Deathloop

To be honest, I've been struck by how similar to Dishonoured it is. There's a lot of the fundamental gameplay mechanics that are identical, and the basic sneaking/planning is very similar moment to moment (although that's true of many immersive sims). Even visually it's quite similar - things like the shutters used to show which doors you can't go through immediately reminded me of Dishonoured.

What's interesting is how they've changed the formula. Bodies disappearing instantly adds a major point of difference, and shows the focus on more action. The structure also suggests to me designers working out a reason to have players try different approaches to the same content. With Dishonoured many (myself included) will have played through the campaign one way and been done with it. This game's repetition pretty much demands you explore more to keep things interesting.

I am enjoying it plenty so far, now that it's settled into its groove. The tutorial is clunky as hell at times and way too long, and the menus / UI needed another few passes as they're an absolute mess at the moment (cursor navigation on console 👎🏻). It's also far more linear / hand-holdy in its objectives than I expected. Not entirely sold on whether the locations are interesting enough to keep revisiting over and over. But it certainly has plenty going for it, and it's certainly fun figuring out some of the secrets the games hold. It is very Dishonoured IMO, but it's always interesting to see a familiar style from a fresh design perspective.

Deathloop is to Dishonoured as Bloodborne is to Dark Souls - an action-focused take on a very familiar formula.

I never said it was just an action-focused Dishonoured, but I do think it feels remarkably like a faster version of that game in much of the minute to minute gameplay :) I mean, all the powers - pivotal to how we play the game - are borrowed directly from that D1+2 with a few tweaks here and there. But certainly all the structural things, the tone and lots of small details ensure this has significant points of difference to Arkane’s most famous series. It’s a mix of the new and familiar - again, similar to Bloodborne / Sekiro.

UI wise I just think a lot of info is buried under layers of menus and submenus. There’s lots of poorly explained icons scattered throughout the menus - for example, the way some objectives have an extra triangular emphasis or the separate icons for non-infused and equipped items. I’m not a UI designer so can only say it feels a bit confusing to use - albeit one Ive adjusted to as I progress. I’d certainly make navigating menus non-cursor based or at the very least have the cursor snap to different boxes as appropriate. I think there’s also some unnecessary ‘hold button for a second too long to do this prompt’ bits - not always instinctively clear you need to hold down a particular button rather than just press it. Also think the way some of the tutorial text pops up in little white text in the middle of the screen was awkward. It just feels somewhat unpolished and messy in some UI details - partially a result of lots of interlocking systems to illustrate, but I definitely don’t think it’s particularly controller friendly with its free-moving cursor (ironically, I’ve heard some PC users complain the interface seems too console focused 🤷🏻‍♂️).

The ‘detective’ angle has certainly come more to the forefront as I dig deeper, and I’m really enjoying it. I do think the game fills in a lot of the blanks for you before you even have a chance to do it yourself, and ultimately by default the game gives you lots of overt objectives about what you can do next - ‘handholdy’ in that sense. BUT there’s still plenty of satisfaction to be found in putting the many pieces in the right place, figuring out little puzzles, and digging up secrets. If it’s a little bit less satisfying than say Outer Wilds or Obra Dinn in that sense, it’s still fantastic to see bigger games embrace some of the design lessons and choices from those games.

I do really like that Juliana and the other visionaries only take a few hits to go down (or indeed can be stealth killed if you play your cards right). They obviously have their skills to give them an edge over the randoms, but feels very satisfying that they’re not overpowered bullet sponges.

Loop broken. Enjoyed the game a lot on the whole, although perhaps just ever so shy of peak Arkane for me. While I enjoyed the final loop, throughout the game I couldn't help but wish the game gave the player a little more leeway to put two-and-two together themselves. There are satisfying moments of discovery here, but compared to the peak exploration or 'information' games it definitely lacks that incredible sense of figuring out the big secrets or something major finally clicking into place. But there is fun to be had gradually lining up the dominoes for that one final push, even if the final push is very overtly spelt out for you.

The game is definitely more willing to make you completely overpowered compared to Dishonoured, which I do think works to its benefit. Towards the end when you have a few special weapons loaded with purple trinkets you'll be absolutely mowing through enemies - far more so than Dishonoured, Deathloop almost seems to prod you towards the chaotic path. Stealth is fine, especially when you finally have a decent slab and trinket setup (the hack from great distances trinket is hilariously overpowered), although with a couple of exceptions - such as the party - I often found it more efficient to simply let all hell break loose and pick off the dumb AI in a localised area.

Not entirely sure whether I liked or disliked the looter shooter element, although I'm perhaps leaning towards the latter. It was very satisfying to find one of the orange tier weapons by solving the puzzle attached to them. But the nature of the other random drops meant there was a whole lot of junk thrown the player's way. For example, I held off on the library and arsenal sections until later in the game... but in the end just found a bunch of generic weapons that weren't a patch on the ones I'd had for hours.

It's a good game overall with plenty to like. If it fell just a little short for me it was because it's doing some of the things a few of my favourite games from recent years are doing, just without the same level of trust in the player. But as a different spin on Arkane's brand of the immersive sim, it's a solid mix of the familiar and the refreshing.

Stealth is definitely viable, although I found the nail gun I had (which tagged enemies in the area) was just a bit too inaccurate to be wholly relied on. Might have a look for other silenced weapons as I’d like to do a silent party run.

In contrast, I had two incredible shotguns to pick from and the incredible dual pistol / assault rifle combo weapon. They’d pick every enemy off with one shot. Just felt like the quickest way to clear a room or area, especially since the alarm systems usually seemed localised rather than level-wide.

Ha, I ran into that invisible sights issue as well during my final run, was an absolute pain!

I do think the ending was pretty underwhelming:

I’m actually confused now which endings are considered ‘good’ and ‘bad’ - from what I was reading online the one I liked more wasn’t considered the ‘good’ one 😅 Will have to try the third one to see if that settles it 😎