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

Terenty

Liturgist
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Nov 29, 2018
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A bunch of racists and hypocrites, when an objectively better Prey came out with a chinese protagonist they shat on it and buried in a garbage bin, but put a couple of blacks in there and lo and behold Goty 10/10
 

toughasnails

Guest
How come Death of the Outsider didn't receive 10/10s?
If there is some ulterior motive and coordination behind these scores it's more likely to be a misguided attempt by the journos to help Arkane stay afloat. But, while we aren't in the same situation as the film industry where there doesn't seem to be much of a correlate between the critics' scores and commercial success, it seems to me that overly negative reviews are much more likely to hurt game's sales than the extremely positive ones are likely to help them on their own.
 
Joined
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Codex Year of the Donut
I'd be surprised if professional reviews actually sway sales more than a few % at this point. Perhaps more with console gamers than PC, but it's probably still not very large.

I'd trust a random meme curator on steam more than a so-called video game critic.
 

markec

Twitterbot
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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Dead State Project: Eternity Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Better comparison is Dishonored 1, 2 and Prey.

https://steamcharts.com/app/480490
https://steamcharts.com/app/403640
https://steamcharts.com/app/205100

All three games have almost as much players as Deathloop.

You shot yourself in the foot by linking these games.
Dishonored 2 has more players atm than deathloop despite being a 5 years old game.
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It's normal for this genre of game to drop quickly after release but it's obvious deadloop is flopping hard, and that's despite being Arkane's most fellated game in the media, it even received fucking 10/10 scores which even the worst game journos don't hand out often.

7DwLE07.jpg


All those doritos didn't pay off.

Wut?

How exactly did I shoot myself in the foot by posting those links?
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
it's more likely to be a misguided attempt by the journos to help Arkane stay afloat

Yep, they knew the game was going to flop and wanted to save Arkane. From August: https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-wishlisted-games-analysis/

Deathloop: less thriving than we'd like

Since Jan 1, we've seen Deathloop as one of 2021's most exciting games. It's Arkane, the studio that's made complex, wonderful first-person games like Dishonored 2. It's published by Bethesda. And it's being positioned as a "next-gen first-person shooter."

But it's only sitting at #38, a rung below Frostpunk 2, which only just announced its existence about a week ago. What would it take for Arkane's games to reach the massive appeal of something like an Assassin's Creed?
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


Experience a killer game of cat-and-mouse as rival assassin Julianna Blake in DEATHLOOP’s online PvP mode. Set deadly traps, wield unique abilities, and do whatever it takes to outsmart your opponent and protect the loop.

Want to play against the devs at Arkane Lyon? They will be playing on October 27 and 28, 10am-12pm ET. Add their PSN and Steam names and matchup!
https://bethesda.net/en/article/4uDuWRH4qJDq8ZaC47lfOJ/deathloop-battle-for-blackreef-event

Relationships are hard work, especially when they’re relationships between bitter rivals determined to hunt each other to the death. DEATHLOOP’s unique PvP mode pits its protagonist and antagonist against each other in a battle of wits, weapons, and supernatural abilities. Will you sneak your way through a map as you try to track down your opponent, or will you litter your path with bullet casings as you loudly blast your way to victory?
Read more about playing as Julianna and ‘Protect the Loop’
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
I think the fundamental issue of the game is it's asking players to repeat the same levels over and over again and expecting them to enjoy it.

Personally I'd rather play 12 different levels once than 4 levels (albeit with slight variations) 3 times each.
 

Decado

Old time handsome face wrecker
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Codex 2014
I'd be surprised if professional reviews actually sway sales more than a few % at this point. Perhaps more with console gamers than PC, but it's probably still not very large.

I'd trust a random meme curator on steam more than a so-called video game critic.

They don't. I studied this in graduate school back in the mid 2010s, and professional reviews had almost no effect on intent-to-purchase. Word of mouth -- in this case, user reviews -- were the only thing that really impacted sales. And even then, it wasn't the content of the reviews but the volume of those reviews.

