Arkane Deathloop - first-person action game from Arkane set on a time loop island

[Zombra]

In Deathloop, based on what we know of it, lack of quicksave makes some sense considering the time loop and resets and all of that but not every game after it will employ the same premise or story device to be able to excuse the absence of manual saving. They tested it with Mooncrash and think they struck gold. They didn't. Shit like this is being done by roguelikes all the time.

You and I at least seem to agree that in Deathloop the rolling autosave system makes sense. So it seems like this thread isn't really appropriate for the quicksave debate, when there are already other, better threads on the subject.

 

[Ash]

The structure of Deathloop addresses one of the bugbears of the immersive sim: quick save.
But Deathloop eliminates quick saves entirely: You're meant to play through disasters, you're meant to see the outcome of poorly hatched plans.
-Dinga Bakaba

I had minimal interest in this game. It has just shot up. Looks like it will be no awesome complex immersive sim, but it will get this highly important fundamental right for once so could be good even if simple and straightforward. Fingers crossed. Hope still isn't high since Arkane have been a bit unremarkable ever since Dark Messiah.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

To all you people trying to tell me when I can and can't save in order to make me play your game "the right way".

Fuck you.

Git gud, bro

 

[Jenkem]

"WE WANT C&C"

"what do you mean I can't savescum to get the best possible option all the time???"

 

[RaptorRex888]

Setting doesn't look interesting to me. Sorry.

 

[1451]

Cool story but everybody knows that lack of quick saving is a sign of consoleitis.
They designed the game with consoles as the main platform and try to spin it around with their hypothetical autistic visions.
Day one pirate.

 

[DeepOcean]

Game gone from easy pass to maybe pirate it, they seem aware that having limited saving, contrary to some codexers think, it isnt something you can just slap on any game and lo and behold, instantaneous incline, there are costs to that design decision that must be analyzed and they seem to be setting the game up to avoid them. Only if the level design didnt look so meh and the art design was better...

 

[LESS T_T]

Dishonored 2 already had quicksaves on consoles. They could add it in this game too if they wanted, especially this is PS5 only (no PS4 version) game. If I were pessimistic I would think the decision was more about co-op experience. You can't really quicksave with an opposing human player around.

Either way, personally I don't mind the lack of quicksaves.

 

[SharkClub]

Cool story but everybody knows that lack of quick saving is a sign of consoleitis. They designed the game with consoles as the main platform and try to spin it around with their hypothetical autistic visions.

What a retarded thing to say. Dishonored 2, Death of the Outsider and Prey all had quicksaving and it would literally be less effort and work for them to just copypaste it from them than design a whole new system that involves rewinding time as the main feature of the game.

 

[1451]

If Deathflop had quicksaving it would reduce playtime even more, what they want is the illusion of a long lasting game.

 

[Immortal]

Deathflop

 

[Ash]

Dishonored 2 already had quicksaves on consoles. They could add it in this game too if they wanted.

Is this supposed to be some amazing new technology? Quicksaves have been a thing on consoles since...1997 (Duke Nukem 3D PSX port) if not before. Hell Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening (1993) has a pretty much instantaneous save anywhere feature. Or even Pokemon: Blue/Red (anywhere except in combat). These are original black and white 8-bit gameboy games.

 

[Zombra]

I wonder how many here have even seen Groundhog Day.

 

[Child of Malkav]

 

[DeepOcean]

Deathloop... whatever... gonna watch...

What Dinga was saying? I didnt pay any attention to him for some reason.

 

[ADL]

It was a nice change of pace to see you sub-humans seething about the lack of a save management system in a game about a goddamn time loop where you're supposed to die and learn from mistakes instead of the two black people in a video game as some sort of misguided resistance to the "woke agenda". Honestly I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about when you say this game looks shitty and isn't an immersive sim. Only difference is that it's more lethal playstyle-oriented and has more vertical level design than Prey or any of the Dishonored games.

Everyone should jerk themselves off to a QuarterPounder video before posting ITT. I'll even save you the trouble of finding one.


I swear if you collective group of get woke go broke retards kill Deathloop and yet another mainstream attempt at an immersive sim over something this petty and dumb, you deserve the

you're gonna get.

 

[DeepOcean]

Meh, you guise are deluded, it will be the normie NPCs that are going to decide if this is successful or not and not social media memers, and normies dont give a shit to immersive sims, do you think the average chimp care about things like level design, mechanics, save system discussion or whatever? If those fuckers did, we would have Thief 10 by this point.

Maybe you might get to convince 13 years olds that like to grief people to buy this so they can annoy other people playing as Julianna but even that is a long shot.

 

[A horse of course]

Normie NPCs don't buy Arkane games. Their target audience is midwits with an inflated estimation of their own intellectual prowess (you guys).

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Game's 3 weeks away from release and they still haven't shown proper mission gameplay. This is DOA.

