Wait, Didn't Arkane Already Make Deathloop?
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- Опубліковано 20 тра 2024
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I got a strange sense of déjà vu playing Deathloop, and not just because the game features a time loop. In this video, I share my personal experience with the game, in a design-focused game review.
=== Before you watch ===
Content warning: Scenes of a violent nature
Spoiler warning: I talk about the main campaigns of Deathloop and Prey: Mooncrash, but don’t give away any story spoilers.
=== Sources and Resources ===
- Sources
[1] Mooncrash: Resetting the Immersive Simulation | GDC Vault (Free Access)
www.gdcvault.com/play/1025732...
[2] Spelunky | Boss Fight Books
bossfightbooks.com/products/s...
=== Chapters ===
00:00 - Intro
02:42 - Part 1: Roll of the Dice
06:39 - Part 2: Power Creep
11:04 - Part 3: Under Pressure
13:38 - Part 4: Split Personality
16:37 - Part 5: Playing with Yourself
19:33 - Part 6: Ending It
21:08 - Part 7: Déjà Vu
25:03 - Credits
=== Games Shown ===
Deathloop (2021)
Prey: Mooncrash (2018)
Immortals Fenyx Rising (2020)
Bowser's Fury (2021)
Darkest Dungeon (2016)
Risk of Rain (2013)
Dead Cells (2018)
Enter the Gungeon (2016)
Hades (2020)
Prey (2017)
Hitman 2 (2018)
Demon's Souls (2020)
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (2014)
Rogue Legacy (2013)
Spelunky (2012)
The Swindle (2015)
FTL: Faster Than Light (2012)
Don't Starve (2013)
Returnal (2021)
XCOM 2 (2016)
Dishonored 2 (2016)
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (2017)
Dishonored (2012)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)
=== Credits ===
Elusive Language - Ealot, provided by Epidemic Sound - www.epidemicsound.com/referra... (Referral Link)
Music from Prey: Mooncrash OST, by Mick Gordon et al
Music from Deathloop OST, by Tom Salta
=== Subtitles ===
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/en-gb/videos/wmfPYW... - Ігри
Okay, so Redfall was a bust. But in 2023, Nintendo made the most ambitious immersive sim yet in Tears of the Kingdom. Here's how they designed the game's amazing Ultrahand - ua-cam.com/video/pvOqTunOQB8/v-deo.html
Oh my God, I didn't even think of totk as an immersive sim, but you're right 😅
To be honest, I can't help but feel that Deathloop was just afraid to challenge the player, and that most decisions were made because the developers were just worried most people would find this too hard. And while Mooncrash is indeed great, the truth is that (as far as I know) most players just found it too complex, and while it isn't necessarily an issue for a small DLC, it's another story for a AAA game.
That sounds to me like executives were worried, not devs
@@ScoffMathews it's the same reason why Portal 2 had to tone down its difficulty. At the end of the day, the goal of your game is to reach as many people as possible. Even if you make a niche game catering small audience, you still need to make sure everyone understand the game
@@KevinJDildonik It’s much better now, for what that’s worth. I played it a couple months after everyone else did, and the AI was actually perfectly fine, and the only bugs I encountered were visual (and also quite funny)
I honestly can't believe that devs still have this sort of concern after the massive success of Souls and Soulslikes. I understand that a lot of people don't enjoy that difficulty, but why would they continue doing this after the feedback for almost every AAA game out there was "too handholdy"?
@@trevorx7872 people can handle combat difficulty, but a lot of people just don't like to think. also Deathloop has FPS gamers in mind for target audience not puzzle gamers.
LOL at the redfall mention. Turned out to be something else entirely
I had thought that Deathloop could really do with a Dishonored-esque chaos system, but instead of based on how much killing you do, it's based on how much infused gear you bring into a loop. So if you bring a full arsenal of super powered guns and chunky powers, the world has basically gone to shit.
A refreshing idea that.
I am looking forward to this inevitable mod.
@@gogauze Deathloop has mod support already?
Call it like the paradox system or something, where the world gets fucked by you bringing super powerful shit to other loops, hey maybe make it only trigger after a death, like the enemies have scavenged your powerful gear
Oh I really like that. Like the loop knows what version of which item does and doesn't belong at that point in time, and the more you mess with that, the more unstable it becomes? Maybe stuff you'd need goes missing from a particular spot, making it impossible to do specific things, or characters become erratic and break their behavior patterns, making it hard for you to get shit done. There's another reply suggesting that the enemies should get your powerful stuff, like they scavenge your items when you die, but that would break the coherence of the reset. So maybe if you bring more than a given number of infused weapons into a loop, as many of your most powerful items as exceed that limit become common for all hostile npcs, so like you're allowed 3 weapons and if you bring 4, your most powerful weapon becomes standard for every enemy that should have a weaker version of that item, like the timeline is trying to fix itself by making it so you having that powerful of an item that early in the day is actually consistent with the resources available.
That bit at the end about Redfall is kinda depressing in retrospect.
20:25 this is EXACTLY what bothered me the most about Deathloop. I did the same thing: started planning in my head how I was gonna do all the kills in one day, feeling all clever and proud of myself-and then they just flat-out told me the answer. Deflating.
I finished the Game yesterday and did not notice that. I planned it in My head with my notes and I just ignored the prompts.
Was it in a cutscene or something?
I don't remember the Game telling me the solution
@@MrRogordo literally just click the timestamp for the video and that explains it. It straight up tells you through an animatic cutscene and then gives you a questlog telling you exactly what to do to get your targets in the right places and how to kill them there.
It begs the question of why they put so many elements of timeloop puzzle games in if they didn't want to draw on the strengths of that genre. Timeloop puzzle games have many weaknesses, but their best features are that information is your ammunition and you need to learn enough to build a solution for yourself, and that you then have to execute on a solution that the game designers will have made very hard. They dismiss both by not only putting the pieces of the puzzle together for you and refusing to let you assemble them any other way, but also making executing the one acceptable solution nit actually hard. They shackled themselves to all the weaknesses of the timeloop puzzle genre and then didn't bother taking advantage of its strengths.
