Deathloop is stupidly fun, like I can't believe how much of a blast I was having playing this game. Even in the first 1-2 hours (which mainly serve as a story introduction / tutorial) I was giddy with thinking of fun ways to kill people and sneak my way through these really open-ended levels. In a lot of ways, this game really asks you to meet it halfway. Deathloop literally tells you on the box that you'll be playing through the same levels over and over again in an effort to master them, but I found that to be one of this game's key components to its success. That also runs the risk of killing the story's momentum, but thanks to Deathloop's genuinely hilarious and engaging story I was also excited for another loop since new exciting things were always being revealed.

Colt and Juliana are perfectly wacky characters to be at the center of this dark 60's nightmare. Colt's immature cursing and quick witted comebacks are a fantastic counterpart to Juliana's more cold and sinister mocking. There's a tangible history between the two before you even fully uncover the mystery that the story expertly unravels for you, and I was also excited to hear more of their interactions. The graphical style is great and stylish too, although it's worth noting that this ran like trash on my PC.

The real meat of Deathloop, the gameplay, feels like a decade's worth of honing their craft by Arcane Lyon. The comparisons with Dishonored aren't unwarranted, and it feels like the psychotic murder-spreee that I always wanted to take with those powers but was deprived of. Blackreef is absolutely your playground, and experimentation is almost always rewarded. The loop (ha) of planning out a route to kill a visionary, something inevitably going wrong, and scrambling back into the tunnels after a sloppy execution feels just as fun and engaging as a perfectly executed plan, and it's part of the reason why I found it so hard to put down Deathloop. There are a few shortcomings, notably that the arsenal system of the loop and allowing you to keep weapons between runs feeling... too forgiving. I found a silenced pistol early on in my playthrough and it never left my inventory. Likewise, I found the two slabs that I liked the most and almost never switched off them, which felt like a misstep since I never wanted to experiment because it wasn't worth not having Blink. The systems themselves aren't bad in any way, but I think Deathloop would've benefitted from embracing a bit more from its rouge-lite influences.

Also worth mentioning that my online experience for this game was... awful. Invasions went about as well as they could when I was playing as Colt, and actually resulted in a really dynamic change of plans once I got the alert that Juliana was around, but playing as Juliana is just fucking miserable in 2024. Not sure if it's the bad netcode or just the high ping since the amount of players is so low now, but expect rubber banding, inconsistent hit detection, and a healthy amount of long wait times to find a match. Thankfully, Juliana's murder tendencies seemed to be only tied to cosmetic rewards for colt's side of things, but I really wish that more of the technical issues with this mode were sorted out because conceptually it's great and the few smooth matches I had were equally tense and thrilling.

As many good things as I have to say about Deathloop, I feel like it's also worth bringing up this game's weak final 2-4 hours. Deathloop's main goal involving you killing 8 visionaries in one loop feels completely insurmountable at first, but after learning Blackreef and its routines I was starting to feel confident in my ability to pull it off. I had an actual notebook where I was planning out my perfect run and I felt like a mythical heist genius, knowing exactly how to sabotage Frank's fireworks, knowing where Fia and Charlie would be and how to take them out, perfecting my route through Harriet's complex... and then once you finally have all the pieces..! The game just spells it all out for you. It felt extremely disappointing once I found out that the game was leading you towards this exact route of taking people out, and giving you objective markers and telling you where to go next didn't make me feel smart, it made me feel railroaded in a game that was remarkably good at avoiding that feeling for it's first 15 hours. That's before we get to this game's ending, in which neither option feels particularly satisfying or conclusive, which is just a shame.

I know I got a bit negative towards the end there, but I honestly did really love my time with Deathloop. I think it's final hours falling off puts a bit of a black mark on the game in my memory, but the first 75% of this game is as good as one could hope for such a crazy concept. It certainly won't click with everyone, but if you've enjoyed Arkane's earlier works and their light-imsim style of gameplay, Deathloop will probably click with you the same way it did for me.

Um dos meus amigos é um grande fã da Arkane e tem praticamente todos os jogos que fizeram (tirando o Redfall, mas mais porque é um 'exclusivo' da Xbox), de certa forma ele foi a minha introdução ao mundo dos ImSims. Eu já tinha jogado parte do Dishonored contudo o que me puxou a realmente considerar a sua potencialidade foi ele, depois também joguei parte do Prey que infelizmente não clicou para mim, não lhe faltava nada para além da minha vontade de tirar tempo para o compreender. Quando comecei o Deathloop senti aquele mesmo aborrecimento a aproximar-se, fui jogando cada vez menos ao longo do tempo e comecei a usá-lo como uma espécie de pausa entre outras coisas que estivesse a fazer, um 'palate cleanser', como os ingleses dizem. Não foi até eu decidir mudar toda a minha forma de jogar ao ir matar o Ramblin' Frank que eu me apercebi que eu sou muito, muito estúpido.

