According to series of leaked emails discovered by online publication, Kotaku, rumors previously linking Arkane Studios to Prey 2 development are true.
This news comes in the wake of a series of vague denials made by Arkane’s parent company Bethesda regarding the project.
Kotaku initially began receiving tips regarding Arkane’s work on the title in May of this year. However, a recent series of emails uncovered by the publication have confirmed the developer is not only working on Prey 2, but is entirely rebooting the project as a “spiritual successor to System Shock 3.”
In addition to the emails, Kotaku’s source explained that the reboot of the game will be an entirely fresh start for Prey 2. Arkane Studios will not be using any of the work previously done on Prey 2 by developer Human Head.
With Arkane Studio’s Austin, Texas team having just wrapped up the last of Dishonored’s DLC, they are reported to be the development team moving on to the development of the Prey 2 reboot.
It would seem, however, that Bethesda had sought to vigorously prevent the leak of the new project before they were ready to make the announcement. Only a few weeks back, Pete Hines, Bethesda’s vice president of marketing, denied the rumors when Rock Paper Shotgun asked them about the supposed project.
“No,” Hines told Rock Paper Shotgun. “All of that stuff, I have no idea where it came from. The Human Head Prey 2 thing is the Human Head Prey 2 thing. Arkane is over here, and they’re doing their thing, and that’s for them to work on. We’ll be ready to talk about what they’re working on when it gets closer to release.”
Technically Hines’ denial rang true, due to Arkane’s entirely new take on Prey 2. In fact, Arkane creative director Raphael Colantonio provided continued denials regarding the project during a Q&A with Rock Paper Shotgun just yesterday.
“No,” Colantonio told them. “We’ve been looking at where that rumor came from, and I really don’t know.”
However, as the emails uncovered by Kotaku reveal, the denials were simply a way to hold off discovery of Arkane’s role in Prey 2’s development.
“Austin has officially been green lit for its own project!” Colantonio wrote in an email to Arkane’s staff back in May. “Doing a new IP was not a possibility because it’s adding risk to the challenge of growth, so after going back and forth with Todd, Harvey, Ricardo, we decided that Prey 2 presented an interesting opportunity if we could reboot it. Zenimax accepted our pitch which was “the spiritual successor to System Shock 3.”
If the emails provided by Kotaku’s source prove to be real, one would assume Colantonio meant to write System Shock 2.
Despite the confirmation provided by these leaked emails, Bethesda issued the following statement to Kotaku today:
We aren’t talking about what Arkane is working on and we have no new information to share on Prey 2.
It remains unknown why Bethesda is still attempting to deny Arkane’s role in the new project, but short of the leaks being revealed to be a massive hoax, it would appear we have a definitive answer, Arkane Studios is indeed working on a new version of Prey 2.
Let us know what you think about Arcane’s role in the upcoming Prey 2 reboot in the comments below.