Arkane Studios has been working in the complex niche of immersive sims for years. And, I must say, he knows his business: the Dishonored and Prey dilogy have practically no competitors … More precisely, they did not exist before the appearance of Deathloop . In fact, this is an exemplary immersive sim and a live demonstration of how long the studio has come since Arx Fatalis . And also – a new word in the genre, although you do not understand this right away.
It all begins on this beach. Again and again
Chicken day
The main character of Deathloop’s name is short and catchy – Colt. But at first our ward does not even know this. He, according to the classic beginning, wakes up with a hangover and amnesia on the cold rocky beach of the Black Reef Island. The mouth is clogged with sand, an empty bottle is in the hands, and there is a total emptiness in the head. However, not for long: the script quickly and decisively gets to the point.
The Black Reef has become the center of the temporal anomaly. The island itself and all of its inhabitants are stuck in a time loop one day long. Every day the cycle is restarted: the dead are resurrected, everything that is broken is repaired, and everything that is open is locked again. Our goal is simple: to destroy this wheel of samsara; why and why is not so important, we will understand later. To do this, all you need to do is kill eight people in one very, very long day. Well, and not to be killed yourself, of course. After all, the island is ruled by so-called ideologues who live in their own little paradise, where actions are never followed by consequences. And they don’t want to change anything, let alone die! One of them, Julianne, will become our main headache, but more about her below.
The surest remedy against a gaping enemy is to kick the bastard into icy water.
Who writes tips right in the air? What connects us with Julianne and other inhabitants of the island? What kind of project is EON? Why is the seemingly funny world of eternal hedonism so quickly becomes like a dark dystopia? What does some rocket plane have to do with it? Questions arise all the time, and it seems like it will take forever to answer them all. Fortunately, we have it. Time on the Black Reef is not only relative, but also discrete. Each time loop is divided into four segments: morning, noon, lunch, and evening. We are free to choose where to go and what to do in each of them, and the time within one sortie is not limited, but after the fourth, the loop is restarted. In words, it probably sounds complicated, but the system turned out to be interesting, convenient and original at the same time. Did someone clean out our safe in the evening? It doesn’t matter, in the morning he was in perfect order! Let’s just spin the day again, come early and calmly take everything we need: before the thief does (or has already?) Blood from the nose needs to get into the archivist’s house, but in the morning all windows and doors are locked? It doesn’t matter if we find out that after lunch the careless guards will leave the garage door ajar … And so in everything. The main thing is to be in the right place at the right time.
Julianne, our personal nemesis
It is information that is the main currency on the Black Reef. Moreover, and the most stable, because Colt remembers everything he learned during his forays on the island. The hero keeps in mind passwords, appearances, hints and other clues. So if you find out the code from the lock in the evening, then the next morning you can simply enter it, without unnecessary searches. Great, of course, but what’s the point, you ask, if the rare “orange” rifle hidden under this very lock disappears from the backpack tomorrow again? It turns out that it makes sense. To rip valuable weapons and useful trinkets out of the noose, you need a special substance – a residual. With its help, we will collect a deadly arsenal of magic tricks and lethal guns.
Death, as the game rightly notes, is a modest price to pay for the ability to save equipment. And often it is death that becomes the only way to go further. Own or someone else’s – it doesn’t matter.
Nightly disco in Downtown. Opponents seem to have escaped from the television series with Adam West as Batman
The wheel is spinning
Each of our goals has its own character, daily routine and habits. Ideologues are not particularly strong: after all, they are mostly just scientists, inventors and simply revelers, not special forces. But each of them has its own specifics. Someone exists in a dozen bodies at once – and to win you need to get rid of each copy. Someone can only be caught at a party where everyone is wearing the same masks (oh yeah, that was already in Dishonored ). And, say, the elusive Julianne, in principle, does not like to sit still: she with manic persistence wants to interfere with Colt, and for this she will stop at nothing. It is this agent of chaos that is the central feature of the game.
Even if you memorize the levels, thoroughly know the location of each resident and the schedule of any ideologue, this will not give any guarantees of success. After all, Julianne can at any time invade your cozy passage and arrange a natural hunt for Colt. You quickly get used to her tricks, but she still does not allow you to relax. Moreover, the role of Julianna can be played not only by artificial intelligence, but also by a living person: just like in FromSoftware games , where the most dangerous opponents were not monsters with silicon brains, but other people. The computer killer is, by and large, a powerful but dumb bot. But as soon as her outfit is tried on by a cunning and cunning player …
Deathloop has a lot of funny moments like singing enemies. She also actively parodies gaming conventions like double jumps or a textbook situation when you need to shoot a button while standing on a pressure platform.
