As you may remember, when Dishonored 2 (which was runner-up for our Best Adventure/Action Adventure Game for 2016) launched back in November it was to critical acclaim: personally, we awarded it a 9 out of 10. However, on pc, the game was quite a mess upon launch. To say it stumbled out of the gate is perhaps an understatement, as on anything less than a high-end rig, players often experienced a variety of performance issues. Since then, patches have addresses a substantial amount of the issues, but the game's launch did leave a sour taste left in the mouth of at least a few PC gamers.

There is nothing Arkane Studios can do to fix Dishonored 2's PC launch now. However, what it can do is assure its next game -- Prey -- launches onto the platform smoothly. And according to Arkane's co-creative director Raphael Colantonio in a recent interview with Game Informer, the studio has learned its lessons and is confident it can deliver a "flawless" PC version of Prey. Specifically, Colantonio said the following:

"We had a rough launch on the PC [with Dishonored 2]... In development you never exactly know what you're going to see, most of all with PC because there are so many different configurations and stuff. Unfortunately, it's what it is, it shipped, then it got patched, and now it runs really well. So of course, we are paying double-attention to making sure that this time, the PC version is really flawless when we ship."

Colantonio then continues, saying the following when asked how Arkane would avoid repeating the same mess, suggesting Prey's PC job is different, and even easier, than Dishonored 2's:

There's a little bit more QA time. Also it's a different engine, so the constraints are different. In the case of Dishonored, we created a new engine, really, even though it's based on idTech, most of it has been redone ... In the case of Prey we're using the CryEngine, so it's an engine that has already shipped things before. So it's not the same configuration. Nevertheless, we are of course aware of [PC issues] now, and were back then already, but it caught us by surprise a little. This time we're paying more attention for sure."

As always, there is never any guarantee's in game development, but it appears Arkane is on track -- and confident -- it will not suffer the same pitfalls when it launches Prey, which is slated to release sometime in Spring 2017 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.