I imagine this effect has only grown more powerful over time. Trusting a random meme curator on Steam is exactly the kind of mechanism most people are relying on nowadays to make a purchasing decision.
 
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I think the fundamental issue of the game is it's asking players to repeat the same levels over and over again and expecting them to enjoy it.

Personally I'd rather play 12 different levels once than 4 levels (albeit with slight variations) 3 times each.
roguelites do this and nobody complains (but then they are priced accordingly). DeathLOOOOOP system might be better because a handcrafted environment with changes in enemy behavior because they remember your previous runs is more engaging than RNG rooms that might as well be identical once you see enough of them. I don't know how much of those promised changes was sweet little lies, though.
 
Joined
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Messages
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Chicago, IL, Kwa
I think the fundamental issue of the game is it's asking players to repeat the same levels over and over again and expecting them to enjoy it.

Personally I'd rather play 12 different levels once than 4 levels (albeit with slight variations) 3 times each.
roguelites do this and nobody complains (but then they are priced accordingly). DeathLOOOOOP system might be better because a handcrafted environment with changes in enemy behavior because they remember your previous runs is more engaging than RNG rooms that might as well be identical once you see enough of them. I don't know how much of those promised changes was sweet little lies, though.

Unfortunately enemies do not remember your previous runs in Deathloop. The AI in general is quite brain dead.
 

copebot

Learned
Joined
Dec 27, 2020
Messages
387
The gameplay is somewhat varied your first time through, so generally it doesn't feel that repetitious despite the map reuse. The repetition comes in as Juliana, because there are only so many areas in which you can wind up with her. The other issue with the mode is that sometimes it 'works' when they're going for an assassination, but it doesn't generally work if they're going for a side objective and stealthing invisibly and slowly. Then you don't know which objective they're going for.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
How exactly did I shoot myself in the foot by posting those links?

Lutte's a retard ESL and I have on good authority he kidnapped Selene Delgado-Lopez back in the '90s but I ain't snitching.
 

Wirdschowerdn

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The absence of Harvey Smith really shows in the insipid writing of Arkane's newer games (DOTO, Clownloop)
the guy headlined Dishonored 2, and that game was poorly written too.

Only because they shoehorned Corvo into the game fairly late in development. And even then D2 is still bounds and leaps better compared to that garbage writing of DOTO.
 

copebot

Learned
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Messages
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D2 has terrible writing. Same with DOTO. D1 was serviceable but nothing terribly memorable in terms of the writing. If anything, Deathloop has competently written dialogue in terms of the mechanics, but the plot is stupid/uninteresting and the characters are entirely vapid and inhuman. The setting is also like if you plagiarized Bioshock, but deleted Andrew Ryan, instead just having a bunch of unmemorable side characters with nonsensical or otherwise unconvincing motivations.

Deathloop's a game in which all the characters are zany and nihilistic within a setting in which nothing means anything and no one has clearly articulated goals other than Juliana and to some degree Colt. The other side characters are basically treating the 'island' as if it's an infinitely repeating modern university, where none of the research means anything, everyone is morally dissolute, and the only identifiable goal is persistence. Virtually everyone is evil and no one demonstrates any human virtues. Even the one romantic relationship is a highly dysfunctional one, depicted in the game as between a murderess and a self-lobotomized murderer.

D2's writing being bad is independent of Corvo being in the game... the entire thing is just a bad shaggy dog story because it repeats an already lame story from D1's DLC, but just ressurects the villain for no other reason than that they wanted to use that same villain. The whole plot line of framing a head of state for serial killing was also deeply stupid. If Queen Victoria were killing prostitutes for the hell of it, the 19th century media would have covered for her: they wouldn't be trying to undermine her legitimacy. If she hadn't done it, the people who were defaming her in print would be prosecuted and probably run out of the country at the least. The plot just felt really hackneyed, tinny, and trying to misuse the characters from the previous game rather than just building a new story around new characters in the same world.
 
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Bad Sector

Arcane
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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Story in an Arkane game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but its not that important.

How is the gameplay, level design, etc?
 

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