LogInArt director of Half-Life 2 and Dishonored helped make Arkane what it is now.
Valve
Now, fans are eagerly waiting for Half-Life 3, but there was once another exciting project at Arkane: Half-Life 2 Return to Ravenholm, which was, sadly, canceled.
Arkane's founder Raphaël Colantonio shared the reason behind it at the Quad Damage podcast, saying that the cancelation was devastation for the team.
"[The game] was great, frankly," he said. "And I think the people at Valve who tried it – if they were asked, they'd probably agree."
However, there was just not enough time to make it work. "The thing though is, we needed another year – at least six months. And Valve had a very clear business plan for those episodes. They were trying to make the episode business work, and they could not, internally, because the costs were too high. So they tried with us, and we had 12 months."
Nowadays, a development cycle is around 6 years for an AAA game, so as you can imagine, one year was not enough, even back then. When the time ran out, Arkane had an alpha ready, playable from start to finish.
"We had one or two of the cinematic moments that were really polished and very impressive. But then we would have to add another six months, maybe more, to make it where it should be."
"When the game got canned, we were devastated … in reality, what we didn't know, was Ravenholm was school for us. We were graduating."
Another learning source came from Viktor Antonov, the art director of Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, who unfortunately passed away not so long ago. He made Arkane what it is now, according to Colantonio.
"He trained us in all of their practices in terms of art, in terms of how to think of a level, how to think of architecture … That encounter with Viktor was pivotal to what would become Arkane later."
Antonov was a fantastic artist, very charismatic. "Everybody who met him felt hypnotised by this very specific person. He was some sort of a genius, and he really participated in making Arkane what it became."
Alas, we never saw Ravenholm. However, Colantonio would love to work on Dishonored 3 if it would ever become a possibility.
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