Arkane’s next FPS game, Deathloop, looks absolutely fantastic. His new murder litter box looks like Dishonored meets Hitman, and that’s certainly not an accident. It’s done by the Dishonored developers, of course, but Arkane now says that they are bringing “some” of the supernatural abilities that you will remember to Deathloop. If you thought you had noticed some familiar skills in the trailers so far, you are not wrong.
“As much as we wanted to do something very original with this game, we also wanted some familiarity,” said game director Dinga Bakaba in an interview with IGN. “We decided to bring back some of the powers that we have in the Dishonored series. I think it is something that will make players feel at home.”
One you have probably seen is Blink, which allows you to teleport a short distance. In almost every Deathloop trailer so far, Colt uses it to appear behind unsuspecting enemies or gain a height advantage by climbing buildings.
As we have seen, your main objective in Deathloop is to kill eight targets, the Visionaries, in a single day. Failing to do this in time (or dying) will reset the loop. The challenge is to figure out how to do this on time, manipulating your targets and expanding your own skills.
Arkane explains that Deathloop’s greatest abilities come from rare objects called “blocks” that many of the game’s Visionary targets possess. Grabbing these plates will give Colt his skill. A Visionary has the Kinesis ability that allows him to launch people through the air. You can see Colt doing much of the same in yesterday’s new Dishonored trailer.
Bakaba did not reveal exactly what other skills we will see, whether borrowed from Dishonored or not. For my money, though, it certainly looks like Domino’s ability to unite enemies so that they die simultaneously.
Interestingly, Bakaba also mentions that there are indeed 1 right answer to break the bond. “To align them there is only one solution, so in reality, the game is a gigantic puzzle that you have to solve and complete this puzzle,” he says. Even if there is only one proper order to kill all targets, you can still choose from a wide range of ways to take action using environmental hazards and your many abilities.
I don’t know about all of you, but “a solution” seems like a challenge to me.
Graham says the new trailer has it fully on board and I’m of the same opinion. It looks very stylish and yes, I can’t get this song out of my head either.
Deathloop will be released on May 21 on Steam. It will also be on PS5.