50 Years of Video Games: Deathloop (PS5)

2021 was a bit of a rocky year for the game industry, the new game consoles of the time having their availability limited by chip shortages and the impact of the global pandemic on game development times starting to show. Major game releases consisted of new installments that didn’t shake up their series too much despite being high quality entries like Metroid Dread and Resident Evil Village, but Deathloop was a new intellectual property from the long established publisher Bethesda and it still didn’t feel like it made the biggest splash. However, it is an odd picture of the game industry of the time. Deathloop is a game based around a time loop in a year that featured other games using the same concept like Twelve Minutes and Loop Hero, the acquisition of Bethesda by Microsoft the previous year lead to the odd situation where an Xbox owned game was now releasing on PS5 as a console exclusive, and the difficulty in acquiring a PS5 meant it was not likely that limited exclusivity deal really impacted console sales.

 

While its peculiar place in the shifting tides of the game history is interesting on its own, Deathloop does have a compelling idea at its core. A man named Colt wakes up on the beach of Blackreef Island, unsure of who he is or where he is but soon finding floating words nearby that aid him in understanding his situation. As he moves forward, Colt discovers he’s on an island trapped in a time loop that is repeating the first day they were stuck in it over and over, but most everyone on the island willingly entered into this time loop to enjoy a life without consequence. Few people seem to retain their memories between each loop though, Colt becoming one as the story kicks off while the other main person with a consistent memory is Julianna Blake. While Colt quickly decides he wants to break the loop to free everyone from this endless cycle, Julianna has made it her job to protect it, not only trying to dissuade Colt with frequent conversations over radio but also willing to get her hands dirty and kill him if necessary. A death just means someone will be back at the start of the loop though, so even as Colt and Julianna kill each other again and again, they manage an entertaining repartee. Colt understands his work is serious and can have moments where the crushing reality of it hits him hard, but mostly he’s a man amused by the situation even as he tries to correct it, telling jokes to Julianna about his gradual progress to finding the way to freedom or marveling at the new ways he learns to circumvent the daily reset. Julianna has become jaded by the Deathloop’s repetition but has also learned to take parts of it with good humor, often criticizing Colt’s efforts by way of snide comments or overblown reactions.

 

Considering Colt and Julianna are the only main characters within the loop aware that previous loops have occurred it does give someone for Colt to speak to across the adventure rather than essentially meeting everyone all over again each day, but there are other important characters in the loop you’ll be seeing often because they are the key to breaking it. A group of Visionaries on the island must be killed in order to release the power necessary to upset the endless loop, but they must all be killed in one day. A day is split into four segments for the player, the player needing to figure out where the Visionaries are each day and how to set them up so that you can successfully pull off the complicated assassination plot. Time thankfully doesn’t move in real time though, the player choosing one of the island’s four major locations to visit for each segment of the day and not having to worry about a ticking clock while inside it. You are given as much time as you need in that area to search for relevant information and learn how to set up that one perfect day, but if you do die, the loop will reset and you’ll lose much of what you found. Information is carried over between each loop and you actually have three lives when going into an area so there is some wiggle room. You even get a way to infuse weapons and items with special power so they can be carried between loops. This does eliminate some of the potential annoying aspects of repeating a day over and over and the information you record in your journal can be marked for easy tracking so it’s not too confusing either, the player able to focus more on the discovery aspect rather than needing to juggle information that might not amount to much or rearm themselves every loop.

 

Already presented with 1960s style, the look of Deathloops intersects old school technology and style sensibilities with the more advanced science fiction technology tied to the loop system. The Visionaries usually have some tie to this mix of the loop and the look of the time. Charlie is a game developer who believes the loop can allow for people to participate in live action games where death is possible but easily undone by the daily loop, but the artist Fia who thought the loop a chance to stretch her artistic legs is stressed by the reality that it makes all her work impermanent. Harriet has turned the loop’s existence into a cult while Aleksis believes it can offer people a chance to be decadent and depraved without consequence. Wenjie and Egor on the other hand are mostly tied to the scientific potential of the island’s situation, Wenjie even able to interact with multiple instances of herself from each loop to better expedite her research. Frank Spicer is perhaps the least attached to the loop conceptually, believing it could somehow rejuvenate a flagging career but seemingly misunderstanding the loop’s premise, but like every visionary he does have more interesting layers to discover by investigating his area of the island at the right time like a deeper connection to Colt and a unique space you have to fight through. Participating in Charlie’s live action space fantasy, fighting through Frank’s club with your extra revivals and abilities disabled, and trying to thin the ranks of multiple well-armed Wenjies can make coming into conflict with a visionary already an exciting and suitably unique experience, and learning more about them can even lead to you upsetting their schedule and fighting them in a different way later. Some are a bit simpler like Harriet who feels like she gets less examination as a character and is in the area you need to visit the least in your investigations, but others like Fia and Aleksis have clever tricks to block your work like needing to sneak around Fia’s compound to avoid her triggering a self-destruct or needing to find a way to oust Aleksis at his party where everyone wears masks.

