Deathloop preview: Will time be on your side?
Deathloop was shaping up to be one the most exciting PS5 releases of this Spring. Then it became one of a raft of games to hit delays due to the long-lasting effects of the pandemic, which has made working on collaborative projects more of a challenge than ever.
Now, though, Arkane Lyon has until September to polish it up, and the extra time looks likely to amp up our excitement for the game even further. We got a new guided gameplay walkthrough direct from Arkane Lyon and Deathloop’s game director and art director, and have oodles of new details to share.
An intriguing start
We got a nice glimpse of how Deathloop starts for players, which we won’t spoil in any way but, in short, the player character Colt wakes up to find himself stuck in a time loop on Blackreef island, seemingly a massive haven for the criminal and deranged masses. He’s got one objective – find a way to break the loop.
That’s easier said than done, though, and requires Colt to kill eight major targets before the loop resets, each of them heavily protected or disguised. We largely knew all of that before, but Arkane gave us a closer look at how this actually works within each loop a player embarks on.
While it might sound like the same structure as a Returnal-esque roguelike, where players get one chance to complete their objectives in a row, then have to start from scratch if they can’t manage it, game director Dinga Bakaba was at pains to showcase how the game differs from that template.
For one thing, there’s some permanence between runs – players can collect a substance called Residium to earn upgrades that last between runs. Plus, a Reprise system lets them die three times before a run actually ends, a bit of wiggle room that makes it far easier to experiment.
One huge bit of intel, though, is that even as a run starts players are completely free to go where they want and plan how they want. Blackreef is divided into four chunky zones: The Complex, Updaam, Fristad Rock and Karl’s Bay. Each is roughly as big as the biggest levels the Dishonored series has offered but seemingly denser with details and interiors.
Each of these four zones can be visited during the four time slots of the day that the loop allows, and each will be radically different between slots. A castle area might be quiet and unoccupied during the afternoon, but teeming with life during a party in the evening, while a library might have operating hours that only let you visit it during certain times, for example.
A mystery to solve
If that sounds complicated, it is – but, from the player’s perspective, things should be dead easy. Say you’re in one area during the afternoon and uncover a clue you want to follow up on in another area that requires the already-gone morning slot. You can just end your run (whether by running off a cliff or taking on an ill-advised fight) and start another, choosing to warp straight to the right zone. Even if you want to skip straight to the evening slot to pull at a certain thread, that’s perfectly fine and allowed.
By making this such an easy system to zip around quickly with, Bakaba said the hope is that players can simply follow the leads they’re interested in, while the game deals with all the complex scheduling and AI in the background. Each loop played, whether short or lengthy, will offer up more information that a canny player can use to figure out both what exactly is going on in Blackreef, and how to take out their targets more effectively.
A rogue’s gallery
As you go about your business, though, you won’t have it easy – there are hosts of enemies partying and relaxing around Blackreef, all of them with shoot-on-sight orders. As well as these, though, you’ve got one serious adversary to worry about – Julianna.
This rival assassin will stalk and obstruct you, trying to score a kill to end your loop, and she’s either controlled by a more complicated and aggressive AI or by another human player. This multiplayer facet of Deathloop is one of its big twists, and seems like it could make for loads of fun.
You’ll be able to drop into other players’ games as Julianna to set traps for them and try to dispatch them in whatever way you deem suitable, with cosmetic rewards and more powers to unlock for her as you get to grips with things. Of course, if you don’t want that added stress you can just stick to offline play and contend with the AI.
The island that doesn’t sleep
In the preview footage we say, meanwhile, Blackreef itself lived up to its billing by Sébastien Mitton as one of the game’s main characters. We saw the same area in a few different time zones, with completely different lighting and enemy layouts in each.
It’s a lusciously designed 1960s paradise full of bizarro imagery and amazing rooms to explore, full to the brim with conversations to eavesdrop on, records to file through and notes to read. All of these will gain you more understanding of what’s going on.
It’s clear that there’s plenty of visual variety to be found, too, between palatial residences and industrial settings, eery greenhouses and sprawling landscapes, and we can’t wait to start to learn its ins and outs more closely.
In fact, the graphical situation overall also got some new clarity from the preview. We can confirm that the game is targetting a smooth 60FPS on PS5, with an adaptive 4K resolution. Our video feed was in 1080p so we can’t attest to that solution’s quality, but it’s worked perfectly on other titles.
The game looks great, in short, with the different time slots all offering their own stark lighting, from brilliant morning sun to neon-soaked late-night darkness. It’s as much an advert for the art direction as graphical fidelity, though, right down to the jazzy soundtrack.
Oodles of options
Arkane isn’t scrimping when it comes to the moment-to-moment gameplay, either. Just like in the Dishonored series and the more recent Prey, you’ve got a bundle of different ways to go about ticking a target off your list.
Keeping things simple, you’ve got a fun arsenal of weaponry to explore, from dual-wielded pistols to shotguns and LMGs, or silent nail guns for a stealthy edge. You can also melee effectively, and a slightly watered-down version of the all-powerful kick from Arkane’s Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is back to let you shunt people around, off cliffs or into hazards.
Also taking a clear leaf out of the Dishonored book are a range of powers that you can unlock and level up, including a Blink-like short teleport called Shift, or the chance to link multiple enemies together to kill them in one fell swoop using Nexus.
Collectible Trinkets can further customise your loadout by modifying how your weapons and character abilities work, and you can swap these out on the fly, making for an adaptable system that could make for really unique ways to accomplish your objectives.
You might start out simple, but can collect trinkets to become a dual-wielding, double-jumping maniac. When the game releases, brace yourself to see speedrunners completing things in genuinely absurd ways, basically.
If Arkane can use the extra time to polish the game up to a perfect sheen (and that’s certainly how it’s starting to look already), Deathloop should offer a seriously delirious blend of fun when it releases in September.
From the fun of discovering Blackreef’s sprawling environments to finding out why and how the time loop works, and the myriad ways to pile the pain onto its depraved inhabitants, we can’t wait to both see more and get our hands on it.
