Dinga Bakaba praises God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla and claims immersive sims as new Mecca of game design

Arkane Lyon is not one of those studios that finds a great idea and squeezes every last cent out of it. Its director, Dinga Bakaba, has a broader view on future game design and on a particular genre that is experiencing a new Golden Age: immersive simulators. Gamereactor had the honour of interviewing the veteran developer during his appearance at the BIG Conference, where he picked up the 2023 Honorary Award, and you can watch the full interview below.

Taking a cue from Deathloop and its time-loop based gameplay cycle, Bakaba emphasised the different perspectives on the same story, and how different approaches enrich the player's gameplay. Kind of like God of War: Ragnarök's new roguelike mode, Valhalla. "It is that some people will have already finished God of War twice (...) and they have a really good grasp of the mechanics, but a lot of players will have finished it just once for the story, and by the end of the game, they're like, oh, this feels really good, but then the game ends."

"And I think the opportunity to play through those kind of loops again and again and be surprised and seeing some different things, interesting things, that allows you to go deeper with the mechanics and to touch a little bit of the mastery, you know."

As well as reaffirming that Dishonored 3 is not in the studio's future plans, Bakaba did say that its next game (Marvel's Blade, though he doesn't mention it directly) will be something different. "At Arkane we like to create new things. We like to challenge ourselves."

Immersive simulators are something that fascinate Bakaba, and he closely follows the work of studios, both large and small, that apply this design philosophy: "If you take Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, it's a fighting game, action game. If you take Dishonored, it's more of a stealth game. If you take Prey, more of a horror, survival, psychological horror in space. And even beyond Arkane, if you take Raphael Colantonio, the founder of Arkane's latest game, Weird West, it is a top-down RPG with a twin-stick gameplay, in a sense."

"But they are immersive sims in the sense that they are using this design philosophy and applying it in a genre. And that's what's special."