O Deathloop não é tão expansivo nas suas opções de abordar um nível como qualquer outro ImSim, ou até qualquer outro jogo da Arkane mas continua obviamente a ser 'alimentado' por esses conceitos. Eu guiei-me demasiado pelo o que jogo sugeria que eu fizesse que de certa forma me esqueci que isto é um JOGO e não um LIVRO. Eu comecei a experimentar novas rotas, novas formas de os matar, eu tinha tudo demasiado explícito e streamlined que me faltou aperceber que eu posso simplesmente divertir-me um pouco em vez de tentar correr ao encontro do final. Eu só usava o Shift e o Blink, e até esses usava de uma forma relativamente limitada, lenta e.... demasiado calculada. Não havia grande espontaneidade naquilo que fazia. O que mais recomendo ao jogar Deathloop é simplesmente não ter nenhum objetivo tracked: explorar os mapas ao teu passo e descobrir como queres fazer o que queres fazer é inteiramente melhor do que realmente seguir todas as dicas e ter a papinha feita no final, embora que o jogo realmente não é nada de outro mundo em questão de opções de chegar ao teu destino, apenas tens muitas espécies de sidequests para explorar em quase todos os cantos do mapa.

No fundo o Deathloop foi um jogo feito para quem tirava clips no Dishonored, ele foi desenhado quase com intenção de aperfeiçoares a forma como usas os poderes e não o tempo que demoras a chegar ao teu objetivo, os caminhos no Deathloop são infinitamente mais limitados do que no Dishonored ou até no Prey, o jogo subconscientemente força-te a aprender as posições dos inimigos, reações e a melhor forma de estrategizar o teu uso das Power Slabs (embora seja quase impossível não ter o Shift equipado). No fundo o Deathloop é um jogo onde o 'Boss' é o mapa inteiro, ou se quisermos ser poéticos, onde o maior inimigo é a rotina.

Sobre a história, é extremamente interessante, o twist é engraçado e a última cena tem um foreboding muito intenso, ele estabelece um ambiente pesado e inseguro e quase que capitaliza nisso até aparecer a maldita cutscene onde todos viram amigos e na verdade nem era assim tão mau. Se tirassem essa única cutscene, o final seria o melhor de sempre, não fui um grande fã do final ao estilo 'se calhar o loop foram os amigos que fizemos ao longo do caminho'. De resto é incrível, a lore é incrível e também gosto como apesar de tudo, as circunstâncias exatas do que se está a passar ainda são ligeiramente vagas, tu percebes o que se passou com o Colt, o que tudo isto implica, mas nunca te é dito, isso é muito bom.

VERY cool idea, but the execution really falls flat imo.

It basically dumps everything on you at once after you finish the introduction, and then you just play the rest of the game on the same levels and with the same weapons for like 13 hours until it ends, which gets boring REALLY fast.

The gameplay is pretty fun and smooth, but not much of an improvement from Dishonored, and definitely not enough to make up for the monotonous levels.

Let’s make a time loop game. First, we need to establish a mystery, something that’ll really play into the strength of the format, with something new to discover each loop. Since we at Arkane have mastered the magical assassin concept, we’ll blend the ideas, and have players discover how to assassinate a list of targets across a repeating day.

But how do we prevent players from just lucking into a solution, going to the right places and beating the game in two hours? Dishonored was already criticized for being short, and if even 1% of players beat the game in one run, we’ll never hear the end of it. So, we’ll have to force some repetition: necessary codes will be mutually-exclusive, so players will have to loop at least a few times before they’re able to unlock the ending. We’ll author a linear sequence of events that will guide the player and pace the experience.

What about players who don't like the repetition though? It won’t take long for people to get tired of repeatedly fetching their favorite weapons. To solve that, we could have players preserve their loadout between runs… but that would mean that we need to add a little more depth to it, so they don’t just gather everything once and stop caring. The weapons could have randomized bonuses like a looter-shooter, and collectible trinket buffs as well. Adding in character buffs and loot rarity would ensure that there’s always something new to find each run.

Of course, that will work well with the invasion-based multiplayer. Everyone will be fighting a unique opponent, which is great. We can also kill two birds with one stone by limiting the amount of powers players can equip at one time, further emphasizing unique approaches and making gunfights easy to follow. Speaking of limitations however, there will need to be some sacrifices in the realm of map design, since having a one-on-one fight across sprawling maps with load zones would be a nightmare, especially if hiding on rooftops and turning invisible is on the table. So, we won’t have events progress in real time, just in a single time-of-day per mission, because we won’t know how long those encounters may last. It also wouldn’t be good to lock weapons and buffs behind the multiplayer system, because that would let expert assassins steamroll new players. As a final failsafe, we’ll include an option to only play single player, in case it devolves into an invisible sniper camp fest.

Great. This design makes sense from front to back. We’ve walked through all the decisions and how they fit with all the others. We’ll have a time loop game where… players preserve everything from loop to loop, with no time pressure to navigate a linear sequence of events. We’ll prevent players from being bored with excessive repetition by… having them farm currency and random items. They’ll do that until they feel comfortable with tackling the big challenges and handling multiplayer invasions, because losing to an invader resets all the progress on your current loop. You’ll only ever do it when you’re not trying to focus on completing the story, since multiplayer has no benefits compared to isolating yourself in single player.

Hold on, how did this happen? We made decisions that made perfect sense; why is everything so wrong? Why do all our systems work against themselves? I guess it’s because we started with some good ideas, like the time loop assassin stuff and spy-versus-spy multiplayer invasions, but then immediately focused on how to sterilize those core concepts for people who aren’t interested. We made a time loop game and then removed all the time pressure! We took the magical powers and intricate maps we’re great at creating, and saddled them enough limitations to where they're worse than our old games! We made those sacrifices so the multiplayer would work, and then disincentivized engaging with it, killing the point and the playerbase in one shot! Next time we try this, we gotta keep it simple. Focus on what we think is cool and commit to it. Start from scratch. Ok.

Let’s make a time loop game.