There's no world of assassination here.
Speaking to Stevivor, Arkane Lyon’s Dinga Bakaba explained that even though some of Deathloop‘s targets appear in different zones and can be killed at any time, there was only one such way to line them all up for the perfect run.
“We wanted to create a puzzle, more than we wanted to create a toy,” Bakaba said.
“We wanted to launch the player on this impossible mission, there’s four time periods, there’s eight visionaries and you can be in once place at one time. It’s impossible. Then we wanted you to try and find a way to make the impossible possible.”
While Deathloop’s rich sandbox on the island may seem the perfect place for players to experiment in their quest, there will be just one “golden loop” that will let Colt arrive at the true ending of the game – partly to ensure the game didn’t get too complex.
“Our take on that is that this was a system that should have worked, and the fact that there is one flaw, one pin in the haystack, was the approach,” he said.
“Overall it’s also something that is important when making a time loop game, which we found quite early, is that you have to manage you scope because those things explode. All of our games explode – it was the case with the Dishonored games, it was the case with Prey, they explode in complexity.
“I think that the only reason this project was able to survive the preproduction phase is because we did set those rules and never deviated. Four periods, eight targets, one way to finish.”
Just what will that ending look like? We’ll have to wait and see when Deathloop launches on PS5 and PC September 14. Check out our preview here.
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