Format PC, PS5
Developer Arkane Lyon
Publisher Bethesda Softworks
Origin France
Release 2021
Everything started with a party. Before Colt and Julianna, before multiplayer, before even the concept of a time loop, game director Dinga Bakaba tells us, the initial seed of Deathloop was simply this: “The northern setting – you know, this small, isolated island, with harsh nature – and the contrast with this big, lawless party. That was there from the start. This big, lawless party, everyone’s wearing masks, and it’s sinister. Everyone’s having fun, but you’re not. You’re the butt of the joke.” It sounds like the stuff of nightmares from which you can’t wait to awaken, and it doesn’t exactly suggest the game Deathloop would become. Things start to become a little clearer, though, as Bakaba recalls other aspects that arrived in time for the initial proposal. “Making it somehow connected to Dishonored – that was already part of it,” he says – aconnection that is buried deep in the final release, requiring some excavation by players. While Arkane didn’t want to entirely abandon the world it had spent the best part of a decade building, though, it was keen to chart new territory in other ways.
“Exploring different ways to play an immersive sim was part of that pitch as well,” Bakaba says. Following the departure of studio founder and president Raphaël Colantonio in 2017, this was a transitional time for Arkane. “And the good thing is, we had our publisher Bethesda – and especially Todd Vaughn, VP of publishing – who basically told us, ‘If there is ever a time to experiment and to try things, to make the right decision about where