God, yes. I had already worked most of it out, then the game came in and told me the solution. I was beyond annoyed, if you're going to present me with a puzzle, don't solve it for me!
@@YaBoiBigNutz yeah, I saw the video but I did not get that animation. I don't recall it
My biggest gripe with deathloop was how it resolves its perfect loop in only one way. I don’t feel creative or that I had achieved the best way through, it just happens once you grind through some annoyingly repetitive visits to a power station. I’d like that Groundhog Day feeling of knowing the loop well enough to be able to think through and design my own perfect loop instead of it being impossible unless you do it the way the game wants.
It's a huge let-down. Why let the game be open and freeform if you actually want players to solve it exactly one way? Even most timeloop puzzle games respect the player enough to let them find functional workarounds.
Show me someone who complains about grinding through the power station, and I'll show you someone who didn't find all six generators.
I think Groundhog day game like that presents a huge question as to exactly how to create that feeling.
There's inherent challenge to it, as by the Phil learns his lesson in Groundhog day (humbleness, kindness), he essentially is a demigod.
When you are a demigod in a video game it usually means not much can challenge you. This when players get bored or create their own challenge no other could dream of undertaking. I've been engineering cool situations amd challenge for myself in Dishonored, after I learned levels as a back of my hand and I've seen at least a few channels doing on a pro level.
These kind of challenges in timeloop, something only a veritable master of timeloop could conceive of and try to attempt may require some seriously good simulation, flexible writing and dialogue to account for all the craziness player can throw into it and give player enough freedom to experiment.
Such challenges might have not much to do with the main plot and largely self-imposed and consequenceless, but if there would be unique rewards for certain rare or nigh impossible sequences of events and end states that would be absolutely awesome. If developers themselves wouldn't know whether it's achievable...
In a way, the infinitely rising difficulty of timeloop in Groundhog day raises from an ambition of trying to get a best possible ending for the most number of characters in a given day, just trying to be the best person, while being tempered by the fact, that some things cannot be prevented or undone... In a video game it can be exactly that. Ambition. Trying to get the best possible ending without being handed one or told which is the one.
That would be Timeloop game legends...
Is it possible?
Mmm, here’s the thing: this critique only makes sense if you view Deathloop as a singleplayer game with an optional invasion mode. I would argue that it isn’t; rather, it is a *multiplayer* game that includes a courtesy bot mode.
Playing as Julianna, you’re gonna be making use of the map and loop knowledge you accrue playing as Colt to predict what the Colt you’re invading is going to do. Having there be multiple possible final loops erases this advantage for Julianna, which also makes for a less engaging opponent on Colt’s end.
@@Squalidarity Ah yes, if only the -customer- player brought more value into the -product they bought- game then -it would be good- they would see how -much effort the devs put in- good it is...
I feel like Deathloop was fun up until I "Optimised the fun out of it" upon infusing the silenced SMG. Every encounter was now done with maximum unbroken stealth, one-tap headshotting every identical enemy the same way and only using other weapons or powers just to shake things up a bit. Really seems like they should have had harsher limits on what you can keep or use!
I think the optimisation plays up to the power fantasy, though. It's a real Groundhog Day style omnipotence.
But there's a peak where that drops off, as eventually between that and the weapons, you really just can't die, especially with the revive.
I adored my first playthrough, but by the end of the second I felt like I learned everything, and that the game was effectively over.
I think the real problem is the totality of the weapon/power saving system. By the time the game is done, you can have every single gun, power and upgrade maxed out. I don't have to specialize, sacrifice or adapt because I always have the perfect setup for the plan I want to execute.
I love that optimization point, where I can play basically perfectly with good preparation. Probably why Hitman is a favorite of mine.
Same with dishonored. That game is boring if you use the best strategy, but fun if you don't care too much about doing the best you can and just get cool kills
I felt a bit the same with the silenced SMG but I also adored the skill ceiling of getting as good and quick with it as possible as I discovered the story aspects. Also stealth killing every Juliana until one day she pulled the same move on me!
And those effortless kills would instead feel super satisfying if they're hard to come by
Deathloop desperately needs a "Prepare to Dieloop" difficulty mode. They really could add these restrictions, randomzed item and enemy placements and pressure to an alternate mode.
Yeah and even take away the step by step solution that the game adds. "Give me hard mode"
@@NickHunter can't you turn the step by step solutions off. I can remember seeing such a setting
@@zekiz774 If you can no-one who's reviewed it that I've seen has mentioned it. Would be very interested in the answer to that question though as I'd be interested in jumping in if I can take the handrails away
The thing I found to be a glaring omission in Deathloop is over in Hitman... the map starts in the same state but it's a complex system where lots of things are going on, each of which is usually quite simple, but they connect to other things. As soon as you interact with it, things start changing because you've introduced a change that can ripple outward through the map, and into other parts of that loop in a more organic fashion. If you kill person X and minute Y, their absence changes event Z.
Almost nothing impacts anything beyond their immediate surroundings without being specifically scripted to do so, mostly as part of the scripted single route that results in breaking the loop. The game could have been improved signifanctly by just introducing more sets of action-chains that could be put together to achieve the end in different ways and, of course, dead ends as some things that /could/ help you get to the end don't work together, so you don't have the game just telling you precisely what to do once you've found a thing.
Agreed Hitman has the overall larger puzzle aspect down better. When you start you don't know anything, maybe not exactly who the targets are. You might not know how to access them, what options you have, how to take both out how to do both without attention. But as you learn what causes different events to happen you can ultimately and eventually complete the map
I've been playing a lot of Sifu since it's release. and one thing I really like about it, is while you can permanently unlock skills. They don't really make you stronger, so much as more versatile. Even when you have access to everything you still hit and get hit just as hard as before. Just now with skills that can mix up your fights and give you more control of the situation. It remains entirely skills based.
