As many players have already cottoned on to, it isn’t hard to trace the influences of Deathloop, the new game produced by Arkane Studios and released on Tuesday. There are the sandbox assassinations of Hitman; the timeloops of seemingly every modern game. (Gameplay mechanics are difficult to patent, as the developers of Among Us found out last month.) The most welcome of these features, arguably, is the invasion mechanic of the Souls series: jumping into another player’s game and ruining their day; it’s a heavenly feeling.
In Deathloop, you play through the eyes of Colt – who appropriately shares his name with a gun – a whirlwind of gruff, gravelly-voiced machismo. The game opens with Colt straddled by an unknown woman wielding a machete. She rips open his chest in a gurgling spray of blood, killing him. Then Colt wakes up hungover, on a beach, next to icy waves. Like so many game protagonists, Colt has amnesia: he and the player learn who he is simultaneously. But giant shimmering Comic Sans text is floating in his field of vision, reminding him that this isn't the first time he’s done this, so that helps.
Colt, it emerges, is stuck on the island of Blackreef, a once military base situated on a time loop. It used to be the focus of experiments by something called the AEON program; now a group of “eternalists” do the only sensible thing people who live out the same day eternally can do: they party; many of the enemies Colt assassinates are drunk. (Yes, it's another time loop game. You can trace this genre back past the rise of roguelikes, past visionary indies such as Outer Wilds and Braid, all the way back to the ‘game over’ screen. It’s certainly good that mainstream games are considering formal questions: all these time loop games could be called death loop; in fact, most games could be called death loop.)
You (Colt) and Juliana, the woman who disembowelled you, are two of eight visionaries – read: bosses, such as a rockstar and an evil game designer – leaders of the eternalists. You need to assassinate these visionaries within 24-hours to break the loop; Juliana, as head of security for the island, must stop you, protecting the loop. (She sends Colt taunting messages that radio in on your PS5 controller.)
The key point here is that once you reach a certain point in the story, you can play as Juliana; you can ‘protect the loop’ against human-controlled Colts. It’s here – once the developers solve some of the issues with lag – there’s a bounty of fun to be had.
Before you invade a game, you pick a load of weapons – shotguns; magnums; needle guns – then you’re dropped into an area to kill Colt. You have many tricks up your sleeve in the pursuit of this goal. Transform yourself into one of the computer-controlled eternalists to bamboozle your opponent. Or “shift”, which will be familiar as “blink” to anyone who played the Dishonoured games, to teleport small distances. Blackreef island is an art deco rabbit warren; it encourages you to hide in its nooks and crannies and stalk your opponent.
The invasion mechanic was popularised by the Souls series, beginning with Demons Souls in 2009. In these games, invading players – typically appearing as red phantoms – aim to kill you before you reach an area boss. While a system of chivalry has built up in the Souls series – most famously, bowing before you duel – some do not follow these codes, opting instead for war all against all. You might be on the verge of escaping the poisonous bog, slaying that last giant mosquito, when someone called noobpwner3000 suddenly stabs you in the back with a plus five Moonlight Greatsword.
Invasions, at least superficially, share similarities to the uglier aspects of internet and chan culture, particularly griefing, the term for antisocial behaviour first used in Ultima Online, the 1997 massively multiplayer game.
They're crucially different, though, not least because players can opt-out by unplugging their internet connection. The grief becomes cathartic: a soothing and safe chaos, something akin to a mosh pit; we all want to kill each other, and that’s good and healthy. In the words of Deathloop’s game director, Dinga Bakaba, this kind of online play, featuring “two elements of chaos in a simulated world” (you and your opponent), is an “anecdote generator.” Just as the YouTuber SunlightBlade has chronicled these moments in the Souls series, anecdotes and videos are already appearing, as Bakaba planned. Perversely, chaos brings us closer together. The universe tends towards disorder; stare into Deathloop’s abyss.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
