How Deathloop broke itself
A Chaotic & Random Thought #1
Near the end of its story, Deathloop pulls a twist on a character, trying to redefine the experience. Here’s why I think it falls flat.
A quick bit of context
Developed by Arkane Lyon and published by Bethesda Software in 2021 on PS5, PC and then in 2022 on XBox Series, Deathloop is a first-person shooter.
The player is Colt, an amnesic man mysteriously trapped on an island, itself subjected to a time loop which resets every day. To escape, he has to take down 8 targets - the 6 Visionaries - across the island before the end of a day and the begining of a new loop. Each part of the island can be visited during different time of day when new tings will be available. Throughout the game, the player will be able to find and keep guns and powers despite the loop reset and thus become stronger and better able to face difficulties
There is also Julianna. Julianna is a character who doesn’t want Colt to end the loop. She obviously knows him but won’t tell him how nor why, and is resolutely sour against Colt which makes him theorize that they must have been dating. It is later revealed that she and Colt are the 7th and 8th Visionaries and therefore must die too for the loop to end. They are the only two person knowing that the same day is repeating itself again and again. In solo mode, she will invade a level the player is currently in, block the exit doors until they hack an antenna to unlock them, and more importantly, Julianna will hunt and try to kill Colt, sending him back to the beginning of the day. In multiplayer mode, Julianna is played by a player willing to invade someone’s game and hunt their version of Colt.
The unbroken cycle
Julianna’s cycle of invasion was very important to my experience because Deathloop was not a game of experimentation to me, I’ve never felt the need to try new ways, weapons or powers after the first couple of tries because I quickly felt comfortable with the build I had and most of all, I had a favored path in each level, one I knew was “safe” from start to end and then back again to leave the place. Deathloop uses a couple of tricks to make you deviate from that, but as everything in the game, you get used to it and go back to your routine.
This play style (which is hard to deduce if it was intended by the game and its very own concept or if that was specific to me) made Deathloop repetitive very fast. The game can be tough and I had my secured ways I knew by heart, taking any risks wasn’t something I’d consider. Deathloop was a game of habits.
Enters Julianna.
As previously stated, Julianna can invade a level, block the exit until you’ve found and hacked an antenna, all while she’s hunting you. These hunts and the antennas disrupted my way of playing the game, I had to leave my precious path and face the unknown: the rest of the level and more enemies.
At first I hated it because Julianna coming to a level meant I was sure to die, and then, like the rest of the game, as I gained my favorite powers and weapons, as I learnt where each antena was in each level, Deathloop quickly became a game of habits again. It is not a game of experimentation and trials, but a game of redoing the same thing again and again.
Start a loop, Julianna has something to say to Colt through the walkie-talkie, I do a first level I know by heart, do some specific action to prepare the next level, and kill a target and exit, Julianna has something to say — perhaps a reaction to something I did, then I do a second level I know by heart, do some specific action for the next level, kill a target and exit, Julianna, as usual, as some witty banter to tell, I play a third level, Julianna invades me, I die or kill her, and so on. Habits.
(And to be fair, I enjoyed that. Deathloop was a game to have a quick pass with whenever I needed to vent off thanks to these routines I had developed and the fast paced gameplay it allowed)
Breaking the habit
With that in mind, let’s move to the narrative.
The stories of the island, the characters and such are kind of “static” because everything is repeating itself and the game is not introducing variations on it. A target will always be at his HQ during the morning and be absent during the afternoon. This allows two things: the first is to mess with the regular flow of time and change a situation by doing a specific action during a level like messing with fireworks to remotely kill a target during the evening without having to be there or having two characters move to another location like the party and kill three birds with one stone. Things Colt will have to do each loop, or else, they will stick to their static nature and usual behaviour. Colt, and the player, are the disruption. The other thing is it enables side story bits like reading a paper or listening to two ennemies or an audio log and dive a bit deeper into who the people are or what it is to live here, what a target is doing at noon or why they refuse to move; things you can ignore if you like.
