When Xbox announced their intent to acquire Bethesda six months ago, plenty of people were surprised, including Deathloop‘s developers at Arkane Lyon, one of the many studios acquired in the deal finalised just a couple of weeks ago.
Deathloop, due to release May 21st, remains a PlayStation 5 console-exclusive for a year after release despite the deal, in a strange situation that sees Xbox release an exclusive on a competitor’s console.
In a recent interview with Deathloop’s Game Director, Dinga Bakaba, and Art Director, Sébastien Mitton, shared their initial reaction to the news.
“It was pretty surprising, I would say,” said Bakaba, “It was unexpected, to an extent… [but] after the surprise, it made a lot of sense.”
“First of all, we are very creative, driven and we really care about doing games that are original, that have a lot of personality and style.”
Speaking to Arkane almost a year ago — well before this deal was announced — we learnt how important originality and creative freedom is to the team, so to hear they are unconcerned about that being jeopardised will come as welcome relief to their fans.
Of course, multiple Arkane games have come to Game Pass as part of the deal.
“Being able to be apart of the Xbox Game Pass ecosystem makes things a bit different for us because we can occupy a space in that service, and we will continue to make the kind of games that we make and make them well,” added Bakaba.
“If you’ve looked on social media, you’ll see that games like Prey and Dishonored 1 and 2 coming to Xbox Game Pass, a lot of people are saying that you need to play these games and have no excuse not to, so it’s been very encouraging.”
“It’s a service that will allow us to remain creative and have the audience and build that relationship over time and that’s really exciting.”
Deathloop is out on PS5 and PC on May 21st. You can find our full interview with the team HERE.