Invasive multiplayer is the main difference between Deathloop and the purely single-coil Dishonored and Prey. And, it seems, in general from all the other immersion simulators. Unfortunately, Julianne does not have her own plot, and playing for her is just an additional mode, nothing more. But what a story could come out, fully told from two different points of view! Another The Last of Us: Part II , no less! It is a pity that the developers did not take advantage of this opportunity.
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However, Deathloop is good without Julianne. Even if we turn off the ability to invade for other players, we may lose a fair amount of tension, but still get another “game from Arkane”. And, I must say, a great game … in almost everything.
Seating management is nightmarish, at least on a mouse with a keyboard. Pressing the number “5” to change the magnification of the optical sight may be convenient only for an octopus, but certainly not for a person
Pharmacy, street, lantern
The main thing is, of course, brilliant art and level design. The slightly frivolous Deathloop lacks the dark charm of Dishonored, but the digital brush masters have worked hard on the game as it should. For example, Downtown with its narrow streets and ancient walls resembles Dunwall most of all. And the giant antenna in the post-apocalyptic expanses of the Complex makes you remember either Destiny or Fallout 4 in general (the similarity with Bethesda games enhances the flickering of stupid residents in stupid costumes). Admiring the views, you somehow forget that there is no open world here, and the locations are completely isolated from each other.
However, Deathloop does not suffer from crowding or monotony. The areas of the island not only do not look like one another, they also change very much at different times of the day, and it seems that you can explore them endlessly. But, more importantly, I really want to do this! Climb into every doorway, look into every window, press every button.
Deaf-blind-mute guards often do not notice the hero, even when he is spinning right under their noses
The game is fluid, but persistently pushes for experimentation. If you want, go around the enemies and crawl along the dark alleys with a silent nail gun in your teeth. Or take a heavier shotgun and start doing street justice – especially since the shooting here is simply excellent, and the enemies are not as idiots as you might think. Or jump across the rooftops and kick enemy snipers into the icy sea. Or hack the turrets and make them shoot their former owners. Or lean on magic and scatter enemies with your left hand like Galen Marek. Or do something else, whatever: there are plenty of opportunities here, there are no wrong paths, but you can safely make mistakes, because death only leads to restarting the loop (and even then not from the first time, but only from the third).
With all this, the game is almost impossible to go through cleanly: no saving and loading at the levels is provided. You can plan a cunning operation with the use of superpowers and sticky mines as much as you like, but some brainless guard will certainly screw everything up: he will turn around at the wrong moment and raise the alarm. So an attempt to carefully crawl past enemies often quickly turns into stabbing.
The arsenal is perfectly diversified by magical abilities, even if they themselves do not shine with originality. Telekinesis, teleportation, invisibility – all this was already somewhere
“Saving scamming won’t work!” Is a cool slogan that I support with both hands. But in order for the game with autosaves to work properly, it must be technically stable. And something bad is always going on in Deathloop: it is impossible to exit the menu, the interface elements overlap, then the whole game crashes and crashes into the system. As a result, you can easily lose progress and through no fault of your own.
The Internet is already full of complaints from grateful buyers suffering from microfreezes, sluggish fps, a buggy interface and constant crashes. For a game tied to luck, where it is impossible to arbitrarily save, and the duration of the session fluctuates within half an hour, such technical negligence means only one thing – death. And if Deathloop were at least a grain less talented, it probably would have happened. However, this is a really great project, which certainly does not threaten oblivion even with such carelessness of programmers. I am sure that all mistakes will be cured soon, and the gorgeous gameplay will remain with us for many years. Or at least until the next Arkane game.
Deathloop is worth it at least for this song
Deathloop is arguably the best Arkane game: beautiful, moderately complex, varied, with an original concept and unusual mechanics. No matter how hard she tries to push the player away from herself with bugs or inconvenient controls, she wants to return to Black Reef again and again. Well, shall we break the noose?
Pleased
- time loop mechanics;
- Julianne’s invasions add some fun to the game;
- multiplayer turned out to be surprisingly out of place;
- visual style is beyond praise;
- the song Déjà Vu performed by the Canadian singer Fjøra is just fire.
