Dishonored 3 Was Put On Pause For A 'Small Game' Known As Deathloop

If you've been wondering what the status is on Arkane's action-adventure series Dishonored, it seems it's potentially been put on pause.

During an interview with our friends at Rock Paper Shotgun, Arkane founder Raphaël Colantonio, who has since moved on from the company, spoke about how Bethesda initially made the decision to hold off on a third Dishonored game in favour of an experimental project.

After Dishonored 2 failed to reel in a bigger audience and the release of the standalone expansion 'Death Of The Outsider', Bethesda wanted a "small game" pitch containing "something" that could potentially feature multiplayer, perhaps microtransactions and roguelike elements in it, and in Colantonio's words, that's how Deathloop was born.

"They didn’t quite know where we were going after Dishonored. ‘Do we want Dishonored 3? I don’t know, let’s make something simple and short before, and let’s see."

"And then [Deathloop] became a big thing, over the years."

Arkane's Austin division had also released the roguelike expansion Mooncrash for Prey around the same time, and that's how Deathloop's Ground Hog-style gameplay came about. The only problem was it went from being a small project to something that Colantonio claims "would probably have cost just as much to make Dishonored 3".

Although it has been some time since a Dishonored release, not all hope is lost - with Bethesda confirming late last year that Deathloop is part of the same universe...

Are you ready for a new Dishonored game? Have you played Deathloop yet? Comment below.