Deathloop is the logical endpoint of the genre of Immersive Sim when it comes to how we tell stories using it.
Before that, we have to talk about Immersive Sims or at least one of them,
Hitman is a series of games that some would categorize as an ImSim, I say some because I know for a fact that even just stating that is going to piss some people off massively because the terminology of Immersive Sim is vague and undefined with a very niche fanbase of very dedicated people who are willing to discuss it for hours on end. Just know, I do not care. I’m mainly referring to it as such because a similar group of mechanics, ideas, and goals appear between Hitman and other ImSims
Agent 47 is literally a blank slate character, he is a person developed to just do his job and that job is sleek and quiet murder of any number of targets in a given level, so it’s interesting to note that in Hitman, you are still required to basically live up to the role of a Hitman, rather than place yourself in those shoes.
The way the narrative is signposted throughout the series and all of the surrounding elements of the games paint the player character as a silent assassin who plans every minute detail to a tee so they can slip in and out, murdering their target before anyone even realizes something has gone wrong. This is pretty much guaranteed to not be the way you actually play the game starting off.
To get to this point, you have to go through these maps multiple times, learn their secrets, their layouts, their enemy placements, and everything else before you can be the person the narrative tells you you are. This essentially makes most of the gameplay as it pertains to the story disconnected. Agent 47 as a man cannot physically turn back time, he cannot Save Scum, and he, nor anyone else in the game has any knowledge of the countless previous runs that it took to get to the point where you can actually be Agent 47. Death is an explicit fail state which has no direct place in anything outside of the gameplay.
Deathloop is different.
Deathloop, as a game, is deeply fascinating to me, because even with its own elements separated, they’re great. The Shooting is Punchy and all the weapon types have their own little quirks and feel that make them completely distinct, the level design has so many different paths to destinations and areas that can change based on your actions, that just learning to get around is a blast and the way powers intersect with combat and exploration through all of that makes a game that is so immensely satisfying to play and learn, again and again, and again.
But the real thing that makes Deathloop not just good but Transcendent is how it takes the defined rules of the games it’s inspired by and the traditional player response to those rules and exploits them.
The way it does this is through the idealization and mechanical canonization of:
THE PERFECT RUN
Colt, unlike 47, is much more of a defined character, he had a place in the world before the story and he will continue to exist once it is over. Despite this, it is much easier for a player to put themselves in Colt’s situation because the narrative and gameplay of Deathloop come together in a way that I have not seen another game with these design philosophies before (to my knowledge).
In Deathloop, Colt’s goal is learning the maps, scouting out locations, experimenting with systems, and discovering secrets, everything you do in gameplay and discover is canon within the story, putting you in Colt’s place much more directly, despite not being a self insert.
The mythologized nature of going through and beating levels, streamlining your run, and getting to a point where you can quickly and efficiently kill all of your targets is the end goal, even death in the game, while still a fail state that can halt your progress and be an effective punishment for failing, is just a reality of the game, something that in-game characters will comment on and react to.
Even in failure, the ability to make hard progress, even in runs that don’t go how you planned creates a gameplay experience that finally feels like it scratches an itch I’ve had for a good while. I’ve never been too up on ImSims previously, the stress of perfectly good runs being failed in an instant or the pinpoint accuracy needed to get through them, while not a direct criticism of the design itself, more a personal issue, scared me away from games like Dishonored or Thief because quite frankly I just wasn’t very good at them. Even the new Hitman games to a degree would have lost me if it wasn’t for the new accessibility features basically telling you exactly what you need to do to succeed but even then it never felt exactly right in the end.
Deathloop, in creating an experience where failure and learning from your mistakes are contextualized in the story as just a natural part of growth and getting towards the end, rather than a hurdle to become what the game is acting like you are, spoke to me in a way these games have never done before for me without throwing out the complexity or difficulty that ImSims are lauded for. And for that experience, I cannot be happier with the game.