Sifu is a great example of the player skill and game difficulty matching. Getting past level 2 is a huge wall for a lot of people then it becomes how skilled you can get to level 5 within a decent age because 3 and 4 you should have higher skills but the game can throw a lot at you. You get shortcuts but the last boss is still a challenge even with what you gain.
Oh dear, that ending....poor Arkane, lol
What i love is that Arkane is willing to take risks with their games.
Deathloop (as far as i know) didnt go over as well as many expected. And while I'm sure thats a bit of a kick in the nads for the devs who worked on it, Id rather them take risks and have a few flops, instead of follow the same repetitive system just because it sells.
I myself wasnt a big fan of Moon Crash but i absolutely adore Prey as a whole. I don't think ive played any other immersive sim nearly as many times and with as many different playstyles.
Well it's an interesting case since Deathloop ended up getting multiple 10/10's and some game of the year awards. During the first few weeks it was pretty beloved, sans some technical errors, but similar to the game itself, the sheen wore off for a lot of people.
@@thesequalizers4474 I myself havent played it. The premise of the game overall didnt appeal to me, though i did find it neat. I just havent heard much about it since it released but i also dont pay alot of attention to things outside my interest.
I feel like it also suffered from too much marketing at some points. It was a running meme before the release that every game award / presentation / direct thingy, if it was possible you were getting a DeathLoop trailer which revealed almost nothing new. By the end it had almost killed any hype I might have in the first place for it.
@@thesequalizers4474 Number and awards don't really mean anything though
Prey was so good finished it last week
personally i find time pressure mechanics work best when they're positive feedback only. give the player a positive incentive to be quick, (like an optional perk for completing in under a certain amount of time or before a specific thing happens) rather than a penalty/punishment for being slow (difficulty spikes when i'm already struggling/confused/lost, or 'times up you died'). much less likely to suck the fun out of the game.
Dead Cells has a good mechanic like this. There are special doors between each level that are marked "2 minutes", "8 minutes", etc. If you finish the previous level before the timer reaches that threshold, you're rewarded with upgrade currency and an item that's a couple tiers beyond your own. But you can take your time, cheese every enemy, and still finish the game with a great build. This is why I've become readdicted to it 😁
@@GreebusBleeb The Binding of Isaac does as well, but it's not (just) free stuff, there's always an optional boss fight attached. Or in the case of the first one it's a boss rush against a random selection of bosses.
If I recall, an old video on X-COM talks about this exact topic if you want to see Mark talk about this a bit more.
I think time pressure can also work well if you schedule multiple chronological events to plan your run around,
like overhearing opportunities in Hitman, basically all of Outer Wilds, or the different objectives in Dead Rising.
Negative pressure mechanics do have a positive side when they are well designed. They work like a mercy rule, ending your run early if it's going so badly so that you can start again now, instead of after however many minutes or even hours of frustration knowing you can't catch up - many players of roguelikes never reset, even when they are on a doomed run that can't possibly be fixed. FTL, for example, gives you a very challenging enemy to fight, so that if the run really is going very badly you will lose, but if you do know what you're doing you can prove it by winning and carrying on.
These are difficult to design, because it has to kick in only once a player is not just doing poorly but basically out of the running, and it has to kill them quickly and efficiently but still offer an out if they have an obscure plan that turns out to be extremely effective. Get it wrong, and either it never comes up and was wasted time, kicks in too early and ends viable runs, or worst of all doesn't finish players off and just makes bad situations even worse.
The main "problem" with Deathloop was that it took some of the most interesting elements of a niche hardcore genre (roguelites) and adapted them for a more casual AAA audience. For the average AAA gamer (as seen in many of the comments) it was an original take for a FPS. For fans of the genres Deathloop borrows from, however, it felt watered down.
I personally agree with many of Mark's comments but I also understand this game had to appeal to the more casual players. There are a few things I would've changed, though:
- I would've allowed you to keep power slabs and trinkets between loops, but not weapons. Early in the game I killed Julianna and got a super upgraded silenced SMG which I used for the rest of the game because it was super OP. If you reset weapons each loop, you'd still get a progression system with the powers and trinkets but you'd also push players to experiment with their weapon builds.
- I would've had Julianna (the NPC, not invading players) fill the levels with extra obstacles (perhaps randomly, as they did with Mooncrash) as you advance in your investigation. This would increase the difficulty a little bit in the late game, making that final loop a lot more interesting.
- I would've added at least a couple of alternative ways of doing the final loop and not spelled out exactly how to do it. Keep the UI that shows you everything you've learned, but let players put the final pieces together themselves, make them feel clever.
- I would've changed the ending(s). This wasn't covered in the video but Deathloop has the most anticlimactic ending I've seen in years
Or if they want to borrow heavy elements from timeloop puzzle games, at least make it a good timeloop puzzle game instead of a bad one. The whole point of that genre is that you have to not only get enough information to form a solution yourself, you then have the carefully-crafted challenge of actually executing that solution. Here, you don't. Not only does it flat out tell you what the solution is when you get the pieces of it, not only is there only one acceptable solution, but it's not even challenging to execute. If executing the solution was hard at least it would have made all the time players spend amassing power relevant.
wait...roguelike genre is niche?! i thought it was pretty casual
it would be better if everytime you keep weapon between loop, juliana also have that weapon or something equivalent your strongest weapon, so the more you OP, she also get more OP
The endings ugh!!!!
So, Deathloop is like a big Hitman level, except it doesn't even let you plan your final route yourself... That's just sad.
