Deathloop

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JaySevenZero
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Deathloop

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Deathloop for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Tolkientaters
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by Tolkientaters »

The best thing about Deathloop is its presentation, Arkane always knocks it out of the park with their visual choices and this is no exception. The choice to for a psychedelic blaxploitation aesthetic really makes it stand out. When you add some really cool music and standout voice acting there's little to complain about.

The gameplay is solid with a lot of carryover from Dishonored with unique satisfying guns and abilities, but it billed itself as a little more free form then it ended up being. I think multiple ways to engineer a close the loop situation would have made all the regular gameplay options you have com to a more satisfying conclusion. As it stands you can get creative early game but you're fairly restricted if you actually want to see the ending.

The addition of asynchronous multiplayer with Julianna really worked for me. It was usually pretty easy to steamroll her, but with a clever player it turned into a fun cat and mouse game. Playing as Julianna was also fun, you pretty much had to get a little underhanded to beat Colt. Placing a mine under someone's residium corpse was a partly effective cheap trick.

I Really enjoyed the game and I'm glad it was a success because the commercial underperformance of Dishonored 2 and Prey had me worried for the studio.
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markfm007
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by markfm007 »

Deathloop’s generated some interesting discussions for me, including on the C&R forums. At its core it has well crafted Arkane combat and level design, two great characters, and a fun soundtrack, even if it is a bit Austin Powers. This will be plenty for most to have a great time. And I did too, for a while.

However it falls down for me in two ways - it fails to live up to expectations, and it fails to live up to Arkane’s previous work. First, expectations. This game presents itself as ‘time loop Hitman’, where the goal is to take out multiple targets across multiple levels, within an in game day. Easy to grasp, endlessly replayable, and a step up in scope for Arkane.

Instead the game is a non-linear scavenger hunt, where the goal has been solved for you, you just need to find the pieces to it. The timeloop is just a framing device to ensure that you replay the levels, and to remove the morality system. It’s both less interesting and more difficult to understand than it could have been. Even Arkane have described how long it took them to get people to understand it.

That leads to part two, Arkane’s previous work. Changing from Dishonored’s personal story of revenge, to a constantly cycling island full of Knives Out style posers and wannabe geniuses is a nice idea on paper. In practice it wears out its welcome, and had me longing for the more compelling world and devious villains of Dishonored. I understand why people don’t like the chaos system, but without it, Blackreef quickly becomes tedious.

The end of the game presents a choice of ‘do you want to stay or leave the loop’, but it was never a question for me. I wanted out far before the game was done. Its far from a bad game, but it’s not a good sign when I’m so desperate for it to end that I shoot my favourite character, no questions asked.
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ashman86
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by ashman86 »

Deathloop was the first Arkane game I played that I actually stuck with through to the end. And, while I don't mean that as a knock against their past works or as glowing praise for Deathloop itself, I think it's important context for how I feel about the game today.

I fell in love with Deathloop almost immediately for three reasons: the characters, the different powers I could unlock, and the fact that, unlike Dishonored, the game didn't make me feel guilty for using my powers to take down enemies. Dishonored's nasty habit of locking all their coolest abilities behind a morality system is ultimately what always did those games in for me.

I loved Deathloop so much, that I tore through the game in a little over a week, giving it every second of time I had to spare. I was absolutely hooked. And then, the twist came.
Spoiler: show
Juliana being revealed as Colt's daughter
left such a bitter taste in my mouth, that it's impossible for me to look back at the game with the same fondness I once felt. It felt like such a betrayal to me as a player, and it spoiled everything I had enjoyed about the game's storytelling. After souring on the game's writing, I couldn't help but see the other flaws in its presentation.

Maybe it's unrealistic to have ever expected anything different, but the game's ending totally undercuts whatever sense of freedom or choice or agency I may have felt as a player who had once believed I could tackle its central puzzle in any number of ways. As it turned out, there's basically just one solution, and maybe that's an even greater betrayal of the player's expectations than the narrative twist.