I am mentioning this because it is important: the story has a twist in the end which broke my immersion and left me with a bitter taste afterward. And because I want to be crystal clear that this might be an issue on my end. I may have misinterpreted things or perhaps reading every side document and listening to every audio log would’ve provided clues to the true nature of a character way earlier… One could argue that it is alright for a player to explore the side content and better understand the main story, but not if reading one specific item is the only way to guess a twist is coming or defusing the innuendos.
Colt assumed Julianna was a former lover, that this is the reason she knows him so much, the reason behind some flirty comments of hers, that something important must have driven them away — as a player, I assumed the same as soon as Colt verbalized it — but no. Julianna is Colt’s daughter.
Julianna did not confirm Colt’s initial guess, but she did not deny it either. In fact, she never really weighs onto this and was deliberately written to be ambiguous. The incestuous shade it projects on their previous interactions threw me off, and it is a good thing that Colt stopped right there and now any flirtatious comment, and was disguested by what he assumed. So, the banter, the closeness, all of that, was a trap. Sure, Julianna wanted make Colt suffer to punish him, but more than that, I could hear the developers - or whoever wanted this twist - screaming “got’cha”!
But did they?
Yes, they did.
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But that’s where they lost me.
This twist happened near the end of my game, I’d say I was 85% done if not more. Which means that my relationship with Julianna was 85% her hunting me through levels and me trying to defend myself and escape. Past some point, more than just countering, I was even able to anticipate where she would be, and track her down and attack her first.
Arkane wanted me to see Julianna as more than an enemy, they wanted me to care about her, especially during its final scene which I’ll go to in a minute.
But they failed. Lover or daughter, Julianna was an enemy during 85% of the game AND the twist doesn’t prevent her from invading again, even in solo mode. Deathloop is saying “look, she’s your daughter and she wants to talk to you now” while she is still actively trying to put me down! Was I supposed to consider Julianna as two sperate entities: the narrative one and the invader one?
The answer is yes. Because if you think this through long enough, the whole structure crumbles. Julianna can invade you multiple times during a loop and you can kill her every time, but it won’t count as a Visionnary’s death. Colt is dying a lot during Deathloop, but it doesn’t count as a Visionnary’s death either. In fact, you could kill the 6 targets, a Julianna who invaded you and then kill yourself, it wouldn’t mean the end of the loop. Because there is a narrative Julianna and she’s different than the gameplay one. Those “invaders” are alternate versions of Julianna, or past versions of her if you like, Colt can even meet some of his own alternate self during the game or has to kill all versions of a Visionnary just to be sure he got the “present” one. These past Juliannas invade your game and try to kill you, this one, the actual present-day one, is tired of that and wants something else. But it is only when you have met the requirements that the story progress and that Julianna invites you to meet her. And then, you’ll have to jump on a plane after having kill your targets to go to her and end things. And because Julianna is talking to you through the walkie-talkie, can comment on what you’ve done, can invade your game, and eventually is inviting you to meet her, I started to see her as just one entity. Let’s add that contrary to Colt, alternate Juliannas all look the same, they have no physical variations; whereas Colt’s hair, jacket or tattoos will differ .The game is a puzzle and there is only one way to finish it. Sure you can explore a level or kill a target the way you want, but you’ll have to do it in one specific order to make it work. Julianna is the one signaling you when everything is in the right place.
During its final moment, Colt finally faces Julianna. She offers two solutions, and there’s a third available:
- put down my gun and start a father/daughter relationship with her in the loop, this is the one thing she wants
- shoot her, kill yourself and escape the loop — the main goal we’ve had all the way up here
- shoot her and start a new loop, which is just maintaining the loop andd keep doing the same routine
Now being here, as a player, there’s no dilemma.