7:48 the other danger with this sort of progression is creating a feeling that it's not actually possible to complete a run until you've progressed enough in that meta progression, and that kills a lot of the excitement of this sort of game and turns it into a grind for numbers
I think that not enough attention is paid to the fact that Deathloop and Prey are made by entirely different teams of developers separated by 1000's of miles, a language barrier, and an Atlantic Ocean. We have a better look at how different two teams can be while sharing a company title than how well the half of Arkane that made Prey learns from itself between games.
I think this has a lot to do with it. Same reason you only see minor innovation between Assassin Creed games as well. 2 totally diff teams that are working in parallel.
I find sad reading this today, after redfall
@@angelguzman477 agreed and the commenters point doesn’t excuse the poorly thought out choices whether or not they were the same team. it just shows they didn’t put in the same amount of effort in when making the foundation of the game
@@doormatlad9890 What? Did we read the same comment?
As much as the rogue-like elements could add interesting things to the game, I feel like the mood they're trying to accomplish for Deathloop doesn't mix well with those. It felt like Arkane was going for the sensation of gaining mastery through repetition and memory. The one-up the main character has over most of his opponents is he remembers loops, making the in-game character have powers like the player in similar games - it's like justifying the main character learning how to do ridiculous kills in Hitman when there's no way he could have known that certain stuff would happen. Dramatic changes clash with the feel and story elements Arkane was setting up.
I like to think about it as a metaphor. Colt is literally the embodiment of the player. We all play those immersive sims like the way Colt does, remembering stuff and having knowledge and advantage over the simulation.
I think Deathloop is far more interesting as a piece of media than pure gameplay-wise experience. Everything has a deeper meaning.
@@MrRogordo completely agree with the media take. Deathloop’s gameplay is, tbh, very lackluster. But something about the game as a whole is captivating-it really feels like it’s game-ness is its weakest part
I completely agree. I don't really like rogue-likes, but I really likes DeathLoop. It's really fun to me becoming a unstable force. Being stealthy, but loud and quick at the same time.
It was fun for me as it is. Maybe a little too easy at the later stages, but I wouldn't change it for any random in the game
If they were going for the feeling of mastery through repetition and memory then why they didn't let the players make their own plan for the final loop?
Making the final loop just another follow the marker and do as you told type of mission, literally shows that developers don't trust that the player remembered or mastered anything after replaying the levels so many times.
It feels like the whole game prepares you for the ultimate test and in the end, just solves it for you, it's fun story-wise and would work well in a movie, watching how Colt figures things out after many tries, but in a game, it's a complete failure.
There are no rouge-like elements in deathloop
Nice to see mooncrash get some love. What a great game. While your points are valid about the game design and difficulty, I suspect deathloop diverged from mooncrash for two reasons: One, mooncrash is too complex for casual audiences and didn't really have the wide appeal they needed to move units and, two, many players enjoy a difficulty curve that ends with them as an unstoppable killing machine, as it provides a sense of satisfaction even if it's arguably artificial. Arkane knows what they are doing so I can only assume that they made an intentional decision to make a game that would have the same kind of wide appeal and big sales as something like dishonored.
I mean in defense of Deathloop, by the way you describe it, it sounds like it actually does justice to the time loop idea. I mean in a true time loop no changes would occur, the same things would happen at the same times over and over again. Now in something like Moon Crash, you can get away with changes in the '"loop" as it's a simulation so things change to gauge the response and decisions of the participant.
It's incredibly fun, just has much lower replay value. It's more like a linear story game dressed up than a proper roguelike, and once you realize that you'll have a way better time with it.
SkillUp shares your viewpoint.
Deathloop's loop system is more simplistic where Prey's Mooncrash has much broader design ideas executed.
I wonder if this happened because of budgetary and release date issues. Since I never played Mooncrash, I enjoyed Deathloop a lot.
Came here to say this. This sort of raises the question of how many outlets give Deathloop a GOTY label, meanwhile these outlets never understood that they've picked the right studio, but the wrong game. Also how many people don't care about repetition and the lack of challenge. This is one of the reason why i started to hate open-world games. An open-world game lets you do whatever you want, but you most likely will do the same thing, without trying anything else, since the game is not forcing you to play differently.
Different Arkane studios made deathloop and mooncrash so thats probably a big reason.
I never even played Mooncrash but it was obvious that the design was superior, at least on paper. Says a lot about the professional critics.
Mooncrash also barely sold compared to Deathloop’s pretty big success, so even if it’s supposedly superior it doesn’t seem like something people actually enjoy playing.
I think my favorite example of a IS making you play outside of your comfort zone, at least to me, it's in Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider, where you HAVE to kill people to complete side missions, I love doing these games without killing, but it gets repetitive, so when I found out that you could kill without problems but you still had to be undetected, the game opened up to me.
Shout out to the mission where you have to kill EVERY Overseer on the map, has to be one of my favorite levels in an IS in a while
What does IS stand for?
@@blaznpookie immersive sim
My experience with the Dishonored series was colored heavily by who I played as. In Dishonored 1&2, I approached every problem in a "how do I get through this causing as little damage as possible" because I was playing as Corvo or Emily and they are interested in keeping their empire prosperous. They are a bodyguard and an empress, not assassins. In Death of the Outsider, I avoided killing unnecessarily, but didn't shy away from violence when it brought advantages. Billie is seeking redemption, but she is still a trained assassin who lived her life in the criminal underworld.
Thanks a bunch for this comparison! I remember watching that GDC talk and it really seems similar. I would love to see more games like this personally
I love that I can watch pretty much any video you put out regardless if I actually care about what specifically is being covered, you're presentation, voice, and pace is just sooo good.
You should really do an updated video on RE4, there's so much smart shit going on with that game
Great video GMTK! I want to put some of my thoughts on the design decisions taken on Deathloop by Arkane Lyon here in the comments.