 

Gradually putting together how to track and manipulate the Visionaries to arrange your perfect day gives the player a constant sense of purpose while its freeform nature where you tackle the clues of your choice ensure it maintains an interesting layer of personal discovery. You can skip segments of the day as needed, but there are things to find outside of the main objective that can be worth investigating. Some have simple payoffs like finding some people digging a tunnel in the morning you can later take while others can reward you with special weapons and equipment once you’ve found all the relevant information to solve an information puzzle. Sometimes there are even just little tales unfolding in the state you find a place across the day like a building in the morning that is later torn up by raucous hooligans at noon and then has a car crashed into it in the afternoon, changes both subtle and large able to give more life to the four main areas you’ll be revisiting again and again. Oddly enough the game does completely lock you out Karl’s Bay at noon and Fristad Rock in the evening, but there is usually something to do in each district at every time of day even if much of it will be pay offs to work done earlier.

 

You aren’t just gathering information in Deathloop of course, this first-person shooter featuring enemies who are armed with the same guns you’ll be using. Interestingly though, the game keeps its numbers of unique weapon types rather low. You can carry three guns at a time and its fairly easy to make them a mix of useful types like having the Spiker on hand for its silent shots great for stealthily clearing out enemies but keeping a louder shotgun on hand like the Strelak 50-50 or Vorpat Trencher for when you want to deal heavy damage after you’ve already been detected. There is only one main machine gun in the form of the Pepper Mill and one submachine gun with the LIMP-10, and even though the shotguns overlap in concept they do favor power and ammunition differently so it does feel like you are making legitimate decisions on which type of gun you prefer rather than needing to understand small differences to appreciate the variety. You are also given two other ways to participate in a fight, the player getting four grenades to use in each portion of the day but the grenades can be shifted into different forms like land mines and trip mines for more tactical uses. Most tactical of all though is your ability to hack systems near to you, this not only good for disabling security but you can do things like turn automated guns to your side and even pick them up after to reposition them for some satisfying kill setups.

There is still a deeper degree of customization and decision making to the gun system though as you can start to find better quality versions of these guns with different inherent traits or the opportunity for more trinket slots. Trinkets are where you can get deeper into making your weapons your own, these fairly abundant modifiers able to alter the inherent qualities of a weapon to varying degrees based on their own quality. Giving a machine gun the option to slow an enemy on hit feels like a natural choice and thinning the spread of a shotgun blast can make it more potent, but there are also trinkets with simpler effects like hastening reloads and increasing the sometimes limited clips weapons can have. You even have personal trinkets to consider that can give you extra abilities like a double jump, boosts to your health or how quietly you move, or even inversions like turning your grenade into a healing one instead. Infusion becomes a more layered project than just preserving your best gun thanks to the trinket system and over the course of Deathloop you’ll still be considering how to improve your character in addition to the investigation element. Many special trinkets and weapons even require learning certain information to pursue with unique tools like the Strelak Verso dual hand guns that can be combined mid-battle into a submachine gun or the Sepulchra Breteira that serves as the game’s one true sniper rifle.

 

Adding an extra layer on top of the interesting approach to firearms and customization are the Slabs. Certain special items can be equipped to grant you truly unique abilities acquired by killing the Visionaries who use them. An ability like Aether lets you turn completely invisible so you can sneak around areas better while Havoc increases your durability and powers up the kick and machete swing you have constant access to. Upgrades for acquiring the Slabs multiple times also provides a layer of customization to this element of your arsenal, so something like Nexus that ties the fate of enemies connected by it can be expanded to spread to other members of the group before you kill one to kill them all. Powering up slabs to such a level takes a good degree of effort so it won’t trivialize encounters until you’ve done across many loops and simple combat is already less of a concern, but there are some Slabs like Karnesis that don’t seem as uniquely useful. Karnesis hurls an enemy around in a satisfying way and can even be upgraded to suspend them in the air for easy shooting, but it does feel like overkill on the regular gunmen who patrol the island to ensure Colt doesn’t ruin their endless party. However, when Julianna gets involved, it does feel like a very strong counter to her approach to action.

