Arkane Studios

Founded in 1999, Arkane Studios is a game developer with offices in Lyon, France and Austin, Texas. Arkane released its first game, Arx Fatalis, in 2002. With its innovative magic systems and rich, cohesive environments, Arx earned the studio some major awards, including a nomination as Rookie Studio of the Year. In 2006, Arkane created Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, a game known for innovations in body awareness and its unique first-person combat system. Dark Messiah garnered the IGN Reader’s Choice for the Best PC Action Game of 2006. In addition, Arkane Studios has worked on projects with Valve, Activision, Electronic Arts and 2K Games, contributing to AAA games such as Call of Duty: World at War and BioShock 2 as well as standalone titles for the Dishonored series and Prey (2017).
In August of 2010, the company was acquired by ZeniMaxMedia,"Bethesda Now Owns Arkane Studios" article by Evan Elden Eller at gamrFeed.VGChartz.com which in turn was acquired by Microsoft in March of 2021.Microsoft confirms its Bethesda acquisition is complete and ‘some games’ will be exclusive on VGC
In May of 2024, Microsoft closed down Arkane Austin.Redfall's devs were reportedly building out its massively delayed Hero Pass content 'very recently'—before Microsoft closed Arkane Austin for good on PC Gamer
==Partnership with 2K Games==
Under the direction and leadership of 2K Marin, Arkane Studios assisted in the creation of design, animation, and art for BioShock 2. They notably worked on the first six levels of the game.Dishonored, alchimie gagnante, an interview of Arkane Studios' developers Sébastien Mitton and Dinga Bakaba on massivv.com
A 2020 Noclip documentary interview with Romuald Capron (Lyon Studio Director) and Sébastien Mitton† (Lyon Art Director) clarified Arkane's role on BioShock 2, traveling between Lyon, France to Novato, California to work with 2K Marin. Namely they did the level architecture and level design of six levels as well as the Big Sister and Little Sister animations.Noclip Documentary: The Untold History of Arkane: Dishonored / Prey / Ravenholm / LMNO / The Crossing starting at approximately 49:32
An anecdote that Mitton shared was that he had seen BioShock being played in Arkane's offices, but never played the first game before since the scaling of objects felt unrealistic such as the "enormous" luggage found in the Bathysphere Station in Welcome to Rapture. Though as a "visual perfectionist", he oversaw the rescaling of objects to more reasonable proportions such as the luggage found in the Rapture Metro station in Adonis Luxury Resort.
†Mitton's comments have been translated from the original French for clarity.
For their 2016 game Dishonored 2, Arkane Studios was inspired by a time-traveling/alternate present mechanic used in portions of BioShock 2 for the late-game mission A Crack in the Slab. 
Level Design Director, Christophe Carrier, recalled working on the opening of BioShock 2 where Subject Delta travels back in time briefly as well as later on in Outer Persephone with the Little Sister's alternate visions in scripted areas, "At the time I remember I thought, wow, that would be awesome if the player could control that. If you could have some device or something that would allow him to go back in time whenever he wanted...We already knew how to do it because we already did it for BioShock except it was scripted and not whenever you wanted. But technically it was feasible."Inside the Making of Dishonored 2's Best Level: A Crack in the Slab from GameSpot
BioShock 2 Art Director Hogarth de la Plante and Dishonored 2 developers Carrier and level architect Sylvain Fanget describe similar processes on rendering the illusion:
*"We came up with this really cool sort of hacky tech where we could build a version of Eden (in the beautiful fabric area) then we could build a room that was the same overall architectural footprint, but we would use all the assets from Persephone. Then when you walk in and hit a trigger volume, we would teleport the player's camera up into the Persephone version so everything suddenly blinks over to this terrifying looking version of what you're in." - Hogarth de la Plante Deco Devolution - Outer Persephone Concepts p.103
Outer Persephone atrium normal.jpeg
Outer Persephone atrium idealized.jpeg
*"So there are basically three levels in the map. Piled up. You have one level, and you have another one below it. And when you activate the device, which at the beginning was just a dirty hack from us, you had almost a console command where you would enter a command and then it was teleporting you 1000 units below." - Christophe Carrier 
*"The past version is above the other two [by] 600m, and the two present timelines are on the exact same position, which caused us of lot of lighting problems during the development...The trick was to use the chaos system to separate them, so when the player starts the mission, he is in the low chaos level, and if he kills or chokes Aramis Stilton, it switches to the high chaos level, the alternative present. To be able to change the timeline, we just teleport the player with an offset, in this case +600m or -600m. The tricky part, performance wise, was the preview of the other level in the timepiece device, which use the same teleport but with a different resolution." - Sylvain FangetHow Dishonored 2 hides its best details in the periphery on Eurogamer
==Games==
*Arx Fatalis (2002)
*Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006)
*Arx Fatalis: Collector's Edition (2007)
*Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (2008)
*BioShock 2 (2010)
*Dishonored (2012)
*Dishonored 2 (2016)
*Prey (2017)
*Wolfenstein: Youngblood (2019)
*Deathloop (2021)
*Redfall (2023)
*Marvel's Blade (TBA)
*The Crossing (defunct)
*LMNO (defunct)
*Half-Life: Ravenholm (defunct)
==References==
Category:Development Studios