Arkane Lyon and Arkane Austin are two seperate studios who haven't worked together since the first Dishonored came out. People think that Arkane is a single studio but that was before the Bethesda aquisition, now both of the studios work on seperate projects at the same time while not sharing staff or resources. Deathloop was in pre production (in Lyon) when the base game of Prey 2017 was released (from Arkane Austin), Dinga Bakaba (creative director on Deathloop) hadn't even played Mooncrash until he finished Deathloop ( I still don't think he has finished it, I think he tweeted about his progress in Mooncrash a few months ago). So they most certainly were not thinking about making Mooncrash into a whole game as Deathloop was in production even before Austin started working on Mooncrash.
Now, why is Deathloop the way it is? These are the reasons why most of those design decisions were taken:
It's both the loop and the invasions that lead to the game resulting in being not as deep and rich in some "immersive sim" elements of it. There had to be only 4 maps to build familiarity and so that the player wouldn't get overwhelmed (and that's the optimal number of them to make the player learn them and navigate easily (and these also had to be small enough not to make the fights during invasions too long)). Enemies have to vanish because dead bodies and too much ragdolls are heavy on bandwidth. The abundance of menus before the mission starts is due to the need to balance invasions for both players (essentially, you have to stick to your build and therefore allow your opponent to learn your build and adapt to it). Eternalists are wearing masks probably because when invading as Julianna, they'd look very stupid when the connection is bad. And they all are very colorful to make them look distinct in the environment. Eternalists also can't leave certain areas and therefore wouldn't follow you for too long (again, due to the bandwidth budget). And there's essentially one enemy type outside their classification by their weapons or abilities because of the limitations of the bandwidth (through visionaries have special AIs made for their powers).
And I'm sure that's not all. Knowing how much they had to keep in mind while trying to preserve Arkane's DNA, I think it's a miracle that the game is what it is.
Now, I am not saying Deathloop is better than Mooncrash. I just wanted to put my thoughts out here 😅
@Comment Commenter That's exactly what they were going for, this game isn't supposed to be challenging with the NPCs. Colt has been here in the loop for who knows how long. Then the memory wipe at the start of the game gives players a clean slate to learn about the loop and the visionaries with Colt.
This game was made to be speedrun, the challenge should be Juliana not the NPCs who Colt has seen doing the same shit thousands of times. Try challenging yourself if you want a challenge, the game promotes creative uses of slabs. Try killing the visionaries some other way than usual, use degrading trinkets to show off your skills, complete the loop without being seen or without using guns/hackamajig/powers. Make creative builds to kill other players in interesting ways. No worries if you fail you'll experience the same day again and again you can do all of the stuff you weren't successful in doing previously in this run.
your comment is interesting but could you put a link to the sources of some limitation you talked about ?
@@aaryan4323 I was about to write your second paragraph myself, was surprised to see minimal mention that these are two different teams and how that set the games on different paths.
The premise of the video is hurt when you consider this isn't one developer moving in a single direction, but two moving in separate ones. I remember Bakaba saying he gave up on Mooncrash fairly early in as he was uninterested in the roguelike design, which only solidifies the idea that were never meant to follow the same path.
Comparing Deathloop to Mooncrash creates a scenario where you play Deathloop like you would Mooncrash, which is what creates the frustrations seen in the video. If you are reaching the point where you feel like you've seen everything and are overpowered, you are ready to end the game, which is what Deathloop is pushing you towards, not to keep playing until the game overstays its welcome.
I agree with how you see Deathloop too. It's somewhat of a tradeoff between deliberation and fluidity. Mooncrash is a refinement of the deliberate and patient gameplay of Dishonored and even more deliberate Prey, while Deathloop pulls away from this to become a more fluid game, if less cerebral per se. It's what makes it such a well-suited speedrun game as you mention and approaching it as the careful decision-making game Prey ends up with a focus on the things Arkane Lyon purposefully *did not* focus on instead of the things it did.
The video does give an interesting way to look at the games, but being comfortable with one playstyle and blitzing through the game with it without friction isn't something to be fixed, it's what the game wants you to do. Planning and controlling the game is what Arkane Lyon *didn't* like about Dishonored, so it's odd to expect them to double down on that.
Anyway, I appreciate your comment for getting the ball rolling on my own thoughts on the games!
@@-nomi.- Thanks! I hoped GMTK would see my comment and understand why things are the way they are but whatever!
If somebody wants to make their game more challenging they can just not perform the infusion process and play it like a normal roguelike until they finish the game. Arkane gave you that option as well.
The whole game is made around the invasion mechanic so half the things he was critiquing wouldn't even work in the game even if the devs implemented it. People's bandwidth cannot handle much stress that's why most of the things are designed the way they are, and the best thing is that it doesn't feel half-baked. The game feels like a proper $60 game.
@@kizuma4269 The devs were talking about all of the Deathloop design choices in a Q/A on Arkane's official discord server.
I feel like Outer Wilds did the whole time loop thing almost perfectly.
That game didn't click for me at all due to mechanics
Amen
It did, but it cleverly limits its scope to really perfect the few elements and mechanics it does have. Many of this isn't transferable into something like Moon Crash/Deathloop.
@@TheCaliforniaHPouter wilds is a game you have to endure for the first part, at least for me. But once you get enough info to pick your curiosity then you engage with the game as you should.
@@Puerco-Potter I think its a game a lot of people have to endure if they are looking for a "game"
I think outer wilds is much more of a model than a playground.
there are some puzzles or paths that require you to know how its made, but theres not a lot you can do to play with them.
theres no bad guys to shoot or upgrades to find, and all the transport you need is provided at the start of the game.
for people like me it works great, because I just enjoy testing and learning like that, but other people want a more exciting application of learned skills
I feel like making a standalone big-ish budget roguelike is a fool's errand. It's a niche genre, and if you try to sand off the edges for better mass appeal you lose a lot of what creates its niche appeal.
