The next game from Dishonored co-creator Raphael Colantonio is a first-person immersive sim with a structure between Prey and Fallout: New Vegas—'We favour density over size'

Raphael Colantonio wants you to imagine a spectrum. On its left you have Dishonored, the series he co-created with fellow immersive sim veteran Harvey Smith. It's relatively linear and tightly mission-based; once you've finished with a level there's no going back. On the right there's Fallout: New Vegas—a rambling open world. 2017's Prey is in the dead centre, open but dense, with some areas gated off until you have the equipment (or creativity) to get in.

Colantonio says the new immersive sim from his team at WolfEye Studios sits between Prey and New Vegas on that spectrum—«We favour density over size.» That's all you need to say to rocket to the top of my wishlist. Billed as a «First-person action RPG,» Colantonio and WolfEye CEO Julien Roby make the game sound like a return to their roots at Arkane: «We are even closer to that Fallout thing, [but] still with the values of previous games we've worked on like Prey and Dishonored. It's mobility and that kind of physicality, the level design, the worldbuilding of those games, but served in a structure that is more open than ever.»

Those are all my keywords, and I reckon the same goes for a lot of other immersive sim sickos out there. Lucky thing, too, because Colantonio and Roby are keeping their cards very close to their chest when it comes to revealing anything else about the game. 

All Colantonio would tell me was that it'll have all the RPG stuff you expect—stats, dialogue choices, XP-based level ups—in a «what-if story» set in «the early 1900s in America,» where «a big tech event… like some sort of crazy technology from the future came» and set the world on an alternate course about 30 years before the game takes place. That scans with one of the game's earliest teases: An image of a whiteboard at WolfEye's office with the words «first person» and «retro sci-fi» written on it. The scant few screenshots WolfEye has released as teasers make the game look like someone smashed BioShock and Firewatch together.

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