Just under a year ago, Bethesda Softworks announced that it had acquired Arkane Studios, the game developer based both in Austin, Texas and in France. The team had developed two full games in the past, the fantasy RPG Arx Fatalis, and the fantasy action-RPG Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Today Bethesda Softworks officially announced Arkane"s next game, a first person action title called Dishonored.
The game will get its first big preview in the pages of Game Informer magazine"s latest issue. That magazine"s web site has posted up more info on Dishonored along with a look at the print magazine"s cover (shown in partial form above). The game, which is described as "weird-looking" by Game Informer, will be a stealth based action title. As Game Informer states, "It"s a game about assassination where you don"t have to kill anyone. It"s a game about infiltration where you can set up traps and slaughter the entire garrison of an aristocrat"s mansion rather than sneak in."
The game itself will have some development help from Harvey Smith who previously was a driving force at the now defunct Ion Storm on the first two games in the Deus Ex cyberpunk RPG series. Another team member that is working on Dishonored is Viktor Antonov, who previously was an art director at Valve for Half-Life 2, where he helped to design the look of the game"s City 17 setting. Dishonored is due for release sometime in 2012 for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 game platforms.