Deathloop is one fantastic game that you should play right now, especially so if you find immersive sims hard to get into. The time-looping action FPS by Arkane Lyon have made the many qualities of what you expect from an im-sim more palatable for a general audience. And no, it’s not Dishonored with guns.
That said, during the development process, the developers did bring in all of the melee combat mechanics from the Dishonored series, but it was later scrapped for a more simplified melee system. It only has the machete slashes and a very satisfying kick button.
According to game director Dinga Bakaba, speaking to Noclip, the online lag that came from the addition of online invasions was an issue that caused melee combat to be mostly scrapped.
“In the beginning, you could defend with the machete and parry and block,” Bakaba said. “But as soon as we added multiplayer, something went wrong.
“The client (the invader) has a delay over the host (the invaded) which you’re not feeling when you have hit scan bullets.”
There is technology that can reduce the latency of hit-scan weapons, i.e. guns, Bakaba explained. But the way the melee combat works, straight out of Dishonored, does not feel as good when you add another player in.
“Blocking was okay, but parrying, timed parries were problematic. And the worst part is, yes you can accept it, but… there was a different (parry) timing with NPCs, a different timing [for] Colt (parrying attacks) to Julianna and again a different timing [for] Julianna parrying Colt.”
Interestingly, to explain the inconsistent lag in online melee combat, Bakaba brought up the Dark Souls series, which have online invasions and a game series primarily involving melee combat.
In Dark Souls, the parry timing and lag between fighting the monsters versus other players are also inconsistent, Bakaba explained. But the way the game is designed, most players can naturally accept that specific quirk, but not for Deathloop.
“We know (the difference of parry timing in Dark Souls) exists, but we accept it. In Deathloop, it was hard to accept it. Like, very, very hard. Especially when people were used to the snappy ‘shningg!’ of Dishonored.”
“So then we removed the timed parry, and it was only block. And that was boring as hell because suddenly I can turtle,” Bakaba further explained, followed by him referencing the bit in Indiana Jones where a gun was brought to a sword fight, which the Noclip video perfectly showed the right clip of.
“So we said f*** defence, …replace defence with the kick,” Bakaba continued. “Like, a big kick that makes you go ‘oof!’.
“And if you were to trade hits, you would accept it as a player. Like it’s not weird. Like, ‘yeah, I kicked but it was too late because the machete was on me, I get it’. And if it was soon enough, …we can stun you for a very short time like we did with (the parry).
“And immediately people accepted it much better in play tests.”
The almighty kick is a satisfying move on its own, but it’s interesting that it was really not a deliberate attempt to bring back a bit of Dark Messiah of Might And Magic (which Arkane released in 2006) but rather a solution to a problem introduced from multiplayer.
This is probably why Deathloop is missing a lot of walled spikes and a way to make floors slippery, which could have been fantastic additions to make use of the kick and relive the fun bits of Dark Messiah.
If anything, a lot of the changes and streamlining of several immersive sim qualities that have been fundamental in previous Arkane games could just be due to the need to make it work with a multiplayer mode.
But judging from the critical reception, the removal of some of the things you would normally expect from a Dishonored or Prey has been generally for the better.
Deathloop is out now for the PS5 and PC (Steam). You can find our review of Deathloop here.