There are some great game ideas here, to be sure, but I just can't recommend it to friends anymore without making some major caveats.
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GlobalSaturation89
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by GlobalSaturation89 »

I enjoyed playing Deathloop. The presentation and the art style were top notch (although other forumites have hit this point already that Arkane know how to build a world).
I feel that the lack of consequences for absent mindedly murdering my way out of a failed stealth sequence appealed to me. I struggle with stealth games and the constant quick save get seen reload mechanic of the Dishonored series. It frustrates me greatly that I would get annoyed and end up murdering everyone which would then lead to the bad ending. However deathloop is more like a dishonored starter pack. You get similar powers and skills but are given a sandbox to play in and learn how to deal with different situations. You can go guns blazing dual fourpounders in hand and murder each and every person in sight however I enjoyed creeping around and picking people off.

I also liked that I could make a mistake without consequence. Mess up a side quest? I’ll just play out the loop and try again later.

The only negative I have is that once I learned about Colt and Juliana’s relationship (no spoilers here) it made some of the exchanges they had together a little unsettling to say the least. The one which makes my skin crawl is “F—- you Colt!” To which Colt replies “your place or mine.”
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Alex79
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by Alex79 »

I was initially excited by the idea of Deathloop and downloaded it as soon as it came to Gamepass. The opening hour or so was interesting, although I must admit I found it confusing with how many different systems you needed to keep track of, and wasn't really sure where I was 'supposed' to be going. The excitement soon wore off, however, when I realised it really wasn't the emergent, immersive sim I had been expecting. Perhaps it's unfair to criticise a game over what it's not, or what I had expected it to do, but nobody pays me for my thoughts so I will do just that! It seemed like there was only one true solution for each of the games puzzles, or targets, and the game totally holds your hand and guides you through the process, leaving little to experiment with as a player. Perhaps I have only scratched the surface and that freedom is there if you want it, but I ended up feeling very unsatisfied and uninstalled it after a few hours of play. My one positive is that the shooting felt very good, they got the guns spot on I think. Ultimately, this wasn't a game for me, although I appreciate I'm probably in a smaller minority than those who loved it.

THREE WORD REVIEW: Time Loop Poop.

Extra bit: I'm not blown away by any of Arkane's games. I thought Dishonored was ok, didn't like this or Prey, and am yet to play Dishonored 2. I feel like they have some amazing ideas, but actually playing them, the games never really hook me in fully. I think one day they'll come along with something I go all in on, but until then I'll keep giving them a try! They're an interesting studio, always trying something different, and that's certainly to be commended for sure.
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MattL
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by MattL »

This game was a huge, huge let down coming from Arkane's prior games.

I initially was intrigued by the "kill all the Visionaries in one loop" set up and envisioned a completely open environment wherein you try to locate and kill everyone in the course of a single day using your own creativity and skill, but I was extremely disappointed when I discovered that there's literally only one way to complete the game. The problem was that one single method of completing the game was so obtuse that the game had to resort to being overly handholdy, which made the game very boring, which wasn't helped by the fact that there was (a) only two enemy types, the mooks and the Visionairies and both are totally braindead, (b) only four extremely small levels which you have to play over and over to the point where you just run past everything, and (c) a cap of only two powers per loop thus removing all the Dishonored/Prey-style fun of combining powers.

I'm linking an interesting video from Gamespot where they chat with Dana Nightingale, one of the leads on Deathloop, about the struggles Arkane had developing it. There was going to be absolutely zero hand-holding at first and it totally baffled game testers, which lead to all the excessive hand-holding that's in the game as released. I really feel like Dana learned the wrong thing from those testers. She thought, "Well, if players can't understand the one single solution that I devised, then I need to tell them how to do it," when she really should have learned that the game needed multiple solutions.

https://www.gamespot.com/videos/the-red ... 0-6459169/

It just seems to me that in a game about time travel, there should be flexibility in solving a problem, rather than strict rigidity. Allowing players to come up with their own ways to assassinate every Visionary would encourage divergent playstyles, speed-running, low percentage runs, sequence breaking, and other forms of player expression. The game as it is, is just "get a Strelak shotgun to mow down all the braindead enemies and then follow the dots on your radar to the Visionaries who are likewise braindead, but have slightly more health points." I do not understand how it got so many perfect scores, particularly when compared to (a) other loop games, (b) other immersive sim games, and (c) other Arkane games.

