Bond meets Tarantino in a time loop the years most mysterious game arrives

First revealed in 2019, Deathloop is a game that players have been eagerly anticipating for years. But even as it hit store shelves today, surprisingly little had been revealed about how the stylish time manipulation murder puzzle works.

And that’s by design, according to game director Dinga Bakaba of French Developer Arkane, the cult favourite studio behind so-called immersive simulation games including Dishonored and Prey.

Julianna stalks Colt trhrough the game, and plays a very interesting role in multiplayer.

Players know some supernatural powers from those games return here, that they play as a 1960s badass named Colt and are hunted by an assassin named Julianna across an endlessly repeating day. But the team was wary of showing too much. When Colt wakes up on the Antarctic island of Blackreef with no memory at the start of the game, they wanted players to be with him.

“We really wanted to make an experience where you were piecing things together, and you share a little bit of Colt’s confusion in the beginning,” Mr Bakaba said.

“So you can then go past that and feel powerful, become the master of this time loop.”

What becomes quickly apparent is that things don’t work exactly as you might expect in a time loop video game. You’re not pressured to do things quickly or forced to remember long strings of cause and effect. Colt begins with a primary mission â€" to hunt and kill all eight “Visionaries”, the exceptional people using the time loop for an endless party, in a single day â€" but no idea how to do it.

Colt eventually finds a way to hold on to some equipment and abilities between loops.

What the time loop affords him is the ability to experiment, explore, gain knowledge and power, and then start again with his targets having no idea he’s coming for them. Not coincidentally this is how many gamers already played Arkane’s games; exploring levels and trying tactics again and again, restarting their games when they failed to get the perfect result. Mr Bakaba said Deathloop is designed to codify this into the world of the game, without the jarring experience of constant saving and loading.

“What we wanted was to remove that loading screen and keep you in the action when you fail. You might be going stealthily in a bunker, and then you’re detected and things go sideways, you have to basically recover from the situation. You can’t load a saved game,” he said.

“And what happens in this moment is a lot of what interests us in an immersive sim. When the player is trying to recover from a situation, trying to improvise, that’s when our games shine the most.”

Split into four explorable areas and four times of day, the game allows players to plan each loop depending on the goal they’d like to pursue. While they’ll eventually be able to kill all eight visionaries in a row, the early game is about finding where the secrets and powerful weapons are, growing your assortment of magical abilities, and prodding at the corners of the world to fill your journal with leads and tips.

One favourite power returning from previous games is the ability to link enemies. Then what you do to one affects them all.

“You’re never going back in this investigation, you’re always learning something,” Mr Bakaba said.

“Even if you die after learning something, you still know that thing and you can go to the next step. It’s very hard to be entirely lost if you follow the threads.”

Aesthetically the game is a mix of 60s influences. Art director Sébastien Mitton said the team had a very clear vision for the trailers and promotional material: James Bond meets Tarantino. But in the actual game things go further.

“You’ll see all the references, from TV shows from the 60s like The Avengers, to movies like the one I always like to talk about which is Point Plank; Lee Marvin’s really mad and he wants revenge,” he said.

“We thought that was really interesting this clash between all these movies and books that give this game a certain style. It’s all the 60s, that’s the colour we wanted to bring to it through the characters, the environments, and how people how the characters think and feel”.

As for Julianna â€" the only other person on the island who retains memories between loops, and who shows up constantly to assassinate Colt â€"she plays a very interesting role in the game’s multiplayer. Mr Bakaba said the team wanted a way to play “quick hit Deathloop”, where you’re free to mess with the systems unencumbered by wider objectives. They came up with something unique: a secondary mode where players take on the role of Julianna and invade other players’ games.

“You just click, and you’re in someone’s game. You can hurt them, place traps, stalk them, scare them. Just walk around in the environment. It’s something very immediate,” Mr Bakaba said.

The fight is always to Colt’s advantage, but if you die as Julianna you can at least feel good that a player somewhere in the world got the benefit of looting the sweet weapons and abilities you chose to equip yourself with.

“You’re going after someone more powerful than you, who has a goal, trying to be smarter or more skilled or just have fun with them,” Mr Bakaba said.

“But why not help them? Nothing prevents you from helping them get the Visionaries. It’s a very freeform experience, not a competitive mode. It’s the story generator, we like to say.”

Deathloop is out now on PlayStation 5 and PC.

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Tim Biggs is the editor of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald technology sections.Connect via Twitter or email.

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