This post contains a few general gameplay spoilers for Dishonored: Death of the Outsider.
Many years ago,
Rock Paper Shotgun published a Dark Futures series that wondered where all the
immersive sim games went. Why didn't Deus Ex 1 prompt a huge burst of similar games back then? Self-appointed immersive sim experts like me roughly date this "first wave" from Ultima Underworld (1992) through System Shock (1994), Thief (1998), System Shock 2 (1999), and ending perhaps with Deus Ex 1 (2000). From there, we don't really see a larger return to this tradition until the "second wave" begins with Bioshock (2007), Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007), Fallout 3 (2008), etc. and this is also when we starting using the term "immersive sim" more often.
(How narrowly or widely you define this genre is up to you, I take a sort of "moderate" line on this.)
Unfortunately, word on the street is that sales weren't very great for Arkane's recent immersive sims Prey (2017) or Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (2017). And outside of Arkane, the faith has not been kept:
the Bioshock series (basically) ended with Irrational's closure, and Square-Enix / Eidos has basically
discontinued its rebooted Deus Ex series. The systems-y 2016 Hitman reboot was critically acclaimed but also
sold-off by Square-Enix. Basically, big expensive complex systemic single player games are not exactly thriving in an industry now dominated by giant multiplayer titans that can sell a new hat and rake in millions. (Also file under: "why was there never a Half-Life 3"?)
Well, we got what we wanted, immersive sims returned to the world from 2007 through the 2010s -- but it turns out that no one else
ever asked for this and the games apparently did not resonate with a larger audience. So let us all look up and bear witness to the passing of this great age, and mark the second death of the immersive sim genre.