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One of the most unfortunate missed shots in gaming is that of Arkane’s cancelled Ravenholm game—in case you’re unfamiliar, circa 2007-2008, Arkane was working on a standalone spin-off that would see players returning to Half-Life 2’s zombie-infested Ravenholm.
The project got shuttered because Arkane wasn’t able to deliver on time—though not for lack of trying. This was back when Valve was still attempting (and stumbling on) its episodic vision of Half-Life, and seemingly couldn’t figure it out, either.
That’s a sentiment repeated by Arkane Studios founder Raphaël Colantonio, who was recently interviewed on an episode of the Quad Damage podcast (the answer in question is around 41 minutes, 52 seconds).
“It was great, frankly,” says Colantonio. “And I think the people at Valve who tried it—if they were asked, they’d probably agree.”
“The thing though is, we needed another year—at least six months. And Valve had a very clear business plan for those episodes,” plan being the operative word—as you might be wildly aware, we’re all still waiting for episode three, 18 whole years later. “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.”
Arkane had made some really solid progress. “We had, frankly, an alpha,” Colantonio continues. “We had the entire game that was playable from the beginning to the end. 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.”
Man. Obviously, making games is an expensive and costly process—and in the early 2000s, Valve was not the monkey-making industry giant it is today. But to hear that there was something fully playable that needed a mere half a year’s more polish, and it just didn’t shake out on the balance sheets? That stings.
Colantonio is pretty optimistic about the cancellation in the rear-view, though. He adds: “When the game got canned, we were devastated … in reality, what we didn’t know, was Ravenholm was school for us. We were graduating.”
He explains that the studio learnt a ton from its experience—including a masterclass from the late Viktor Antonov, who died earlier this year. Antonov was a visionary artist who wholesale created the vivid, brutalist aesthetic of Half-Life and Dishonored—leaving a powerful mark on the industry as a whole.
“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.”
In fact, Colantonio has only glowing words for him: “He was a fantastic, fantastic artist … he had so much charisma, and 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.”
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Kurt Indovina
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