Deathloop

Deathloop is a first-person shooter (FPS) developed by the Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The game was designed for 9th generation consoles and modern PCs.

Plot

The action of the game takes place on the island of Blackreef, where a time anomaly occurred. The story focuses on the fate of two assassins, Colt and Julianna Blake, who are stuck in an endless cycle and after death or 24 hours they return to the beginning on the same day. But while the woman is delighted by this, whereas her opponent wants to break out of a strange time loop. If Colt wants to escape from Blackreef, he must eliminate in a single day the eight people called Visionaries responsible for maintaining the cycle. It won't be easy though, as the targets are scattered across the island, and Julianna will hesitate at nothing to stop him.

Mechanics

Deathloop expands on the gameplay model known from previous Arkane Studios games like Dishonored or Prey. The developers focused on giving players freedom in dealing with challenges. Each problem can be solved in multiple ways, and each death allows us to increase the combat potential of the hero, and slowly gained knowledge of the behavior and relationships of NPCs will help us eliminate eight main opponents. The game also doesn't force us to do the main or side quests in any order. The only limitation is the length of each cycle, corresponding to one day in the game world. At the end of each day, Colt's equipment is lost by default, but the game also offers a mechanic for collecting and consuming the residuum resource to permanently save selected powers, weapons or upgrades.

In combat, we can use a variety of weapons, as well as special powers of the hero. The game gives us many types of firearms (e.g. machine pistols, shotguns, miniguns, nail guns), gadgets (e.g. grenades, mines or a hacking machine used to break into cameras, turrets and door security systems) and supernatural abilities (teleportation, invisibility, merging minds of enemies, telekinesis and others). So it's up to us to decide how to deal with the next challenges.

Game modes

Deathloop was designed as a single player game with an optional online component. The latter manifests itself in the form of Julianna Blake, who attacks the player from time to time. The heroine can be controlled by an AI, but it's up to the player to let other people control her at any time, like in the Dark Souls raids. This is not a clash of two completely identical characters. Colt and Julianna use similar powers, but both also have a handful of unique attributes. In Julianna's case, players can take the form of any NPC, and all of the local inhabitants of Blackreef will be on their side.

Technical aspects

Graphically, the game reminds of the previous works of Arkane Studios, however, moving to the ninth generation platforms resulted in a significant graphical leap. The game is heavily saturated with colors and stands out for its unusual, retrofuturistic design of the visited locations. We will explore various research facilities, a theme park, a castle estate, as well as regular houses and apartments.

Last updated on 13 September 2021