I don't think it's that a AAA version of a roguelike couldn't be done, but that indie games in all genres have a tendency to be better than their big budget AAA equivalent. The only time that's not the case is with giant action adventure or open world games, and that's only because indie doesn't really tend to do the former, and you need the giant dev team for the latter.
And then Left 4 Dead 2 basically pulled it off anyway lmao
@@ToxicBastard I don't think L4D is really a roguelike, nor is it what I'd call traditional AAA, it was basically a zombie mod in the source engine.
@@stpirate89 It's AAA alright, it's a Valve game and one if their most famous, everyone just ascts like they're some indie company for some reason.
And it has all the hallmarks of a loop based game; extreme replay value, varying item and map layouts, no two runs the same, nothing unlocked permanently, it just also has checkpoints.
@@ToxicBastard Valve are a big company, but not all of them work on one thing at a time, and L4D did start as basically a mod, more like a AA game than full blown AAA. I think it's replayability is down to its tight design. Yes the items and zombies are different from run to run, but they're not exactly full random either. Nothing unlocked permanently is a throwback to when games could just be greatly designed and released, and didn't rely on shit grind for an inflatted sense of worth. I don't remember there being any things that could change about the map layout from game to game either, but I might just be misremembering that.
I won't debate that Deathloop is a little too hand-holdy at times and wish it included a full Roguelike mode where shit gets fudged around and you gotta adjust per mission. But I don't think the game is bad because it didn't. I had a ton of fun with it and it's just simply not a roguelike which is a shame but oh well.
Considering they were going for an easier game I think they should have taken a page out of rogue-lights and added some more positive experiences.
"A little too hand-holdy" is an understatement. I quickly noticed that reading the notes ruins the experience so I decide to not look at them anymore, but they still decided to GIVE YOU THE WHOLE ANSWER to the puzzle on how to kill the targets. Honestly the notes and them giving the puzzle away completely ruined the experience for me.
I was really grateful to have my hand held at the start as I personally found it a little overwhelming but once you grasp the concept it could have let go and let me discover a bit more, I still thoroughly enjoyed the game. I've played Prey but never tried the DLC so that's my next challenge.
Great video as always Mark. It's about time I disagreed with one of your premises, however. I bounced off of Prey really hard, I did not enjoy the combat in that one very much at all, and so having combat be the main focus in Deathloop (and the gunplay in particular is easily the best-feeling gunplay out of any Arkane game) meant I enjoyed the flow of gameplay so much more in Deathloop than I did in Prey. I also feel that you are perhaps examining Deathloop too much in the lens of a roguelite. It borrows elements from the roguelite genre, certainly, however if you consider the game more like a Dishonored game (except where you get to skip about the levels in any permutation you like, up until the final sequence) then the structure and design decisions make more sense I think.
I appreciated your perspective however, and always enjoy your videos regardless :)
Completely agree on Deathloop. I had fun with it, if you'd asked me halfway through I'd have said it was awesome. But the repetitiveness combined with how overpowered you get meant that by the end I was losing interest. And the final loop itself falls so flat it left me with a bit of a sour taste. A little more freedom and variety, or less residuum to keep your gear would've gone a long way.
Yep. I think it might be the worst Arkane game, and the time loop was a lie. It feels good and looks good but it’s just not an improvement on their other immersive sims
I feel the opposite, maybe because I think the game is making a commentary on how we as players engage. I think this is Arkane's best game to date.
(VERY MINOR SPOILERS)
We get OP not only because the systems allow us to, but because we repeat the same actions over and over and over again. Julianna constantly taunts us saying that we do the same shit always. They are literally critiquing us for playing the same genres and the same games until we master them. Is almost like the devs are saying that they are tired of doing the same systems just to watch us react in the same way each time
I'd love to talk more about it but I feel that i'd have to adress more of the story and dialogue
@@MrRogordo bro it’s just a worse “dishonored” but with a loop so they would ironically, be critiquing themselves
@@Overqualification yes they are and it's part of what makes it better for me.
EDIT (SPOILERS)
The game provides meta commentary in every possible level, from players to devs to the whole games market. That's why we see one version of Cole going in a rampage because he doesn't know what to do to use the RAK. The devs are literally telling themselves that no matter what they do, they don't know how to make their games Big comercial successes. And their own answer? "You already know the code", they already know that their games are awesome.
I get that gameplay-wise, it is not as polished or as engaging as Dishonored or Prey, but I think that outside of the gameplay, Deathloop it's a much better experience than those.
Also, fatigue might play a role, this is like their 6th game with the same engine, perspective and formula. It's so damn good that they can experiment with it adding roguelike elements and even though some won't like it, no one can say it's a Bad game
@@MrRogordo They're the ones putting the same formulaic polished seen-it-a-thousand-times systems in their games so if that was really how they felt I'd feel like smacking them and pointing them back at the foundations they're standing on from decades ago that did things more interesting than they do them today.
The edit is so good, Mark. I'm impressed with the immersive presentation
Great production quality. But at the same time, I feel like there's more personal agenda and tastes in this video than in the other Mark's works. Maybe it always was like that, I just started to notice it more prominently now. Anyway, to each is his own. Cheers!
Yeah, Redfall really built up upon these mechanics XD
If only he knew how Redfall would turn out.
Really cool video. It's funny though because I had the opposite response to the two games. I love that base game of Prey, it's on my top games list but I never got around to finishing Mooncrash. I've tried a few times but the "pressure" element was a huge turn off for me. Prey had intense levels but once I did the work of clearing out a space I could enjoy and explore at my leisure. I so badly wanted to explore the moon base but I felt like I never had *time* to. I know I could have said eff the time and just let some runs fail to experiment. But something about it felt like that - failing. I never got very far into it. (Though I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more as its own game. It just didn't feel like Prey to me because of the pacing. That may not have been an issue if it was its own thing.) But Deathloop I loved. And it's something I see myself going back to for a loop or two here and there. I can just jump in, have some fun, move on, come back. And in that game failure never really felt like it. I would die and lose whatever progress but I'd be laughing because it was probably some hilarious fight that got me there. I was always having fun even when I wasn't succeeding. But I am also a person with just no interest in Roguelikes. I'm on that graph you have where I am perfectly happy if the game just gets easier over time lol I do get why a lot of Deathloop let people down and I can see how people wanted it to be more. But I really liked that it just doesn't end. It feels like I can just keep playing without either reloading and doing all the work again or doing a NG+ which imo takes all of the fun out of progression. Now I can just loop and experiment however much I want. I just doubt that I will ever go back to Mooncrash just because there is an actual time element.