 

[Ash]

What Dinga was saying? I didnt pay any attention to him for some reason.

It wouldn't happen to be because he's French would it?



SLAP "Speak English!"

It's odd higher ups and marketing is allowing this rather than using more of a presenter's voice and English native as (smart) game companies always do. A more marketable voice. Isn't this shit marketing 101? Really it is just common sense. I mean, I can imagine this guy being pretty difficult to understand for younger viewers or those not great with English or had little exposure to English-speaking French people. I find him not that intelligible and I have a lot of exposure to the French. Too bad because he is clearly intelligent. Understands quicksave is retarded after all.

Oh right I forgot, GAMEPASS. Guarantees games won't utterly bomb if I understand it correctly, which I guess takes some pressure away.

 

[baud]

What Dinga was saying? I didnt pay any attention to him for some reason.

It wouldn't happen to be because he's French would it?



SLAP "Speak English!"

I remember watching that scene in French when it was released (at the time I wasn't good enough to watch movies in English). Didn't make any sense.

It's odd higher ups and marketing is allowing this rather than using more of a presenter's voice and English native as (smart) game companies always do. A more marketable voice. Isn't this shit marketing 101? Really it is just common sense. I mean, I can imagine this guy being pretty difficult to understand for younger viewers or those not great with English or had little exposure to English-speaking French people. I find him not that intelligible and I have a lot of exposure to the French. Too bad because he is clearly intelligent. Understands quicksave is retarded after all.

even as a French I dislike his accent. Maybe it's because I'm mostly used to hearing English spoken with a US accent

 

[Ash]

I remember watching that scene in French when it was released (at the time I wasn't good enough to watch movies in English). Didn't make any sense.

I'm not surprised. There's like three reasons why it wouldn't.

1. Chris Tucker's particular brand of humor and character cannot just be translated over to any other language.
2. Somebody speaking french slapping an Asian that also speaks french and telling them to speak English? They must have changed some stuff but regardless it's not gonna make much sense.
3. A lot of the humor is also based in the English language, e.g spelling whore with a W. But when pronounced it is silent. A lot of it is also simply how the french-asian speaks. Or the fact he speaks french in the first place. Nothing wrong with it it is just funny. The high-pitched voice, his cocky attitude, and the hiliarious facial expressions. Definitely a Frenchmen from birth even if Asian parents. That can't all be acting...

 

[baud]

I remember watching that scene in French when it was released (at the time I wasn't good enough to watch movies in English). Didn't make any sense.

I'm not surprised. There's like three reasons why it wouldn't.

1. Chris Tucker's particular brand of humor and character cannot just be translated over to any other language.
2. Somebody speaking french slapping an Asian that also speaks french and telling them to speak English? They must have changed some stuff but regardless it's not gonna make much sense.
3. A lot of the humor is also based in the English language, e.g spelling whore with a W. But when pronounced it is silent. A lot of it is also simply how the french-asian speaks. Or the fact he speaks french in the first place. Nothing wrong with it it is just funny. The high-pitched voice, his cocky attitude, and the hiliarious facial expressions. Definitely a Frenchmen from birth even if Asian parents. That can't all be acting...

checking the film (here's the relevant part), in the French localized version they had the Asian actor speaking joual/Québécois (from Quebec, the French-speaking area of Canada); so it's not completely French, more of a patois, and required the help of the translator, but made less sense in the context of the movie.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Julia looks like a more athletic Candace Owens, but still shares her annoyance and insipience.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-08-26-deathloop-is-not-at-all-what-i-expected

Deathloop is not at all what I expected
Or how Arkane's gone loud with its most bombastic outing yet.

There's an interesting note that's been attached to the access we've been allowed to Deathloop - some five hours with the latest game from Dishonored and Prey developers Arkane Studios - that politely implies we look beyond the easy comparisons with the likes of Hitman and Dark Souls with its intricate clockwork maps, or of Majora's Mask, The Outer Wilds and Returnal with the ingenious time loop at its core (it even goes as far as to categorically state, should there be any lingering confusion, that no Deathloop is most certainly not a roguelike).

The thing is - and I'm sorry Arkane, I know you tried your best to dissuade me, but this is just what we do - I don't know how else you pin down this curious chimera of a game. Partly because so much of the pleasure of those first five hours is seeing how Deathloop assembles itself from all those disparate parts as its loop winds around itself, partly because by the time you've taken down a couple of the visionaries that are your marks and earnt some of their powers there's so much in play that it's something of a tangle. Mostly, though, it's because Deathloop's knotty enigma is one you should untangle yourself, because judging from the first five hours this really could be something special.
This is, though, a very different experience to those we've seen from Arkane in the past. Yes, after those five hours you may well be using your recently acquired superpowers to blink from rooftop to rooftop, perhaps opting to sneak past guards or simply snapping their necks like Dishonored, and yes there's some of that same pulpy kitsch from Prey - dialled up here to an enjoyably heady degree - but the balance, and the set-up, feels entirely different.

