TIME OF YOUR LIFE

With DEATHLOOP, Arkane is rewriting what an immersive sim can be

- Phil Savage

NEED TO KNOW

WHAT IS IT? A stealth shooter set in a time loop. Think Dishonored meets Outer Wilds.

EXPECT TO PAY £50

DEVELOPER Arkane Studios

PUBLISHER Bethesda Softworks

REVIEWED ON RTX 3080Ti, 32GB RAM, Ryzen 7 3700X

MULTIPLAYER Yes

LINK bethesda.net/en/ game/deathloop

Arkane Studios is calling me out. It knows how I played Dishonored 2 – quick-loading away any mistake in pursuit of a perfect stealth playthrough. And given that almost 30% of Steam players have the achievement for finishing a mission without being spotted, I suspect I’m not alone. Despite having a suite of tools, we ignored them in favour of the most OP button on our keyboard: F9. With Deathloop, quicksave is gone.

Deathloop is all about what happens when things don’t go to plan; about panic and improvisation; about learning from a mistake, and taking those lessons forward. Trapped in a time loop, it doesn’t matter if you botch your way through combat encounter after combat encounter – it doesn’t even matter if you die and get kicked back to the beginning of the day. All that matters is that, in doing so, you gained some information that will help you the next time around.