Marvel's Blade

Marvel's Blade is a narrative-driven, third-person action-adventure title, representing a departure from previous games developed by Arkane Studios which were usually played from a first-person perspective.

The game follows Eric Brooks / Blade, a dhampir known as "The Daywalker" who has sworn his life to the complete eradication of vampires in memory of his mother, who died at the hands of one on the day of his birth. A core theme is Blade's struggle to balance his humanity with his vampiric heritage, necessary to battle the undead but which also ostracizes him from human society. The game's narrative takes him to a quarantine zone in the middle of Paris, France that has become overrun by a colony of fearsome vampires, who have taken to preying on the human survivors while seeking to entrench themselves to invade the rest of the city.

Arkane Lyon, the French-based development division of Arkane Studios known for their work on the Dishonored series and Deathloop (2021), had begun preliminary work on their next project by January 2022, by which point Deathloop's campaign designer, Dana Nightingale, had been tapped to serve as their new game's campaign director. During this period, Arkane Lyon creative director Dinga Bakaba and art director Sebastien Mitton were offered the opportunity to collaborate with Marvel Games, as the firm had been in the midst of licensing out their characters to external developers in a commitment to renew their focus on AAA titles. The pair pitched their vision of a standalone game focusing on Blade, which was responded to enthusiastically by Marvel Games' vice president Bill Rosemann, claiming that "The Arkane touch fits Blade like his trademark trenchcoat." The prospects of the title similarly excited Bethesda Softworks' former vice president Pete Hines. Arkane's game marks the first title focused on the character since the video game tie-ins to the Blade films by New Line Cinema, as well as the character's first standalone appearance in an original video game not tied to other media.

Marvel's Blade was announced with a cinematic trailer during The Game Awards 2023 on December 7, 2023. Bakaba spoke on Blade's character and the resonance he instilled on him as someone who also shared his mixed background and that he was excited to place the character in his hometown of Paris as the game's setting, stating that he considered the studio's chance to interpret the material their own way a dream of his, as well as "a challenge that our team embraces with a passion." Co-creative and art director Sebastien Mitton remarked on approaching a character like Blade as an opportunity to push Arkane's art direction into "even more modern and bold territory". The game had entered full production at Arkane Lyon by late 2024 according to a financial briefing from the studio.