Some time ago the publishing house Bethesda Softworks and the team Arkane Studios
held a closed presentation of their new project – an experimental first-person action game Deathloop… Editorials GameMAG.ru managed to attend this event, watch the long gameplay session of the project, and also talk with its leading developers – game designer Dingoy Bakaboy and artist Sebastian Mitton…
The fresh show of Deathloop came in handy. Despite the fact that the project preparing for release on the console Playstation 5 and PC, which has been shown to the public many times before, the general concept of action among a wide audience still raises a number of obvious questions. Therefore, we have prepared for you the most simple description of the new creation of the talented Arkane Studios team, divided into three points.
Deathloop is Dishonored with guns
At least, this is how Dinga Bakaba, the senior project manager, did not hesitate to describe Deathloop. Also, the game designer directly mentioned another easy-to-understand term: Deathloop is an almost classic immersive sim… Simply put, we are waiting for a deep and verified to the smallest detail first-person adventure that unfolds in detailed locations with high interactivity of the surrounding world and the characters inhabiting it, with whom you can get acquainted on your own terms and at your own pace… The player here is the director. And the limit of the possible is always limited only by his imagination.
Deathloop is not a roguelike
The game really adopts some of the features inherent in projects with roguelite elements, but at its core, Deathloop remains a hand-built mechanism with a clear structure, focus on narrative elements and transparent start, middle and end… Elements of random generation here, with very rare exceptions, cannot be found – the artists and gameplay designers worked on everything painstakingly. In general, as is the case with Dishonored, albeit with reservations.
Deathloop is not an online game
The project has an unusual multiplayer aspect. The easiest way to compare the idea with the intrusion system from the Dark Souls series… When you complete the next mission, another player may enter your world, who needs only one thing to win – to take your life. But if such a prospect does not seem very attractive to you, you are tired of aggressive battles, or you are just temporarily sitting without the Internet – it does not matter, because Deathloop from start to finish can be passed exclusively in single player mode.
Now that we have outlined a few landmarks, Deathloop can be told in a little more detail. As the name suggests, the link to the entire project was the time-loop phenomenon. A mysterious phenomenon that distorts the linearity of the sequence of events determined both the storytelling of the game and its basic design decisions.
According to the plot of Deathloop, Colt, a man with an expressive voice and attractive character, wakes up on a beach unfamiliar to him. Unconscious, the hero tries to restore the chain of events, to remember who he is and what the hell surrounds him. Quickly enough, Colt makes disappointing conclusions – he was trapped in a time anomaly, and now he is going through the same day over and over again, without any chance of salvation. Even death is not liberation – having died, Colt simply finds himself on the shores of that very damned beach.
But quickly enough, new perspectives open up for the protagonist. The time loop can be overcome. To do this, you just need to eliminate eight extravagant “Visionaries” – crazy artists, artists, and just nice people who enjoy their stay on the Black Reef Island. There are only two obstacles in the way of Colt. Firstly, he must cope with his task within the framework of one looping day. And secondly, he himself is the target of the mysterious killer – Julianne’s girlfriend, obsessed with the idea of keeping the loop unbreakable at all costs.
When developing the concept of Deathloop, specialists from Arkane were inspired by several works at once. Besides the obvious “Groundhog day“And thriller”Source“, artist Sebastian Mitton also mentioned the trilogy “Back to the Future”. As the illustrator explained, even if in cult films Robert Zemeckis the issue of time cyclicality was not directly raised, the idea of conjugation of different eras and historical periods became one of the brightest beacons for the visual design of Deathloop. Taking as a basis the catchy aesthetics of the 60s of the last century, the Arkane art department has filled it with fantastic elements – from classic retro futurism to completely eclectic styles that combine many directions at once.
The narrative context described above essentially defines and guides the entire gameplay of Deathloop. From the very beginning of the passage, the player is given an obvious goal – to find and kill eight people, using a large arsenal of weapons, as well as a whole collection of unique magical abilities. But you simply will not be able to complete your plan in the shortest possible time. Here Deathloop stops mimicking a stylish shooter and reveals the complexity of the gameplay concept invented by Arkane in all its glory.
The world of Deathloop is divided into four unique areas, which are gigantic and detailed levels, characterized by intricate structure, expressive artistic content and verticality. In a word, all that for which you could love Prey (2017) and dilogy Dishonored… Visiting each of the locations is like an isolated mission. Within one day, you are free to visit each of the four sectors, but moving from one to the other also moves the time of day – from early morning to noon, evening and finally deep night. At the same time, the progress of time is in no way tied to your actions – having arrived in one of the sectors during the day, you can spend ten hours in it without fear of any timer.
