Summary
- The Perfect Dark reboot takes on immersive sim elements, offering dynamic gameplay options.
- After the closure of Arkane Austin, a new immersive sim is a surprise.
- If Perfect Dark is as good as it looks, it could be both immediately engaging and highly replayable.
I didn't go into the 2024 Summer Game Fest weekend thinking about the reports of troubled development clouding several years of radio silence since its initial reveal. I'm also not someone who tends to be particularly enticed by remakes and remasters, even if it had seemed like Perfect Dark was going along swimmingly.
If the Perfect Dark reboot was being approached as a generally straightforward update, there's no reason why it wouldn't be easy to pull off. Like GoldenEye 007, the preceding FPS from Perfect Dark developer Rare, the game follows a design sensibility that still helps define how shooters are made today. At the same time, I don't know how much a loyal remake of Perfect Dark would interest me. The varied environments and moody lighting of the original remain visually engaging today, and there's no particular reason I would leap to a newer version over the Nintendo 64 release.
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The Perfect Dark Reboot Has Immersive Sim Elements
One Of My Favorite Genres Is Making A Surprise Comeback
As the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 revealed, however, the new Perfect Dark is anything but a basic remake. Agent Joanna Dark is still here, maintaining her shockingly orange hair from Perfect Dark Zero, but virtually everything surrounding her looks different. A setting called Garden City trades in dark corridors for a solarpunk aesthetic, and despite the franchise's iconic FPS status, there isn't that much emphasis on guns. If someone described this to me without showing me the trailer, I might think it sounded like an awful way to reboot Perfect Dark, but seeing it in action has had the opposite effect.
What Perfect Dark actually looks like is an immersive sim, a genre defined by games like Deus Ex and System Shock. Immersive sims are all about options, but not necessarily in the same way as RPGs. A good immersive sim offers meaningful interactions with its environments that allow for creative play, making the world feel alive with its responsiveness to the player. While getting past an enemy in an average FPS might require shooting them, that's only one option on the table in an immersive sim, where stealth, parkour, manipulation, and unusual environmental kills could all be on the table.
Arkane Austin's Closure Killed My Immersive Sim Hopes
Microsoft Closing A Talented Studio Was A Huge Blow
I love immersive sims, but I didn't expect to see a major new one anytime soon. Despite the excitement that the earliest entries in the genre generated, they've never really taken over the mainstream. The most prominent studio carrying the torch is Arkane, which has been working in the genre for decades. The studio's biggest hit, Dishonored, included its fair share of genre elements, and its 2017 game, Prey, doubled down, offering a vast array of possibilities and strong systems to them. Arkane's Austin studio usually worked in collaboration with the primary company in Lyon, but developed Prey solo.
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In May 2024, however, Microsoft closed Arkane Austin, removing an incredibly talented team from the equation (Arkane Lyon, thankfully, remains operational). Of all the recent closings, this one hit me the hardest. Dishonored is one of my favorite games ever made, and despite Redfall being a misstep, I was hopeful that Arkane Austin would be able to follow up Prey with another engaging immersive sim. No one at the studio deserved to lose their job in such a sudden and unceremonious way, and Microsoft's stewardship of game companies won't be something I would be willing to trust anytime soon.
The other recent Microsoft closures were Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, Mighty Doom developer Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios, the successor to the studio behind the original 2007 Prey.
This also seemed like it might just be the end of immersive sim projects as ambitious as Prey, at least until the market comes back around to it at some point. Arkane Lyon is working on Marvel's Blade, which will probably include some trademark elements, but it's unlikely to be as ambitious or experimental as Prey. Perfect Dark, consequently, came as a major dark horse surprise to me, especially coming from underneath the same thumb that just dealt a potential death blow to the genre.
Perfect Dark's Gameplay Looks Genuinely Great
Dynamic Action & Interesting Possibilities Have Me Hyped
Perfect Dark has only offered a look at one mission so far, but the dynamic possibilities are striking. Joanna sneaks into a complex by copying the voiceprint of a guard, a great example of the ways in which immersive sims can sometimes make combat unnecessary. She parkours up to the second floor, utilizing movement that looks more akin to the momentum-based freerunning of Mirror's Edge than the stiffer systems of Assassin's Creed. By this point in the trailer, I was already sold, with the focus on fluid first-person stealth feeling more like Dishonored than anything has in a while.
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The mission breaks out into open combat moments later, and at this point, Perfect Dark unveils a suite of beautifully synchronous possibilities. Joanna doesn't just shoot enemies. She kicks their legs out from under them, electrifies them, and blasts through balcony railings. Bullets send fruit flying, tear through obstacles, and break equipment for impromptu smoke bombs. I've played through Dishonored with every prerogative, from never being spotted and leaving no corpses behind to killing everyone in sight, and Perfect Dark looks like it could offer a similarly wide range of engaging options that demand replays.
The future of AAA immersive sims can't realistically rest on one game, and even if there was more on the horizon, none of it would make the closure of Arkane Austin feel any more acceptable. Under the circumstances, however, Perfect Dark might be the ticket to an experience I wasn't expecting to see again anytime soon. If Perfect Dark can emerge from its development woes to match the quality shown in the gameplay reveal, Xbox might just have the next great immersive sim on its hands, and I'm certainly willing to celebrate that.
Source: Xbox/YouTube
Perfect Dark (2025)
- Developer(s)
- The Initiative
- Publisher(s)
- Xbox Game Studios
- Franchise
- Perfect Dark
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