I really feel like this was an attempt by Arkane to dumb down their normal formula and go more mainstream, due to them now being owned by Microsoft and from what I've seen of Redfall, the dumbing down seems like it's going to continue. Skip this game and play the Dishonored series and Prey 2016.

Three Word Review: Dollar Store Dishonored
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Ico
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by Ico »

Rather enjoyed Deathloop. I tried Dishonoured a number of times but just could not get on with it so was a little apprehensive starting Deathloop but happy to give it is try given the high scores it was getting which had piqued my interest. I loved the hyper-stylish presentation and the voice work between the main characters and dialogue was fun. Gunplay was fast and enjoyable but I did have to turn on the one hit kill option after a while. Overall a good game but I didn’t find it quite the 10/10 many outlets felt it was and 6 months or so after playing it I’m struggling to remember a lot of it. Three word review - Style over substance?
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Tolkientaters
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by Tolkientaters »

I gotta mention one of the weirdest takes I've seen about Deathloop, that it's generic. I just don't understand how anyone who understands the meaning of that word could apply it to Deathloop. There's very few games with anything close to its aesthetic and its structure is certainly unique. I completely understand why some people might not like Deathloop, but it's definitely going for something different than most other games on the market.
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Tolkientaters
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Re: 580: Deathloop

Post by Tolkientaters »

GlobalSaturation89 wrote: January 30th, 2023, 7:14 am The only negative I have is that once I learned about Colt and Juliana’s relationship (no spoilers here) it made some of the exchanges they had together a little unsettling to say the least. The one which makes my skin crawl is “F—- you Colt!” To which Colt replies “your place or mine.”
Completely agree.
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Taz
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Re: Our next podcast recording (29.7.23) - 580: Deathloop

Post by Taz »

I seem to have fonder memories of Deathloop than many others. I agree with most of the criticisms I’m seeing from other posts but they weren’t enough to sully my experience.

Having an endlessly repeating timeloop gave the player permission to really experiment
without worrying about the consequences, which felt refreshing when so many games do the exact opposite. I get that a game claiming that ‘your choices matter’ should feel like a plus point but I found it so liberating to be able to do whatever I like in the moment without worrying that I might miss out on some content or end up with ‘the bad ending’ for taking a particular action.

I loved the characterisation of Colt and Julianna, their squabbling never outstayed its welcome for me. The game is at its best when another player takes the role of Julianna and tries to hunt you down, however I played the game on launch; it’d be interesting to play it now, I imagine the servers are either empty or full of people who have 1000 hours on the clock who’ve minmaxed their way to an optimum strategy. But on launch, it was a fantastic cat and mouse game. It was great having a real opponent to outsmart and outgun, considering the enemy AI was very basic. One friend of mine switched the game to Offline mode because he didn’t like the sound of a real player invading his game and I begged him to switch it back on because I thought he was seriously missing out.

As much as I enjoyed solving the loop the first time I was very disappointed to find there was only one solution. I thought this was a Hitman-style game with multiple possible solutions. When I finished the game I was hungry for more but felt I’d exhausted what the game had to offer – I’d have loved a reason to revisit the levels and continue experimenting, maybe hunt for a more optimum or creative solution to close the loop.

Many users complaining about the twist at the end – it didn’t bother me at all, and honestly I’d forgotten all about it until reading these posts. Perhaps this means I wasn’t all that invested in the story?

My main takeaway from Deathloop was that it was an inventive, vivid and exciting game which may have overpromised and under-delivered in some respects but I enjoyed it and appreciated that it was doing something a little different when many AAA games are playing it much safer.
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MattL
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Re: Deathloop

Post by MattL »

Just listened to this pod today. It's really quite striking the division between professionals in the industry loving this game and gamers not getting into it. I think Deathloop fell into the weird crevasse of it being too difficult/confusing for mainstream audiences, while being too stripped down for Arkane/immersive sim fans. By trying to please both audiences, Arkane in fact pleased neither.
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