Bethesda and Arkane have confirmed that Roundhouse Studios is assisting in the development of Redfall.
The detail was actually confirmed in a cheep (opens in a new tab) along with new gameplay footage from the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase earlier this month, but in the hustle and bustle of non-E3, the information flew under the radar.
In a new email to fans, Co-Creative Director Harvey Smith says “The team at Arkane Austin (along with our partners at Roundhouse) are investing everything we have to make Redfall the best game possible, both in solitary as well as cooperative.”
Roundhouse Studios was founded in 2019, though it’s actually been around since 1997. Like Human Head Studios, the company was probably best known for the 2006 game Prey. But during a legal dispute with publisher Ragnarok Game LLC over Rune II, Human Head went out of business. , but within days most of the studio’s developers were working for Bethesda under the Roundhouse name.
Exactly what Roundhouse has been working on has remained a mystery ever since, and Microsoft’s (and parent company ZeniMax’s) purchase of Bethesda shed no further light on what to expect.
We still don’t know if Roundhouse is working on anything of its own outside of Redfall. Human Head was working on Prey 2 under Bethesda until it was canceled in 2014. Arkane finally released a much-loved new game by the name of Prey, but Human Head’s Prey 2 is still one of the biggest games of ‘what could have been’.
For more information on each developer under the Xbox game studios banner, you can follow that link.