The father/daughter thing was unexpected and, and this is very subjective, but I did not care about that — my relation with Julianna was one of a former lover turned enemy until now, not of a parent and their child. It’s also stated that Colt, before loosing his memory, was dedicated to take Julianna out of the loop and bring her back to a world of consequences for her own good.
Starting a new loop felt inconsequential because it was the same as the rest of the game and I was almost sure that whatever my choice here I could play again without having to start from scratch; so it would really be just an added layer on narrative here.
Now, killing Julianna to escape the loop. Shooting her, which was 100% of my interactions with her as a player and character to escape the loop, the main goal I was given when I started and which was stated again and again through the loops… It felt, to me, the more cohesive and rewarding ending — especially since I knew that even this time like some many previously, she wouldn’t actually die. It was the only option that felt like a conclusion and I wanted to finish the game. The only downside Julianna has to oppose is that she won’t forgive me for breaking the loop and might try to kill me as revenge. But Colt’s goal is to leave, we know we want to escape the loop and face a world with consequences, we know Colt wanted to free Julianna, and let’s be honest, it is the end of the game, I won’t be there to see her not forgiving Colt.
In my opinion, there was no dilemma.
If things had stayed the same, Julianna being just “a former partner”, I would also have done that choice of killing her. The twist added a layer of narrative complexity which falls flat to me because it was unnecessary regarding to the scope of the game and what it says and does so far, and almost dishonest because the game is trying to manipulate me, with no subtlety since it is the end, into caring for a new situation that does not really change anything. As I mentioned, Julianna keeps hunting Colt and most of the game was spent seeing her as a romantic partner. I understood Julianna’s pain, but I couldn’t be moved by the rest of her argumentary. The loop means to kill or be killed again and again as a player, it is hard to see it as a positive place to bond with a character I barely knew, and whose death won’t be definitive.
In a game which comforted me in not taking any more risks than necessary once I liked a weapon or a path, once I knew which action would trigger which reaction, I wasn’t prepared for the rug to be taken under my feet and I was defiant. So, I pressed the trigger.
It’s a bit gruesome because the characters are facing each other in a standoff, I press the trigger, Julianna dies, then I kill myself by jumping off a platform and the loop is finally broken: the same day is going to start again but this time there’ll be a tomorrow. My reward is a short cutscene of Colt waking up to a new day, Julianna is almost ready to fire at him but then just leaves, pissed off by the decision to break the loop. It is kinda sad, and that I understand even though I would’ve liked something longer or centered around Colt since it was supposed to be such a big thing. The whole twist has no relevance in the cutscene, I’m deprived of any closure concerning these two. The developers went into a bittersweet ending instead, and I get that. The extended ending recently deployed shows some characters going about their lives and possibly regaining their memory, a song is playing during this cutscene, some characters then seem to join Colt into heading somewhere else— or Deathloop 2? Still no sign of Julianna.
A short aside
Once you’ve watched an ending cutscene, you’re provided with the choice to start the game at the beginning or go back to where you were before that final scene, so I did the other two choices.
Killing her and starting a new day within the loop is really like the usual flow of the game, so there’s not a lot to mention here. Putting down the gun, now is more interesting; afterall it is what Julianna wanted. And so, at the dawn of the same day, they start to plan some activities together and bond but I will see nothing of it. It was cute to see Colt and Julianna trying to father/daughter again, and I was kinda happy that there was this option for them. But I know I wouldn’t have picked it the first time, it feels unsatisfying as a player.
In conclusion
That’s it for this inhinged thought about how Deathloop was a comfortable game after the few trials of each level, until it tried to trick me with its narrative, and how, to me, it didn’t work.
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These thoughts are my own and hold no value compared to the work of the people who made a game. I am aware that suggesting the slightest modification to a game is easy to write but often very much more complicated to do during development — and that’s why each suggestion could spawn a new game project on itself. I do not pretend these chaotic and random thoughts are good, so take everything with a grain of salt.