TL;DR How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Immersive Sims
Before that, we have to talk about Immersive Sims or at least one of them,
Hitman is a series of games that some would categorize as an ImSim, I say some because I know for a fact that even just stating that is going to piss some people off massively because the terminology of Immersive Sim is vague and undefined with a very niche fanbase of very dedicated people who are willing to discuss it for hours on end. Just know, I do not care. I’m mainly referring to it as such because a similar group of mechanics, ideas, and goals appear between Hitman and other ImSims
Agent 47 is literally a blank slate character, he is a person developed to just do his job and that job is sleek and quiet murder of any number of targets in a given level, so it’s interesting to note that in Hitman, you are still required to basically live up to the role of a Hitman, rather than place yourself in those shoes.
The way the narrative is signposted throughout the series and all of the surrounding elements of the games paint the player character as a silent assassin who plans every minute detail to a tee so they can slip in and out, murdering their target before anyone even realizes something has gone wrong. This is pretty much guaranteed to not be the way you actually play the game starting off.
To get to this point, you have to go through these maps multiple times, learn their secrets, their layouts, their enemy placements, and everything else before you can be the person the narrative tells you you are. This essentially makes most of the gameplay as it pertains to the story disconnected. Agent 47 as a man cannot physically turn back time, he cannot Save Scum, and he, nor anyone else in the game has any knowledge of the countless previous runs that it took to get to the point where you can actually be Agent 47. Death is an explicit fail state which has no direct place in anything outside of the gameplay.
Deathloop is different.
Deathloop, as a game, is deeply fascinating to me, because even with its own elements separated, they’re great. The Shooting is Punchy and all the weapon types have their own little quirks and feel that make them completely distinct, the level design has so many different paths to destinations and areas that can change based on your actions, that just learning to get around is a blast and the way powers intersect with combat and exploration through all of that makes a game that is so immensely satisfying to play and learn, again and again, and again.
But the real thing that makes Deathloop not just good but Transcendent is how it takes the defined rules of the games it’s inspired by and the traditional player response to those rules and exploits them.
The way it does this is through the idealization and mechanical canonization of:
THE PERFECT RUN
Colt, unlike 47, is much more of a defined character, he had a place in the world before the story and he will continue to exist once it is over. Despite this, it is much easier for a player to put themselves in Colt’s situation because the narrative and gameplay of Deathloop come together in a way that I have not seen another game with these design philosophies before (to my knowledge).
In Deathloop, Colt’s goal is learning the maps, scouting out locations, experimenting with systems, and discovering secrets, everything you do in gameplay and discover is canon within the story, putting you in Colt’s place much more directly, despite not being a self insert.
The mythologized nature of going through and beating levels, streamlining your run, and getting to a point where you can quickly and efficiently kill all of your targets is the end goal, even death in the game, while still a fail state that can halt your progress and be an effective punishment for failing, is just a reality of the game, something that in-game characters will comment on and react to.
Even in failure, the ability to make hard progress, even in runs that don’t go how you planned creates a gameplay experience that finally feels like it scratches an itch I’ve had for a good while. I’ve never been too up on ImSims previously, the stress of perfectly good runs being failed in an instant or the pinpoint accuracy needed to get through them, while not a direct criticism of the design itself, more a personal issue, scared me away from games like Dishonored or Thief because quite frankly I just wasn’t very good at them. Even the new Hitman games to a degree would have lost me if it wasn’t for the new accessibility features basically telling you exactly what you need to do to succeed but even then it never felt exactly right in the end.
Deathloop, in creating an experience where failure and learning from your mistakes are contextualized in the story as just a natural part of growth and getting towards the end, rather than a hurdle to become what the game is acting like you are, spoke to me in a way these games have never done before for me without throwing out the complexity or difficulty that ImSims are lauded for. And for that experience, I cannot be happier with the game.
TL;DR How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Immersive Sims
Reviewed on Sep 19, 2021
3 Comments
Great review. Deathloop is an excellent game
ImmSim should not be even recognized as a genre. These games are just RPGs
AG147
2 years ago