I've been a champion of Arkane Studios since I borrowed a friend's copy of Dishonored back in 2012, and in all that time, never once was there an overwhelming critical and commercial response that I thought was sufficient for the team behind Dark Messiah and Arx Fatalis. After mixed reception of their Prey reboot and a looming buyout from Microsoft sent nary a ripple through the online game-o-sphere, I feared that the original Dishonored was going to be the last time anyone's ears pricked up at the mention of my favorite team of immersive-sim hooligans from lively ol' France. Suffice to say, I was wrong. Deathloop is, in the eyes of many, a rousing success and a feather in the cap of Arkane Lyon. A swan song, if you will, for their time as a multi-platform studio before going on to create bigger and better things for the suits over at Bill Gates' alma mater. However, I'd be lying if I said I shared the same fervor.
Before I start dissecting Deathloop with my critical scalpel, I'm going to heap a modicum of praise on the aspects of the game that I think let it stand head-and-shoulder with some of its contemporaries in the immersive-sim genre (and to some extent, first-person shooters as a whole). For starters, Deathloop boasts an impeccable stylistic milieu that hasn't been touched upon at all in the game-o-sphere, excepting a handful of James Bond tie-ins and No One Lives Forever. The pop mash-up of disco deco and blacksploitation sci-fi is a wild, unruly direction that pays off in droves, lending each disparate style a uniformity of counter-cultural uniqueness that mixes well with the exaggerated character models and wonky supernatural aesthetics that Arkane perfected in Dishonored. Okay, yes, I am trying to sound smarter than I am here: Deathloop looks and sounds fucking cool. Harsh monochrome animatics, floating text, and gorgeous vistas swirl about in a melting pot of high-concept ideas and top-tier gunplay, and if that were the end of my analysis, you could easily walk away thinking that Deathloop is at the top of my list of artistic endeavors. Unfortunately, I'm being a bit too cheeky to let the game get away with wowing me with pitch perfect production.
Where Deathloop falls short for me is in a multitude of arenas that all happen to add up exponentially. Despite the gunplay feeling responsive and crunchy, the AI refuses to give you a challenge, making the player's victories over the armies of faceless goons an unearned, easily repeatable (scratch that, mandatorily repeatable) hinderance once you've mastered the basics on the core mechanics. Which I have indeed neglected to mention up till this point! Deathloop is, as the title suggests, a time travel game where you the player as Colt the gunslinger must complete a series of assassinations in the span of a single day lest that day be reset and you the player (as Colt the gunslinger) along with it, carrying vital information that may or may not help you complete a loop successfully. If you die, you loop. It's your standard "video-game-genre" meets Groundhog Day, which seems to be the style of 2021, all things considered. With a premise as solid as that, what could go wrong? Well, dear reader, many things apparently.
The time loop mechanic that is the selling point of Deathloop has diminishing returns in its efficacy. At the front end of the game, uncovering secrets, finding efficient modes of clearing arenas, and acquiring an arsenal of overpowered weapons is gripping, unadulterated fun. Mastery over the game comes quickly to those who've experienced Arkane's previous titles, and the game-feel compared to Dishonored and its sequels is leagues ahead. But Dishonored lives in this game's DNA, down to its lead tracking system, always marked targets, and broken traversal. Deathloop holds your hand at every turn, and even if you try to muffle its obnoxious cries, it will still find a way to ensure you will never feel stuck. Map markers tell you exactly where to go, the aforementioned floating text will always nudge you toward another prompt, and Colt will often talk to himself whenever you come across an item that will definitely be used for something later. These shorthand techniques that ensure the vast majority of players will never be frustrated makes the entire experience of exploration, discovery, and mastery as hollow as the combat. On top of that, the game is structured so rigidly, the chances to have an "a-ha" moment where the player experiments with the game to solve problems in unique ways (not too dissimilar from a myriad of immersive-sim titles) are few and far between, with the final quest of the game being a standard checklist of things you have to do in a set order before finally cutting to black. This lack of agency is in startling contrast to Arkane's previous work where the sandboxes felt like sandboxes and not obstacles on the road to completion.
