Arkane has made a name for itself with the gameplay freedom, creative abilities, and detailed worlds in the Dishonored and Prey franchises. Now Arkane Lyon is working on a new IP called Deathloop, bringing together the studio's strengths with some new twists. The first-person shooter tasks you with eliminating eight targets in a single day to break a time loop. But beware! A rival assassin, who can optionally be a PVP opponent, also hunts you. Deathloop was announced at E3 2019, and we got our first look at the gameplay in action recently. However, there’s still a lot we don’t know about this intriguing sci-fi experience. We recently sat down with Arkane Lyon to get some clarity on what to expect.
On What’s Different From Past Games
If you watched the gameplay trailer, it was easy to see the echoes of Arkane’s previous properties, especially Dishonored. When asked about what’s being carried over from previous games and how Deathloop will have its own identity, game director Dinga Bakaba didn’t shy away from the familiarity. “Something we are bringing back that we care a lot about is the flexibility of the gameplay, the flexibility of the worlds - the player being able to sneak past situations or go in action-heavy to find creative and intuitive solutions to challenges,” he says. “We care about world-building and placing players in a world with a lot of interesting lore elements and little stories to uncover. There are also some abilities that we have in the game that you might have seen in the gameplay reveal that do resemble some that we had in the past.”
While it looks like Deathloop is speaking to the studio’s strengths, Bakaba also assured us there’s plenty of new lifeblood. “This project was really started on the premise of doing something different, to experiment with different concepts after eight years of doing Dishonored, he explains.
“I would say the story is more player-driven than [anything] we ever did before. You can do things in almost any order. That’s something new for us. The time loop itself is something very different in terms of the structure of the game and how you approach, for instance, dying in the game. And lastly, I would say another key element that is new is the multiplayer elements. Colt is trapped in a one-day time loop and in order to escape, he has to kill eight targets before the end of the day. One of those targets actually can be played by another player. The fact that the main antagonist of the game called Julianna can be played by another player is also one of the key novelties on display here.”
On How Arkane Keeps The Time-Loop Structure Engaging
Deathloop centers on its Groundhog Day-like structure; if you die before reaching the end of the day (or fail to meet certain objectives), you relive it until you beat all eight targets. But how does that stay interesting for a player beyond the challenge? Loops invite repetition, and that’s not always fun in games. We asked Bakaba how the structure stays engaging for the long haul.
“The story progresses along with your actions and the knowledge that you piece together about the events,” he explains. “It's something that progresses iteratively, but as it progresses, the world resets. You're really trying to solve this impossible situation by learning more about your targets and the place, and once you know something, it’s knowledge you can act upon.” Bakaba uses the example of finding the code for a safe that holds important information, but it’s located in another district and can only be accessed in the morning. Obviously, you’d have to wait for the day to start anew to unearth those details and use that information.
The island is divided into several districts. By entering them at different times of the day, you see different events and routines. “Depending on where you are, different things happen,” Bakaba says. “Just exploring all the permutations of those districts through the day is something that's exciting to do. And then starts the experimentation: But what if I do this? What happens then? Can I prevent this character from dying? Oh, wait a minute, I killed that character, but he was digging a hole, what if I don't kill him and come back in the afternoon and then maybe this opens the passageway to something else. It is really about this clockwork; pushing a domino here, pushing a domino there, and then seeing the ripple effects.”
Bakaba also confirmed there is “no such thing as a perfect day,” meaning there will be some slight variations and differences each time a day resets. For instance, maybe a character wears a different color shirt, eats something different for breakfast, or begins the day in a different mood. The main events are always the same, but little details may change. “[The experience is] more about what the player is throwing into this and how they’re making it change. So there is all this exploration and then experimentation, you know, trying different things and taking a different approach.” Bakaba spoke about giving players more agency to either avoid certain challenges until they’re ready or just discovering different ways to approach things that might offer new or better results.
At the end of the day, your goal is to find “the golden loop,” a way to complete this eight-target puzzle. How many times players repeat days before they find it will vary. “How you get to that knowledge is really freeform,” he explains. “Even though this is about Colt being on the clock to take out the targets before midnight, we didn’t want the experience to be a race, so time in that sense is a bit abstracted. If you want to spend all your time in one district and read every note before you go on to the next day, you’re welcome to do that. I am sure some players will try to make a super-optimized version of the campaign where they take fewer loops to be able to complete the game. I think that would be interesting to see what speedrunners do with this game.”
On Creating Cool Weapons And How Progression Works
Arkane has a flair with creating nifty abilities and weapons that open up different ways to pursue situations. That’s not changing here. In fact, one of the big things the studio was excited for creating a first-person shooter and creating interesting guns.
“This is the first first-person shooter we are doing since two of our projects, Return to Ravenholm and The Crossing, never shipped,” Bakaba says. “So it’s been a long time and we just wanted to make really big guns that really look awesome and have those nice toys for the player. Our approach here was to go for an arsenal that was accessible, so I would see it and immediately be able to say, ‘Okay, that's a shotgun, that's a precise pistol, that’s an automated assault rifle.’ We wanted to have those tent poles of first-person shooters, but give them their own vibe visually in terms of gameplay. We also wanted to make a few little bit crazier weapons.” Bakaba pointed to one of the guns we saw in the trailer as a good example, where you can use two guns that shoot two bullets, but can combine them into a full rifle that fires off four bullets in one burst. “It's a nice weapon, it's stylish, it allows us to do those cool animations when you combine the gun. It’s one of my favorites.”