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

Immortal

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In My Safe Space
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I've not played Kingdom Come: Deliverance so I can't comment in much detail. The fundamentals seem pretty good (stamina system, lock-on with focus on aiming attack directions, various offensive and defensive maneuvers) but I don't know what depth is really there, how it interfaces with the RPG systems, etc. I haven't played Chivalry or Mordhau so I don't know much about those either.

Last question, Mount and Blade?

Well designed / fun directional combat? Or too abusable and unrewarding?
 

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Welp, Arkane certainly wasn't kidding with adaptive difficulty. I'm at a point where enemies on the ground can actually see me on rooftops, hear my footstep while I'm running on a different floor, start firing immediately upon seeing me, and I even got sniped midair while shifting above them? Just lost 3 slabs, shit ton of trinkets, a purple nail gun and a purple rifle at Aleksib's party because they just kept coming and naded my camping spot.

From my experience, enemies are much more lethal at night, and the guards in specific areas that have Visionaries are much more reactive than the mooks in open areas. I think this is a deliberate design choice, they want exploring the open areas easier because you'll spend the majority of time in here solving puzzles and finding clues. Even with objective marker, the majority of puzzles requires observing the environment so having difficult or respawned enemies would make navigating the map tedious. I just spent an hour finding the codes for a chest underground which had its clues spreaded around Updaam, looking for them and figuring the codes themselves aren't easy, and I don't think having to struggle against enemies every 5 steps would add much to the process.

There are also areas that react to you if you trip the alarm, like the Library. If you were wondering if there's any incentive to stealth, then there you go.
 
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Wunderbar

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Adaptive difficulty shouldn't be a thing in a game like that.

Isn't it the entire point of Deathloop that the enemies don't retain their memories upon a loop reset? Your character is the only one who gets to learn new tricks.
 

Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Adaptive difficulty shouldn't be a thing in a game like that.
Isn't it the entire point of Deathloop that the enemies don't retain their memories upon a loop reset? Your character is the only one who gets to learn new tricks.
You're arguing for a game where you get new powers, weapons and resources, but it's just the same simple challenges over and over again. Like an MMO where you can level up to level 80 but the only enemies throughout the world are level 1 rats.
 

Belegarsson

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Adaptive difficulty shouldn't be a thing in a game like that.

Isn't it the entire point of Deathloop that the enemies don't retain their memories upon a loop reset? Your character is the only one who gets to learn new tricks.
That's fair. I was pointing out that there's still challenge in this game despite the derpy AI. Also who knows, the game has been thoroughly giving explanations on why things are like this, I won't be surprised if it does the same with enemies' sudden lethality :)
 

Child of Malkav

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Adaptive difficulty shouldn't be a thing in a game like that.

Isn't it the entire point of Deathloop that the enemies don't retain their memories upon a loop reset? Your character is the only one who gets to learn new tricks.
What does retaining memories have to do with deadlier enemies and a more reactive and hostile AI?
 

Wunderbar

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Child of Malkav the main character is stuck in a time loop. The enemies don't keep memories about what's going on, each cycle they act predictable and repeat the same actions. Then all of a sudden they become more reactive and hostile?
 

Child of Malkav

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Child of Malkav the main character is stuck in a time loop. The enemies don't keep memories about what's going on, each cycle they act predictable and repeat the same actions. Then all of a sudden they become more reactive and hostile?
They become more reactive as the day advances and discover that more Visionaries are getting killed. Unless you die or reset the loop, what you do in one district or time of day can lead to this increase in enemy alertness.
 

Wunderbar

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:deathclaw: apparently i can't read. For some reason i thought the enemies are becoming better at finding and fighting you even after the loop resets.
 

copebot

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There's a part in the game in which you can get two visionaries together, every time, where they can be easily killed in multiple ways with no alerts, to get their full loot and residuum with no sneaking required. It's also very fast to complete it. Also, for whatever reason, Juliana can't invade that level and at that time, but she's supposed to be able to invade any level with a visionary active. Once you unlock that, (and honestly before it) there's no more loot pressure on Colt at all and the only thing you lose if you die in multiplayer is just your time.

Beating the game does require a higher pressure evening run that requires 3 days of setup. In mine, the multiplayer adversary was just hiding on the roof in Aether (the ghost power that has an upgrade that makes it so it lasts indefinitely if you didn't move), so I walked up to the purple shimmer and stabbed it in the ass.

Aether seems better than it is, although it's very hard to see the shimmer in daylight. It also nerfs your audio with crackles and distortion while making a loud noise.
 

Siel

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About the AI, here is a response from the game director (Dinga)

There is indeed an adaptative difficulty called « Loop Stress », though it doesn't depend of the time of day nor does it reset each loop, it's global to the game.

Basically it starts already quite low and if you die or fail, it goes down and when you kill a visionary, complete a Lead stage, finish a complete loop, etc, it goes up. Once it's on max, NPCs are much more vicious in their aim, their fire rate, the
simultaneity of gunners, they have better loadout (health trinkets, anti-headshot, or weapons that drain you Power) and they react faster and investigate longer. You can be invaded up to 4 times a loop (0 when your Loop stress is too low). But NPC loot is better (cause they're better stuffed) and there are much more residuum nodes in the levels etc.