And while we're talking about sandboxes, let's randomly switch gears to the game's worst feature: asynchronous multiplayer! Yes, the lauded "invasion" feature of Dark Souls fame rears its frustrating head in Deathloop. Players can take on the role of Julianna, Colt's rival, to invade other active players' games and try and cut their loops short. Seems fine on the surface, however the game has no way of balancing these encounters. Oftentimes, low-level Colts will be steamrolled by a high-level Julianna and vice versa. Rarely did another player end my run early, which made each encounter a tedious divergence from what I was more interested in doing - A.K.A. playing the goddamn game.
And now, another divergence: storytelling! Deathloop is a mystery... supposedly. It more or less fits into the type of mystery storytelling that J.J. Abrams popularized with Lost: the mystery box approach A.K.A. the "I-don't-know-we'll-figure-it-out-later" approach or, as I like to call it, the "fuck-around-and-find-out" approach. When you fuck around and find out about the secrets at the heart of Deathloop, you are left disappointed with more half-answers and bigger questions being asked than actual narratively satisfying conclusions being delivered. While the voice-acting and character writing give games like Uncharted or Mass Effect a run for their money, the over-arching narrative of Deathloop is pretty run-of-the-mill and, in my playthrough, very poorly paced. Plot revelations and key moments happen seemingly randomly in the middle of certain quests and the player doesn't get enough time to decompress or absorb any of the information, especially when the loose-science fiction elements remain consistently inconsistent, so literally any plot detail can be waved away as metaphorical or dream-like in its execution. What is Deathloop trying to say with its story? Something generic, really. Doesn't matter. It's not told that well, which is more what I am concerned with.
I'm happy that Arkane is finally getting the recognition it deserves, but I'm not convinced it deserves it for Deathloop. Plenty of other titles have come along in the last few years that handle the time-loop adventure in ways that are unique to games but also unique to the genre as a whole, and I wish Deathloop allowed players to make the adventure their own rather than funneling down a path toward an unsatisfying, derivative story. As with most videogames on the market these days, you can just buy it for half off a few months later and spend your time playing Hades instead, a game that lives up to the tagline, "If at first you don't succeed, die, die, die again."
Arkane, I still love ya, babe, but I know you can do better. Excited for Redfall!
(Please don't let me down!)
3 out of 5.
The perfect game for someone who thought The Forgotten City was too jank and Twelve Minutes was too taboo!
Before I start dissecting Deathloop with my critical scalpel, I'm going to heap a modicum of praise on the aspects of the game that I think let it stand head-and-shoulder with some of its contemporaries in the immersive-sim genre (and to some extent, first-person shooters as a whole). For starters, Deathloop boasts an impeccable stylistic milieu that hasn't been touched upon at all in the game-o-sphere, excepting a handful of James Bond tie-ins and No One Lives Forever. The pop mash-up of disco deco and blacksploitation sci-fi is a wild, unruly direction that pays off in droves, lending each disparate style a uniformity of counter-cultural uniqueness that mixes well with the exaggerated character models and wonky supernatural aesthetics that Arkane perfected in Dishonored. Okay, yes, I am trying to sound smarter than I am here: Deathloop looks and sounds fucking cool. Harsh monochrome animatics, floating text, and gorgeous vistas swirl about in a melting pot of high-concept ideas and top-tier gunplay, and if that were the end of my analysis, you could easily walk away thinking that Deathloop is at the top of my list of artistic endeavors. Unfortunately, I'm being a bit too cheeky to let the game get away with wowing me with pitch perfect production.
Where Deathloop falls short for me is in a multitude of arenas that all happen to add up exponentially. Despite the gunplay feeling responsive and crunchy, the AI refuses to give you a challenge, making the player's victories over the armies of faceless goons an unearned, easily repeatable (scratch that, mandatorily repeatable) hinderance once you've mastered the basics on the core mechanics. Which I have indeed neglected to mention up till this point! Deathloop is, as the title suggests, a time travel game where you the player as Colt the gunslinger must complete a series of assassinations in the span of a single day lest that day be reset and you the player (as Colt the gunslinger) along with it, carrying vital information that may or may not help you complete a loop successfully. If you die, you loop. It's your standard "video-game-genre" meets Groundhog Day, which seems to be the style of 2021, all things considered. With a premise as solid as that, what could go wrong? Well, dear reader, many things apparently.
