Deathloop - Good Concept, Unfortunate Design

This blog post is transferred from my FYP blog. This was written back in Nov 2022

From morning to night

Deathloop explores an intriguing concept of time loop with a Dishonored-like combat system. Most reviews didn't give the game a high rating due to the game design having fundamental flaws which affects gameplay. Despite the shortcomings, I do appreciate the Arkane's creativity and courage to implement the system. The game feels like a new breakthrough even though it has its criticisms.

The repeating same day

You play as Colt. You woke up in an island and heard a woman talking to you on the radio. You followed the voice until you reached her house, and then you got killed. That's the start of the game. You woke up again. This time you knew you got killed last time, but everything was the same as if that day was reliving itself. You realized you were trapped in a time loop, and you started seeing things, messages left behind by the past "you". You started to think, how can you get out of here?

In the world of Deathloop, a day was being purposefully repeated for an experiment. Colt's goal was to kill all the 8 visionaries - key personnel who protect the loop - so that he can stop the loop and escape. The game has an interesting theme - break the loop or protect the loop, where the player as Colt will be trying to break it at first. This happens in the individual's player's world. After the players have progressed enough, they are able to play as Julianna - the woman who wants Colt dead - to protect the loop. Players can then invade other people's game world and disturb (kill) them.

How the loop works

The whole time-loop idea revolves around the concept of the day getting reset when it reaches midnight. Every event, person, objects will be gone and reset back to where they were a day ago. That also means people will be doing the exact same thing again and again. This concept is executed by dividing the day into four timezones - morning, noon, afternoon, and night. There are four regions on the island and Colt can visit them anytime of the day. The time wouldn't change when Colt is in that region unless Colt tries to go to another region, that will progress the time from morning to noon, from noon to afternoon, and so on. Players discover clues as to the visionaries' whereabouts and plans of the day by exploring a region and players have to think of a route to execute their plan in a single day.

Despite the map looking the same, different events occur during the day. Updaam seems peaceful in the morning with the museum displaying nice weaponry, but the museum will be ransacked by a gang in the afternoon. Players have to break in only in the morning to obtain weapons they want. There's also a party at night in a club area inaccessible any other times of the day. The streets will be filled with Eternalists, people who believed in the loop experiment. Players have to be extra careful when infiltrating the club since a tiny enemy alert could lead to guns blazing from all directions.

The time loop concept is creative indeed, but the inherent problem lies in the repetitiveness of levels and enemies since it is a literal day reset. The game loses its difficulty when players can predict enemies' positioning, movement and it can become boring. The level design also contributes to the repetitiveness since there are only a few map entrances. There are occasions when the objective is far away and players have to run all the way there, passing by places they've seen for a million times. The quest navigation also leads to boredom, as Deathloop stresses heavily on its "puzzle-solving" aspect of having to strategize and plan. What players are given in the end was only a navigation that tells them to "go here do this", in which it's a no brainer process. This makes it more like a "experience the loop concept with guidance" instead of "try to break the loop yourself"

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Common sense is not common sense

Deathloop has a compelling start - you are trapped on this island where a women called Julianna commands the Eternalists to kill you. You found out the only way to escape is by breaking the loop. Everything however, went down after that. The main problem of the story is how it doesn't make sense at all. It feels like the story only caters for the gameplay - to justify the gameplay - and it makes no sense on its own. I feel like the developers failed to notice how split the story is to the gameplay. They don't blend well together.

One of such example is Colt's dialogue with Julianna in the tunnels. Julianna, being one of the visionaries herself, wanted to kill Colt and preserve the loop. In order to travel to different regions, Colt used a connection of underground tunnels left by a military organization prior to the arrival of the visionaries. When walking down the tunnels, Julianna will try to strike a conversation with Colt, revealing the fact that she can hack into Colt's communication system and know his whereabouts. This is just weird when we know both of them wants to kill each other, and they were just chitchatting shittalking each other on the radio?

Colt to me looks like an idiot when he sometimes spills his plans to Julianna. Julianna on the other hand, doesn't even try to "invade" or "disrupt" in a meaningful way despite knowing what Colt is going to do. The only presence of Julianna in the game is when other players invade your world and start a 1v1. When Julianna was defeated, she will no longer invade for the rest of the day. This invasion system is fun in a competitive sense but it rips the story apart. What Julianna (aka, the other player) does doesn't affect the story in any way. She only appears in cutscene at the start and the end of the story which makes her somewhat a spectator for the most part. Meanwhile she was supposed to be important in the plot since she is the only other visionary who preserves her memories through loops. She was supposed to be way stronger and smarter than what the game presents her to be. If Colt can predict the other visionaries, Julianna should also do the same with Colt. With her visionary position she could freely change up patrol routes, make roadblocks, blow up the tunnels and even warn the other Eternalists. Unfortunately nothing of sort was implemented in the game. I feel like the potential of making her an actual smart enemy is wasted for the sake of a simpler gameplay.

Apart from the logical errors, the plot itself is confusing. No one knows why the visionaries wanted to create the loop in the first place, or why Julianna - being Colt's daughter, wants to preserve the loop. Arkane did a poor job with the character writing. The visionaries were all distinct from each other in terms of motives, abilities and beliefs. We can see that from numerous documents we can collect, but that's not enough to make a strong impression because, well, they are just walls of text. We know nothing from the visionary's side - do they have a compelling reason for protecting the loop? should we emphasize with them? This make the story flat where players are only familiar with Colt's point of view - which is to kill everyone. There isn't any moral dilemma in Colt's actions because the day resets anyway. There isn't any emotional value to the plot as well because we never get the chance to know the other characters. instead of being "story-driven", Deathloop feels more like a "rouge-like game featuring some sort of a story"

I had to read through pages of lore in IGN's walkthrough in order to get a hold of what the story is about, despite not skipping any cutscenes and reading every documents. That speaks for itself - narrative needs to improve.

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The perfect example

I would say Deathloop is the perfect example of how not to write and present a game story. We have to be mindful of the common mistakes it made including:

• No impactful narrative
• Few cutscenes with explanations
• Few character development
• Fundamental logical errors

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