It never becomes extremely difficult (this is not the point of the game, it's a power fantasy) but it still gives some challenge and if you add Julianna invaders, it can become quite hard... So, don't really trust early game lets play, it becomes harder and, in my opinion, more fun on a challenge perspective on mid/late game.

Translated from here:
https://nofrag.com/test-deathloop-vers-linifini-mais-pas-au-dela/#comment-101352860
 

Child of Malkav

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About the AI, here is a response from the game director (Dinga)

There is indeed an adaptative difficulty called « Loop Stress », though it doesn't depend of the time of day nor does it reset each loop, it's global to the game.

Basically it starts already quite low and if you die or fail, it goes down and when you kill a visionary, complete a Lead stage, finish a complete loop, etc, it goes up. Once it's on max, NPCs are much more vicious in their aim, their fire rate, the
simultaneity of gunners, they have better loadout (health trinkets, anti-headshot, or weapons that drain you Power) and they react faster and investigate longer. You can be invaded up to 4 times a loop (0 when your Loop stress is too low). But NPC loot is better (cause they're better stuffed) and there are much more residuum nodes in the levels etc.

It never becomes extremely difficult (this is not the point of the game, it's a power fantasy) but it still gives some challenge and if you add Julianna invaders, it can become quite hard... So, don't really trust early game lets play, it becomes harder and, in my opinion, more fun on a challenge perspective on mid/late game.

Translated from here:
https://nofrag.com/test-deathloop-vers-linifini-mais-pas-au-dela/#comment-101352860
So it's just the corruption system from Mooncrash.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Quick update on the difficulty:
While hardly a punishing or hardcore experience, I'm finding plenty of challenging situations and have died several times in the first few chapters. The looping conceit with dying and coming back works very smoothly.
 

toughasnails

Guest
Did anyone else have Dishonored frame to them initially as being a spiritual successor to Thief then they played Dishonored and never wanted to hunt down someone and murder them more in their life?
I disagree. If you mean the removal of Thief\s reliance on lighting, I think that it actually makes the game more challenging and tactical. You have to be more dynamic, to have better grasp of the environment and the movement of AI bc you don't have Thief's "safe space" that is you cannot be safe in spite being within AI's line of sight bc you're in space whose lighting is bellow their visibility threshold.
Everything else, meaning the exploration, freedom of movement, looting, is classic Thief. I'd say that Dishonored duology is faster paced Thief more than anything else. That is as long as you play them as you SHOULD, without powers and with all helpers turned off.
 

copebot

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The game works best with the invasions, and is just a mediocre Dishonored when the invasions aren't happening or your invader sucks. One issue with the way the game is designed is just that some of the cooler scenarios for multiplayer (invading Frank's party palace, killing Fia with the pressure of the exploding nuclear reactor if you get discovered, killing Wenji at the science complex, killing Charlie at his LARP, killing Egor at night) are actually all one-time events unless the host is trying to farm them or just do it for fun.

You can only queue as Juliana, instead of just being able to queue as a random scenario for either. Sometimes the multiplayer can be brilliant even with the jank, but the game just isn't that much without the multiplayer. It's very fun to trap up the objective areas in ways that are difficult to disarm, especially without the mine-hacking power. New players will blunder into the mines, intermediate players will be terrified of being blown up and intimidated away from the trapped up entrance, and good players will figure out how to evade them or disarm them.
 

Zombra

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The soundtrack for this game is so goddamn good. Marrying a classic James Bond aesthetic with blaxploitation themes was fucking inspired.
 

Atlantico

unida e indivisible
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The soundtrack for this game is so goddamn good. Marrying a classic James Bond aesthetic with blaxploitation themes was fucking inspired.

It's very generic and inoffensive. Nothing "blaxploitation" (who spells it like that? Prince?) about it.

It sounds something like the soundtrack of Evil Genius, but with modern voice aesthetics and auto-pitch.

Vapid NPC garbage, done in a hurry. And it shows.
 
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I'm getting close to the endgame. 20 hours played with probably another 4 or 5 hours left if I had to guess, maybe another 5 on top of that if I wanted to do a full completionist run. The game definitely puts its worst foot forward. The first five hours are easily the most bland and boring. The midgame is pretty fun though. Decidedly too easy is really the only major complaint that I have with the midgame. Endgame looks like it will be quite a bit more linear, but hey, that's sort of the nature of endgames.

Even though I've come around on Deathloop quite a bit, it's fucking insane to me that it got so many 10/10s and 9/10s. Definitely feels like game critics wanted to go out of the way to show off how erudite and sophisticated their design palate is, but in doing so just actually demonstrated how fucking basic it is. At its very very best and at my most generous I would rate Deathloop an 8/10, but taken as a complete package it's probably around a 6/10. I also wonder if it would have been better received if it launched at a $40 price point. It really doesn't warrant the $60 price tag for anyone outside of the niche audience of people who like games that exist in unusual design space (I am one of them).
 
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