The time loop mechanic that is the selling point of Deathloop has diminishing returns in its efficacy. At the front end of the game, uncovering secrets, finding efficient modes of clearing arenas, and acquiring an arsenal of overpowered weapons is gripping, unadulterated fun. Mastery over the game comes quickly to those who've experienced Arkane's previous titles, and the game-feel compared to Dishonored and its sequels is leagues ahead. But Dishonored lives in this game's DNA, down to its lead tracking system, always marked targets, and broken traversal. Deathloop holds your hand at every turn, and even if you try to muffle its obnoxious cries, it will still find a way to ensure you will never feel stuck. Map markers tell you exactly where to go, the aforementioned floating text will always nudge you toward another prompt, and Colt will often talk to himself whenever you come across an item that will definitely be used for something later. These shorthand techniques that ensure the vast majority of players will never be frustrated makes the entire experience of exploration, discovery, and mastery as hollow as the combat. On top of that, the game is structured so rigidly, the chances to have an "a-ha" moment where the player experiments with the game to solve problems in unique ways (not too dissimilar from a myriad of immersive-sim titles) are few and far between, with the final quest of the game being a standard checklist of things you have to do in a set order before finally cutting to black. This lack of agency is in startling contrast to Arkane's previous work where the sandboxes felt like sandboxes and not obstacles on the road to completion.
And while we're talking about sandboxes, let's randomly switch gears to the game's worst feature: asynchronous multiplayer! Yes, the lauded "invasion" feature of Dark Souls fame rears its frustrating head in Deathloop. Players can take on the role of Julianna, Colt's rival, to invade other active players' games and try and cut their loops short. Seems fine on the surface, however the game has no way of balancing these encounters. Oftentimes, low-level Colts will be steamrolled by a high-level Julianna and vice versa. Rarely did another player end my run early, which made each encounter a tedious divergence from what I was more interested in doing - A.K.A. playing the goddamn game.
And now, another divergence: storytelling! Deathloop is a mystery... supposedly. It more or less fits into the type of mystery storytelling that J.J. Abrams popularized with Lost: the mystery box approach A.K.A. the "I-don't-know-we'll-figure-it-out-later" approach or, as I like to call it, the "fuck-around-and-find-out" approach. When you fuck around and find out about the secrets at the heart of Deathloop, you are left disappointed with more half-answers and bigger questions being asked than actual narratively satisfying conclusions being delivered. While the voice-acting and character writing give games like Uncharted or Mass Effect a run for their money, the over-arching narrative of Deathloop is pretty run-of-the-mill and, in my playthrough, very poorly paced. Plot revelations and key moments happen seemingly randomly in the middle of certain quests and the player doesn't get enough time to decompress or absorb any of the information, especially when the loose-science fiction elements remain consistently inconsistent, so literally any plot detail can be waved away as metaphorical or dream-like in its execution. What is Deathloop trying to say with its story? Something generic, really. Doesn't matter. It's not told that well, which is more what I am concerned with.
I'm happy that Arkane is finally getting the recognition it deserves, but I'm not convinced it deserves it for Deathloop. Plenty of other titles have come along in the last few years that handle the time-loop adventure in ways that are unique to games but also unique to the genre as a whole, and I wish Deathloop allowed players to make the adventure their own rather than funneling down a path toward an unsatisfying, derivative story. As with most videogames on the market these days, you can just buy it for half off a few months later and spend your time playing Hades instead, a game that lives up to the tagline, "If at first you don't succeed, die, die, die again."
Arkane, I still love ya, babe, but I know you can do better. Excited for Redfall!
(Please don't let me down!)
3 out of 5.
The perfect game for someone who thought The Forgotten City was too jank and Twelve Minutes was too taboo!
YoungNacho990
2 years ago