Thus, Deathloop has as many as 16 prepared states of the game world, with each of which you will have to actively interact in one way or another. For example, the target you need appears in a specific location only in the evening, therefore, it may be impossible to eliminate it at other times of the day. However, in order to successfully complete a murder, Colt may need to conduct a little reconnaissance beforehand – find out the code for a closed door, listen to important information, get a special key or equipment. All these subgoals, in accordance with the scriptwriters’ idea, are divided between different locations and their time intervals.
Taking into account the form proposed by the developers, Deathloop turns into a kind of puzzle. You yourself are looking for the most effective ways to pass locations, choose the right time, find new types of weapons and magical artifacts, get acquainted with the daily routine of the Visionaries you are pursuing, try alternative paths of passage, experiment with the environment, until at some point, after countless defeats and victories, sorrows and triumphs, do not find the only correct sequence of actions – the one that will break the loop of death and destruction.
Of course, Deathloop does not imply absolute freedom of action. The overall plot progression of the project is based on triggers and plot events preset by the developers. In other words, start the game, randomly kill all the Visionaries and after an hour you won’t be able to enjoy the credits – there is a beginning, a middle and an end here, remember?
As far as the gameplay mechanics are concerned, the Colt can run, jump, crouch and slide. The hero actively uses both melee weapons and numerous firearms. Special paranormal skills are added to the standard methods of warfare – from banal telekinesis to more memorable tricks like “dominoes”, which came directly here from Dishonored 2 and allows you to link several opponents with a single thread, and then interrupt their lives in a single action.
In case of death, the accumulated progress and the items found in each loop can be transferred to your next run – for this, however, you will need a special resource obtained in the process of passing. As conceived by Arkane, pumping in Deathloop is done in such a way that you gradually feel as if you are turning from a prey to a hunter. In the early stages of the game, the Colt is very weak, and stealthy movement is almost the last chance to win. By the end of the passage, the hero is able to eliminate dozens of opponents, deftly shooting back and moving with lightning speed from cover to cover.
By the way, another curious detail of Deathloop is connected with death. Having started any mission in one of the four regions, it is impossible to freely save and load within its framework – death leads to failure, and an accidental error simply cannot be corrected with a combination of the F5 and F9 keys. As noted by Dinga Bakaba, the developers made such a decision at the very early stages of Deathloop production – it was important for them to motivate players to experiment through numerous mistakes, and not drive them into the conventional framework of “ideal” passage.
All of this is naturally layered with online integration. The merciless Julianna who pursues Colt is not an empty dummy, but an independent character who plays a very important role in the plot. If you go through Deathloop with an online connection, during the game sessions, another player (both a completely random user and one of your friends) can spontaneously join you and try to eliminate Colt at all costs, and you, in turn, will have to not only to fulfill the previously planned task, but also to dynamically adapt to the fact that spontaneous death now awaits literally around any corner. For winning local multiplayer “matches”, the character receives unique rewards – equipment and even cosmetic accessories that allow you to dress up Colt and Julianne to your liking.
If you don’t want to interact with other players in Deathloop at all, then you just need to switch the game to offline mode and never think about multiplayer again. Julianne from history will not disappear and will even periodically attack you as an enemy controlled by artificial intelligence. Within the framework of the presentation, Ding Bakaba made a separate emphasis on the role of Julianna in the general narrative – players will gradually learn about her motives, past and fate as the global history develops.
Despite the catchy and bold concept, Deathloop doesn’t go far outside of Arkane Studios’ comfort zone. On the contrary, the game uses the studio’s long-term portfolio in order to collect under one roof a whole set of well-tuned solutions and present them in an unusual order – fans will rejoice in a fresh approach, and a wider audience may ignite a previously absent interest in Arkane projects.
If the Arkane Studios team can implement everything conceived in the new game without compromising on their art style and game design philosophy, and Black Reef Island turns out to be as elaborate as it wants to appear, then in Deathloop we can expect a real culmination of Dishonored ideas, stretching rooted in an immortal legacy Looking Glass Studios… And after the presentation we saw, I really want to believe in it.
New screenshots and Deathloop arts:
Deathloop comes out September 14, 2023 on the Playstation 5 and PC…
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