 

Julianna will appear at unexpected times while the player is exploring the island. You’ll get a warning she’s present, but she is out to kill you and able to use similar weapons and slabs to Colt when pursuing him. Julianna also locks the exits of the current district you’re in, meaning that you have to head to the antenna that unlocks them so she can force you out into a good hunting area even if you were working in somewhere more closed off or out of the way before her arrival. Julianna’s appearance can sometimes upset delicate work like infiltrating Fia’s bunker but most of the time, despite the increased threat she poses over most enemies, the high quality weapons, trinkets, and even Slabs of all types she has the potential to drop makes fighting her a rewarding element despite the potential for disruption. When controlled by the game she doesn’t always approach her work in the smartest way however, but Deathloop actually contains two ways to play. If you choose to Break the Loop you play through the story as Colt, but at any time after the set up you can go back to the main menu and try to Protect the Loop instead, playing as Julianna yourself and infiltrating story sessions of other players to try and kill them. Players need to opt into letting other players invade them so some of the guilt of potentially ruining a busy loop for another player is assuaged by the fact they opened things up for your assassination mission. While playing as Julianna your only goal is to kill Colt and the tools you use to do it get better over time either thanks to successful missions that speed up the process or a gradual build up of consolation points, Julianna soon getting the Slabs and special weapons that can prove far more useful on an intelligent human target when you don’t risk triggering an alarm or getting a whole district’s worth of baddies on you for using the flashier options. Julianna is also given a unique edge in the battle with her Masquerade Slab, the power allowing her to disguise herself as a regular enemy to better pull off surprise ambushes or move about less suspiciously. What’s more, playing through the story gives you an understanding of what a player might be up to in a district, and using that knowledge to hunt down someone or set traps near important areas does make playing Julianna deeper than just running around hoping to find Colt.

 

Protect the Loop does feel like an important addition to the game not only because it gives an addictive and simple way to extend play after you’ve beat the story, but it does balance out some of the weaker elements of the game. The story has multiple endings but all feel a little underwhelming even if you’ve acquired the abundant amount of context for the situation from files and eavesdropping. The plot does have some interesting developments before the finale in relation to the loop and Colt’s personal involvement at least, but one thing that hampers your ability to peruse your findings is a baffling pause glitch where sometimes you’ll be unable to do anything in the pause or journal menus and have to reset your game and the current progress within that portion of the day. Thankfully it won’t reset the whole loop but the fact you can’t reference your notes without risking losing progress undermines some of the discovery, but at the same time you can read them between areas safely so they’re not inaccessible and information like door codes is either available for automatic entry or appears in the floating notes Colt receives assistance from after you know it. The game does have obnoxious tutorial messages with far too much information thrown in your face at once as well, but beyond some visual glitches that don’t harm things much you can eventually find a smooth way to play, and since pausing already doesn’t actually stop the action it’s not too damaging that this option might have to be entirely avoided.

THE VERDICT: Unraveling the mysteries of Deathloop’s constantly repeating day and using those to your advantage adds an intriguing layer of complexity to this first-person shooter, the player plotting out where they wish to investigate and using their growing knowledge of a day’s events to manipulate outcomes in their favor. A meddlesome pause glitch nearly jeopardizes this if not for some conveniences, but otherwise the game provides an enjoyable mix of stealth and shooting opportunities that balance the simplicity of Slabs and weapons with clearly different roles thanks to their deeper customization with upgrades and trinkets. The multiplayer mode where you can hunt or be hunted by Julianna also gives the player a new way to take advantage of certain abilities and their knowledge of the island for a different play experience, the rough spots in design offset by the engaging relationship between action and discovery.

 

And so, I give Deathloop for PlayStation 5…

A GREAT rating. While the game’s premise was certainly jeopardized by the pause glitch ruining your means to reference the growing amount of information you use for navigating the island’s loop, Deathloop also has a good deal of systems in place to ensure you can still use your findings to your advantage. The time loop is still something you are able to gradually uncover and most of its most important elements are easily remembered rather than requiring constant sifting through your discoveries, and with the Visionaries not only having interesting areas to explore as you aim to take them down but behaviors you can influence to make your assassination plot possible extends their use and depth beyond your first encounter. Not only are there interesting developments to their personal stories to be found, but you can use them against them and set up that perfect day needed to try and break the loop for good, with different characters having different approaches that best suit the ways you pursue them in that effort. The smart mix of simplicity and complexity found in the weapon system allows you to engage with it more deeply if you desire but also makes some ground level decisions like which guns to bring with you easy enough that it becomes more about a satisfying gradual build up in your capabilities rather than fiddling with minor differences. Slabs and special options like moving hacked turrets also deepen the ways you can approach a battle and things get even more layered as Julianna adds the unpredictability of human behavior to things both if you’re playing as her or pushing back against her after enabling the invasion option. Deathloop is a game where you are encouraged to fight smart but given a good deal of help to avoid the tedium a time loop could have threatened, only a few things like the simplicity of tackling Harriet’s portion feeling like they lack the meat on their bones to make good use of the relationship between the actions you take and the information you gather.

 

Deathloop doesn’t feel like it suffered too much for the strange circumstances surrounding its development and release, and while it concept feels like it could have gone further, it still provides an enjoyable package that marries the gameplay and discovery well while ensuring players won’t get lost or be left scrounging for something important to do. Without the multiplayer element, the glitches and endings might have extracted a greater toll, but Deathloop is still more than a simple shooter thanks to what elements it did give attention to and the smart way it structured the balance between simplicity and depth.