The next game by Dishonored creator Raphael Colantonio will be a first-person immersive simulation with a structure somewhere between Prey and Fallout New Vegas -- "We prefer density over size"

Raphael Colantonio asks you to visualize a spectrum. On the left, you'll find Dishonored - a series he created with immersive sim veteran Harvey Smith. It's a linear, mission-based game. Once you've completed a level, there's no way to go back. On the left, you'll find Fallout: New Vegas, a sprawling open world. Prey, 2017's game, is in the middle, open, but dense. Some areas are gated until you have the right equipment (or creativity).

Colantonio said the new immersive game from his team at WolfEye Studios is between Prey and New Vegas in that spectrum. "We prefer density over size." You only need to say that to make my wishlist soar. Colantonio, WolfEye CEO Julien Roby, and Arkane's Colantonio make the game sound as if it is a return to Arkane's roots: "We are closer to that Fallout-thing [but] we still have the values of the previous games we worked on like Prey or Dishonored." It's the physicality and mobility, the level design and the worldbuilding from those games, but in a more open structure.

All of those are my keywords and I think they apply to a lot other immersive sim scumbags. Colantonio, and Roby, are also keeping their cards close to their chests when it comes to revealing any other information about the game.

Colantonio told me that the game would have all the RPG features you'd expect, including stats, dialogue options, and XP-based levels, in a "what-if" story set in the "early 1900s in America" where "a big technology event... like some kind of crazy technology from a future came" changed the course of the world about 30 years before it takes place. This scan matches one of the earliest teases for the game: an image of a WolfEye whiteboard with the words "first-person" and "retro sci fi" written on it. The few screenshots WolfEye released as teasers look like someone mashed BioShock with Firewatch.

Colantonio's and Roby's return could be viewed as a departure, or a comeback, depending on your perspective. WolfEye’s first game, the experimental Weird West was a third-person isometric immersive simulation with an anthological story. Some PCG writers, including myself, will tell you that it was severely underrated. Even long-time fans of this genre were a little sceptical: How could a third-person game actually be immersive?

The next WolfEye game, which is still unnamed, isn't but it is consistent with the previous experience of its developers at Arkane. Roby says, "I think that we want to improve our craft." "That's exciting to us, to go to first-person and build on all those experiments."

Colantonio adds, "It is my favorite view." "I think we all naturally went back to what our best skills are, and also what gamers want us do, so everything aligned perfectly." Colantonio does not just mean Roby and him when he says "we all." The pair pointed out that WolfEye has more than a handful of Arkane alumni working on the new game.

Weird West also gave the studio an opportunity to learn more about itself. Colantonio says, "We liked some of the procedural content [in Weird West], but there was a lot that we thought wasn't for us... I don’t think procedural missions are a good thing for us: it's hard to create content that has the emotional effect that a crafted mission has."

In other words, I'm fully expecting WolfEye's game-that-has-not-been-named to feel very much like it came from an alternate-universe Arkane: A first-person RPG with a focus on its narrative, with room in its systems for players to come up with their own solutions to problems. God willing, at some point I will pick up a box and it will turn transparent, and I'll be able to tell that I've arrived home.

You can probably guess that it will be a while before I find out. I'm constantly having to come up with new hyphenated words to replace names. The-next-immersive-sim-from-WolfEye-studios has only just wrapped up pre-production, and Roby and Colantonio are currently in the process of showing it off to potential publishers behind closed doors.

There will however be an "exclusive private alpha" in the coming year. Roby says that the motivation for next year's alpha is to involve the community early in the development of the game, before it is released, so we can take their feedback in a meaningful manner.

But that's all we can expect for the medium- and long-term future. I'm still excited. Arkane, and Colantonio in particular, has been responsible for some my favorite games of all time. Is it exciting to hear that the group is putting out a game in the style of their greatest hits? Even crumbs can make me interested.