Developer: Arkane Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Verified
Rrp: £49.99 (Humble, Steam and Epic)
Released: 14th September 2021
Available on: Humble, Steam and Epic
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard and Steam Deck
Approximate game length: 20+ Hours
With a gasp you wake up on the beach again. What was it this time? A sniper, gotta stay in cover next time.
With a gasp you wake up on the beach again. What was it this time? Machete, got me from behind while I was shooting her friends.
With a gasp you wake up on the beach again. What was it this time? Damn, cooked the grenade too long.
With a gasp you wake up on the beach again. And again. And again. And again. Eventually, you’ll get it right. With each loop a clue and another step closer.
Deathloop is a FPS from the developers of the Dishonored series Arkane Studios (yes, they also made Redfall but that’s a whole saga unto itself). The game is set on the small Isle of Blackreef, where a strange group of people have somehow set up a time loop that resets itself at the end of each day. For most people, when the day loops they forget everything that happened. You play as Colt a man who for some reason retains his memories between the loops and has decided he’s had enough, it’s time the loop was destroyed.
The problem is, destroying the loop is not as simple as smashing a machine, you have to kill a specific group of people who call themselves Visionaries. Complicating this is the fact that they all have to die within the same loop, which is harder than it sounds because they’re all scattered around the isle. A second problem is Julianna, a skilled assassin who also retains her memories from loop to loop and wants to protect the loop.
In order to kill those Visionaries you’re going to need the one thing that can never be taken from you. Information. With each loop you learn something new, maybe even several things, such as where people are going to be and when. Perhaps that will allow you to lay out a trap, or at least find a time when they are at their most vulnerable.
Of course, even if you fail and only kill one Visionary in a loop that’s still no bad thing. The Visionaries carry special items called ‘slabs’ which grant you an ability such as being able to go invisible or teleport short distances. The more of these abilities you can gain the easier the whole affair will be.
Of course, the Visionaries aren’t the only ones on this isle with something worth taking. You see the various enemies on the isle all carry weapons and sometimes items called ‘trinkets’. All trinkets fall into one of two types; personal or weapon. Weapon trinkets can be applied to a weapon and will have a passive effect such as increasing the damage or reducing recoil. Personal trinkets work similarly to weapon trinkets but instead will give a passive benefit to your character or in some cases grant an ability such as double jump.
Both weapons and trinkets come in one of four rarities, crude (black), sleek (blue), exemplar (purple) and unique (orange). In the case of weapons the higher the level of rarity the more weapon trinkets can be applied to it, and with trinkets the higher its level the more potent it is.
A loop lasts from morning til night, then you wake up on the beach again and all your equipment is reset and all enemies respawn (yes, even the Visionaries). The game splits the ever looping day into four parts; morning, noon, afternoon and evening.
Each of the districts have different opportunities that arise at different times of day, meaning that you will likely spend multiple loops exploring a single district to work out how to do your perfect final run. There are only two ways to progress time which is either travelling between the districts or choosing to wait in the district select screen. Yes, this does mean that you could spend twelve hours exploring a district and when you leave it will still be ‘morning’.
As you might have noticed I mentioned that once a loop restarts everything is reset, so you might wonder what the point in gathering weapons and items would be since they all get reset back to zero at the start of each loop. There is an answer and the answer is ‘Residuum’. Residuum is a resource that can be spent to allow you to carry specific weapons, trinkets and slabs between loops. You can find residuum while exploring the districts but your main source will be through sacrificing weapons and trinkets you don’t need. Of course, you don’t have this power right away, nope. You need to find and complete a specific quest to gain it. I recommend prioritising that quest over anything else in the game, because without it the game is near impossible to beat.
While exploring the island you’ll get ‘invaded’ (to use Dark Souls terminology) by Julianna, or rather, a player controlling her. This player will lock down your tunnels for escape and hunt you relentlessly. If you do manage to kill them then you can get some residuim, a weapon, trinkets and sometimes a slab (or slab upgrade). You can’t avoid being invaded by changing the setting to single player or friends only because the game will instead invade you with an AI controlled version.
Verticality is the word that comes to mind when I think of this games level design. The developers clearly wanted to give the players as many options on how to approach a scenario. Do you go in guns blazing? Maybe sneaking through the vents or over the rooftops? Perhaps a mix of the two. The fact that the districts change depending on what time of day you enter them is great too, some windows are now closed, others open, perhaps a passage has appeared that wasn’t there before. So many options.
I love this game, it really scratches an itch that Dishonored left behind. One of the many things I love about it is that it’s really just one big puzzle. Admittedly, a very violent puzzle but still a puzzle.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
The Dishonored Series
The Sexy Brutal
Thief 2: The Metal Age
