DEATHLOOP (2021) by Arkane Studios

Deathloop's often an artistic masterpiece that's a lot of fun to play and features a wicked hook. That being said, it's a severely flawed game, and the vast majority of praise I have for the game comes from its higher level philosophy and design and not necessarily in its execution.

The game is an artistic powerhouse. It looks phenomenal due to the incredibly talented artists at work on developing this game. Its sense of style is really unmatched by most other contemporary games. Its color palettes, its character designs, its setting, and its music are all phenomenally good and work to craft a really unique feel for the game. The fact that it looks so good is really impactful, because Void Engine is—there's really no other way to put this—a god-awful garbage heap of an engine on PC. The game frequently chugs in certain environments, and huge frame drops of double digits are overwhelmingly common. This is even more unforgivable considering all of these problems were present in Dishonored 2 when it released back five years ago. Most damningly, Deathloop isn't even that technically pretty, so there's even less excuse for such huge, arbitrary drops in performance. Luckily for Arkane, though, the art at Deathloop's core is more than good enough to carry the experience along.

The game is also quite fun to play. I was surprised to find out how close it plays to Dishonored 2. Many of the powers are simply carry-overs from Dishonored 2, and that's not a bad thing. The player is pushed to use them in a more wide-open fashion in Deathloop than they ever were in the Dishonored games, and it works exceptionally. The shooting is also much tighter than it was in the Dishonored games. Further, the core gameplay loop of replaying levels to gain more infusion points to improve abilities and equipment in order to better replay levels is really compelling and addictive, and Arkane's level design supports repeated playthroughs of the same area—at least, for a time.

The problem is that so much of this game seems to lack cohesion, and playing it for an extended period of time begins to feel disjointed. The world, to me, feels remarkably flimsy, which is a criticism I'm really surprised to be making considering how utterly realistic and lived-in Arkane's previous worlds have felt—particularly Dunwall. Blackreef in Deathloop feels like a set of multiplayer levels. They're designed fantastically for gameplay and they're a joy to play through and explore, but nothing in the game actually felt like a real, lived-in place. I never had the experience of poking through an apartment or a building and wondering how these people lived like I did so frequently in Dishonored, and that really damaged the experience in Deathloop for me. I didn't care about the setting or the lore because none of it felt real or genuine, and thus I never lost myself in this game like I did in some of Arkane's previous efforts. I was never really immersed and was always consciously aware that I was playing a video game. I lacked the transcendental experience I often have with some of my favorite video games, and a lot of Deathloop—despite being fun—felt dry and meaningless to play.

Feeding into this great flaw is the fact that almost all of the story content the player will experience is drip-fed through text items which are picked up in the world. The game does not pause as you read, so often the player finds themselves skimming very quickly through such text, barely paying attention in case they are detected by enemy NPCs patrolling the area. This quickly turned into a huge problem, because I was very rarely grasping where I was meant to be headed, or why, even, I was heading there. Several times I would be tasked with assassinating one of the game's primary enemies without having any idea who they are, what they were doing, or why they were doing it. The game does an exceptionally poor job relaying important plot- and character-critical information to the player, which leads you to simply following the marker on your screen and killing everything in your way. The only effort it shows in developing its characters is between Colt and Julianna, and the effort pays off as they're both the only people in the entire game who feel human. The rest are dry, boring, lifeless NPCs, despite some great voice performances. Cherami Leigh as Fia is a particular stand-out, but they're all really great.

The experience of playing DEATHLOOP, in one image.

Pacing is also an issue. Deathloop is the most blatantly offensive "Sorry, Mario! Your princess is in another castle!" game I have played in literal generations. The way this game artificially stretches out its quest lines is absolutely shameless and infuriating. There were several instances in which the player proceeds to the next step in a given questline, only for the game to throw a locked door or a literal wall in your way with a note attached to it, saying something like "whoops! You've got to come here in at another time of day to proceed in this quest!" Great, so I just spent this time period in a completely wasted manner, only for you to tell me in the most gamey way possible that I can't do this right now, and have to wait until the next day to proceed. This kind of thing grew frustrating very quickly, and my joy in replaying areas to explore further or increase my own power quickly turned to frustration with the tedium of the way the game structures its quest design. The quests are given far too many fetch-quest-caliber objectives and end up being stretched out far too long. This, again, feeds into the feeling gaminess that the best games do a great job of hiding from the player. I eventually went from having trouble keeping a grasp of the game's quests due to the poor way in which it relays its storytelling, to simply not caring, because so much of it felt flimsy and meaningless when I did grasp it, which is a real shame considering some of the character designs are so good, and the voice cast bringing them to life are all exceptional, particularly the game's two leads. There's a real missed opportunity to create some memorable characters here, because the player will end up simply not caring since it's too much of a chore to really become invested in them in the first place.

My issues with the way the game imparts its story and designs its quests won't be a problem for everyone. If you're looking for a rip-roaring time in a combat arena where you can play in a fast-paced manner and kill everything in sight using a variety of weapons and powers, all while being surrounded by exceptional art and level design, while great music plays, then you're likely going to love Deathloop. But if you're looking for a more cerebral experience where you can explore, learn about the world you're in, and piece together things for yourself as you proceed—like you did in a game like Dishonored or Prey—you're probably going to have a mediocre, up-and-down time with Deathloop, as I did. When it's firing on all cylinders it's a joy to play, but I never felt I was truly immersed in its world and its characters, and those are by far the most important reasons why I typically play single player games. So for someone like me, I would not recommend Deathloop. It's an ambitious game made by people who clearly care a whole lot about their medium, but it ended up being a bit too tedious and gamey for my tastes, in addition to running very poorly on PC.

I don't really regret the purchase because I'm happy to fund Arkane as they keep trying creative, ambitious stuff like this, but I sure hope they do it on a different engine next time, and I hope they put more emphasis into executing on delivering a more cohesive, genuine world and narrative to suit such great style and characters in the future.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 19.6 hours