I really enjoy your videos. You're very knowledgeable and articulate and very much into gaming for different reasons than I am haha which is why I find your perspective interesting.
Yeah I actually enjoy when I can clear out all the enemies in an area and feel safe in exploring.
Same.
It might be worth going back and giving it a second chance. There's some slight time pressure, but I remember it being generous enough that I could explore all the areas across runs. The pacing allows you to be briefly "safe" in the same way that you're briefly "safe" in System Shock 2 after clearing an area, but the floor is never devoid of all threat. You can't just mill around opening every crate and looting every corpse (nor would it benefit you much to do so even in the original Prey) because there's at least a tickle of urgency. It did kick me out of my perfectionist "stealth kill and then collect everything" rut. To me Mooncrash is full of fascinating and skillful development choices, because as the video pointed out it's forcing me through various means to engage with the game in ways I normally wouldn't. And unlike Deathloop once you have the bits to succeed it lets you put together the pieces of the perfect run yourself. It's a very satisfying game.
Nice video, as always. I love both the games and just thought they were trying to do different things with their agency and narrative but I totally understand the frustration with the Roguelite elements vs difficulty curves. Arkane have gathered some knowledge with this latest game and hopefully we'll see some more tweaking and brilliance in the future.
Mark. I cannot tell you how stoked I am for you to have broken Deathloop down this way. I enjoyed Deathloop for what it is, even if it didn’t reach all of the heights of some of Arkane’s previous work. I also haven’t gotten around to Mooncrash yet… somehow I expect those two things are at least partially related.
Thanks for crystallizing the critiques of this game. I enjoy SkillUp’s content on here, and I feel like you did a terrific job at organizing and articulating the specific points between these two games in a way that made me better understand his dislikes of the game.
Thanks for what you do!
SkillUp had the exact same take on this. I loved Dishonored, but never had any desired to play Deathloop. I like time travel-y movies, but I can't get into time loop games at all.
Outer Wilds might change your mind on that
@@AJ-uf4sh I actually own that on my PS but couldn't get into it mechanically. I'll probably have to wait until the next time I have a decent computer so I can try it with my preferred setup for FP games, a keyboard and mouse.
@@atquinn1975 ah fair, I know the game recommends controller but I personally didn't have any trouble with kb/m (I've heard that controller is just more intuitive with the ship controls, but that's it I think), hope that puts you at ease
Thank you, I was likewise thinking to myself "...haven't I seen this video before?"
Since we are on the topic of rogue-likes - I can't wait to see what IO Interactive are going to do with the recently announced Freelance mode for Hitman 3 which is supposed to include many rogue-like elements. I hope it will be interesting enough for you to make a video about it.
I think the biggest thing Deathloop could have done better (and would have fixed at least point #2) is Juliana learning. Juliana is smart; she wouldn't go and steal the LPP at afternoon day after day. It makes sense both lore-wise and gameplay-wise for her to show up more often, reinforce the visionaries locations, even just setting up a trap now and again would be super nice.
ending sentence regarding Redfall, yeah. that was me too :(
When it comes to the diversification on playstyle, I generally agree, but I do think not having a morality system and starting from "scratch " (environment wise, able to choose whatever skills/guns you want before any run) made it much easier to mess around with playstyles than the Dishonored games and I thoroughly enjoyed that improvement. They could have pushed it more, for sure, but I found it an improvement
@Comment Commenter I agree, it's kind of on the player in this case to diversify, but some may argue the game should put some more pressure to do so. I generally played heavily stealthy but enjoyed being able to go through some runs focusing on different playstyles just to have fun with it and see how differently I could approach it
Yeah, there's probably more they could have done to keep players from optimizing the fun out of the game but I really think if you found Deathloop repetitive it has more to do with your lack of imagination than the design of the game. I never did the same mission the same way twice and found myself repeatedly rewarded for experimenting with the game's systems. There's always more than one way to accomplish any given goal and discovering them all and trying out different ideas was immensely rewarding on its own.
Between the fact that you can't kill anyone on the island "for real" and the fact that they're all rich jerkasses anyway, it feels like the setting was designed specifically as an answer to people's complaints with Dishonored's morality system. The lack of manual saves also pushes people out of that save-scumming, MGS-European-Extreme mentality by force.
Moon crash still to this day , one of the greatest dlc ever created.
Yaaay, I love how this also references the previous videos Mark's done on timeloops and feedback loops!
can't say I enjoy being stressed or overwhelmed every waking second as a player, so I gotta say that deathloop was the perfect game for me. I could chill and explore, get familiar with everything, and plan. and then when the time came, everything I learned paid off in one great cacophony of violence. I had the space and the freedom to experiment without the pressure to keep going. sorry it didn't vibe with you, different strokes I guess, man.
to explain a bit, I started out playing deathloop like I played dishonored: carefully, meticulously, and paranoid. but the longer I played, the sloppier I got, and the less I cared about being careful. I was free! I could do crazy, weird, bold things with no worries! nothing mattered and it felt amazing near the end. never had that kind of fun from a game in my life.