First, a word on that set-up. You're Colt, waking up blearily on some strange cold shore with not much more knocking around your head beyond a hangover - no recollection of who you are, where you are or why it is exactly that the entire island you're stricken on seems hell-bent on killing you. If they succeed - or if you meet your end any other way - three times over, the loop begins afresh, Colt waking up once again on that chill beach with nowt more than a dry mouth and a migraine.

So you push forward again into one of Deathloop's four distinct districts, hopefully armed with something a mite more powerful than the shotguns, nailguns or bolt rifles you can pick up along the way - knowledge. Maybe it's something as simple as the passcode for a locked door, or maybe something else - a new piece of intel that might send you on the trail of a new piece of gear, or some information as to the maneuvers of one of the eight Visionaries that are your ultimate marks. Which is when it gets more complicated still, with the only way to break the loop being to kill all eight of them in a single day.

Built in the Void Engine, Deathloop can be a seriously pretty game - helped along by some impeccable art direction. Above all that, though, it's always the paint texture in Void Engine games that impresses me the most. So rich!

Already I'm sure you'll be making connections of your own, picking up a bit of Hitman in the clockwork nature of your marks and their movements, The Outer Wilds in how you're free to manipulate and manifest that clockwork in bold and fascinating ways, and then as soon as you've started to get your head around all that other elements from Soulsbourne and roguelikes are folded in - soon you're able to infuse the weapons and abilities you pick up on each run with 'residium' so that you might hold on to them next time you wake up on that beach, and while all residium is lost upon death you can return to the place of your demise to pick it all up again. It is, in short, a lot.

We refer to these games as a useful shorthand, I think, because when you put Deathloop's make-up down in simple black and white it can come across as something of a scrawl - indeed, as you're picking through the lists of intel and leads in the sometimes fussy menus, it can feel like one too. But while this is no doubt a very cerebral game, much like its predecessors from Arkane, it feels somehow lighter than what's gone before. Indeed, for all the names that have been invoked when it comes to Deathloop - the Hitmans and Dark Souls and Returnals - it was a very different game that came to mind in so much of the moment to moment action. With its spy fiction underpinnings (by way of The Prisoner and Point Blank, of course), maps dense with multiple objectives and - most importantly - the sheer breeziness of it, it was GoldenEye that came to mind more often than other games when playing those first few hours of Deathloop.

Spoiler

Antagonist Julianna is playable in the online part of Deathloop that wasn't available for us to sample at this point, though I imagine - and apologies to Arkane again for invoking another game - it'll work along similar lines to invasions in Dark Souls.

This is a pure power fantasy, so much noisier and chattier than Arkane's previous games (with so much of that chattiness coming from the to-and-fro between Colt and antagonist Julianna - something that fizzes and pops and gives this complex game a very human heart). There's much more urgency to its action too, injected by that Majora's Mask time loop limitation of having just one day to do it all, but also by the forward momentum Deathloop's arsenal loudly insists upon.

Which is to say that the guns feel good in Deathloop. Really, really good. Cole's starter SMG spits and buckles, helped along on PS5 by some fine DualSense support, with a tendency to jam mid gunfight if you're still rocking one of the more basic models. The shotguns, meanwhile, boom with such screen-shaking exuberance that it seems frankly rude not to use them as and when you can. Whereas Dishonored always felt like it was funnelling you to a life in the shadows, Deathloop pushes you to the other extreme, encouraging you to go about your business with a bit more swagger and extravagance.

The visionaries come complete with their own lore to pick through, and provide some memorable set-pieces which you I should probably preserve so you can experience them yourself.

It's helped along by the fact that, in those first few hours at least, Deathloop is not a punishing game. Far from it, in fact - maps are wide open and dense, making sidestepping a mob a doddle (with lavish architecture and craggy rockfaces that you know will launch a thousand thinkpieces) while the AI seems suitably blunted by the fact that most of the NPCs in Deathloop are perpetually drunk, seemingly distracted by their own inebriation or strumming idly on guitars. It places the power firmly in your hands, perhaps re-emphasising the fact that the world in Deathloop is presented for you to toy with rather than be intimidated by.

The real challenge, it would seem, is how you go about placing those pieces together, and how you align this dense little Rubiks Cube of a world until all the tiles - and all eight of those visionaries - click right where you want them. After those first few hours I'm at the point where the world has opened right up, where each four of those districts are available in each of their different times of day and where the possibilities and permutations are threatening to become something of a headache.

Up to this point, though, Deathloop's made sense of its dazzling array of components, and held them together with an impeccable sense of style. There's a danger it might end up tying itself in knots, though at present it seems composed enough to help guide its players through the tangle. After those first few hours, as well, I can see why Arkane politely asked to look past the obvious comparisons, because while Deathloop might be built from familiar parts, it's quite unlike anything I've ever played.