Arkane’s Blade game has been in development for two years

Revealed during the 2023 Game Awards, Arkane Lyon is working on an Xbox exclusive game based on Marvel’s Blade. While the game is in early development, the title has been worked on for almost two years.

Following its reveal, Bethesda revealed that Marvel’s Blade was in early development, teasing that the title won’t be seen for a while. However, it seems that Arkane has still been working on the upcoming action game for a while.

Spotted by Twitter user BethWilder, a LinkedIn post by Arkane Lyon developer Dana Nightingale revealed that Arkane has spent almost two years working on the superhero project. In a LinkedIn update, Nightingale revealed the game has been worked on since at least January 2021.

Nightingale is the Campaign Director at Arkane Lyon, and her responsibilities on Marvel’s Blade include being the “director of the level design team and principal designer of the campaign”.

Marvel’s Blade appears to be Xbox’s answer to Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man games. While the Spider-Man license is infinitely more popular than Blade, Arkane Lyon’s sublime history of systems-driven gameplay is certainly expertly suited towards the comic book vampire hunter.

The reveal of Arkane’s Blade game has been criticised for the mistakes of the recent Xbox-exclusive vampire hunting game Redfall. However, that title was developed by Arkane Austin, a completely different studio from the creators of Dishonored and Deathloop. However, with Xbox’s exclusive offerings falling behind the competition in recent years, Marvel’s Blade is the type of game Xbox needs.

During the game’s reveal at the 2023 Game Awards, Arkane revealed that the upcoming game will follow the studio’s traditional open-ended structure. This means that missions will have multiple ways of being completed with a variety of skills to use.

Whenever it ends up releasing, Marvel’s Blade will be an exclusive game for Xbox Series X, Series S and PC. The game will also be playable via the Xbox Game Pass subscription service and Xbox Cloud Gaming.