@@makkon06 Hard agree. I think the lack of a quicksave/load feature and no Dishonored chaos system helps a loooot with making the gameplay feel so free. No quicksaving means you've got to actually live with your mistakes in real time instead of loading a save and spending 10 seconds waiting in a load screen to try again. No chaos system means that stealth isn't basically forced if you want the good ending (Defenders of the system call it a "different" ending. I don't agree with that, it's pretty notably worse and I can't help but feel like I need the best outcome narratively even if it's less fun) so you can go guns blazing and commit as much murder as you want without feeling punished for it. Plus, loops are short enough so that the "full stealth/no lethal takedowns" achievements feel more like just fun self-imposed challenges than "goddamnit I have to play like this for 10 hours straight" which I really liked.
Lol
@@makkon06 you literally just described the difference between hardcore and casual gaming, no?
@@EpicTkoWko TLDR - i don't like hard games, i enjoy easy games. it's really not deeper than that. the issue is that there's ways to make easy games while still including options for hardcore gamers. As it is, you play how they tell you, holding their hand the entire way to the end.
Oh what a shame with how red fall turned out
I think we don't talk enough about how games like Hades handle the "use different tools on each run" so perfectly by forcing you to pick skill trees as you go, with a limited number of skill trees allowed.
Im glad you did this. Ive been wanting a comparison between the two.
Funnily enough many of the things you say as being improvements over deathloop is what made me bounce off mooncrash.
With deathloop I was able to get to a point where the challenge was to optimize the route and I had a lot more enjoyment out of that than I would have if the progress was constantly being stripped away from me.
Once you know all the areas and workarounds to the changes it can get fun in finding how to advance, but until that time you're just hit with roadblock after roadblock, making the early and mid-game a slog.
It's also why I don't get into most roguelikes, at some point you realize that the ending is being artificially moved away from you and you lose all the fun. (Hades having a huge problem with this imo, but I really like that they added a way to reach the ending easier once I you're tired with the game and just want to finish the story).
I think the power creep should be fought with having a cap on it, and having increasingly difficult areas to access. So once you have your explosive shotgun you don't lose it and have to play with a plonky pistol, you just have to enter harder areas of the game to progress.
And then there's the class system which I just despise for artificially limiting what I can do.
When in deathloop I started out, I was stealthy and caucious hacking every turret and camera I saw, as time went on, and I repeated the same levels over and over again I got more confident and went into more gun-oriented gameplay, then got access to some good powers which let me move even faster with some loops focusing only on advancing the story, some just to get new upgrades that i didn't mind dying, and at a point where I mastered it all I was often just using different weapons and powers to mess with the NPCs and see what else I could do.
And finally once I've beaten the game of course I played as juliana which despite the horrendous lag issues, was the most fun I had with the game as I was able to mess with the other players using the powers.
I got to do a bit of everything over a single playthrough of the game, at each point enojoying the full extent of my abilities and not being forced to use flat out bad weapons and upgrades.
I can't say anything of the sort on mooncrash. Playing as any class I just felt constantly limited by what I couldn't do rather than having the freedom to explore what I could do.
The one thing I definitely agree with you is the last point: The inability to make your own route or figure it out by yourself. I was also massively disappointed when it just flat out told me in which order to do it. I just grabbed all my notes I've been keeping on who does what and where and when, and threw them in the trash.
The order of the final loop should definitely have:
1) Had more than 1 single solution.
2) Had the option to be hidden from the player.
@@aidanleenstra1605 the order of the loop is shown in the game??
For real?
That's a bummer
After opening the RAK I just gathered my notes and figured out how to do it. I did not look at the quest markers because in real life we don't have those and I figures that we were supposed to do it by ourselves
Yeah. They shouldn't be approached as games meant to be played the same way. Arkane Austin wanted to see how they can build on the complexity of the immersive sim by integrating death and repitition. Arkan Lyon wanted to integrate death and repetition to take away complexity.
You dislike good games and good game design and want baby shit.
Your text screens and ingame text implication gone to a whole another level. I am stunned! You have such a great passion for this
One of your best videos. Thank you, very insightful!
Mooncrash is so underappriciated (like the main game really) and the video reminded me to replay it. Thanks!
One thing I actually despise in games is time limits haha! I play games to relax, to fulfil a fantasy, to escape. And when I play a game that happens to be very challenging, like Bloodborne or, more recently Sifu, I like to be able to take my time, learn its systems, practice, maybe get some better gear, etc. Plus, as someone who likes to complete things before moving forward, time limits force me out of a level against my will. I understand their implementation from a design perspective, but it's just not something I like, personally. I like to feel in control when I'm playing, which is why too many narrative choices in games will also drive me nuts lol. Nonetheless, great video as usual Mark!
Haven't gotten around to Deathloop yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Mooncrash. Pulling off that 5-escape run was quite satisfying.
Without a doubt, the best channel on UA-cam. So original, insightful and flawlessly executed. Thank you Mark
Death loop was one of the rare titles in a while that most my gaming friends coalesced around on release. Almost all of us came to the conclusion that mooncrash was the more satisfying experience overall for many of the reasons explored in this video. I personally had no idea they were done by separate teams.
Mark, I recommend Heat Signature, it has everything you're asking for and more.
Heat Signature is so damn rad
@@sergeen2314 I have over 200 hours in it mostly from playing the daily challenge, that game mode addresses most of the issues Mark had with Deathloop, seriously wish he'd analyze it on the channel one day.
@@THExRISER he knows of it, he's mentioned it at least three times in the last five years
@@taliyeth I do remember vaguely seeing it but thought maybe it was another game design channel.
Still, would love to see him or another channel analyze it's gameloop because it nails every aspect of emergent gameplay an immersive sim fan might look for.
It sadly went under the radar.
Why a lot of these design choices are made were to appeal to a wider audience. I've seen a lot of Deathloop critique being in complete opposite directions: one person thought the missions were too easy and hand holding, another person was lost and confused. A Dishonored veteran thought the stealth was laughably easy, a new player struggled at stealth too much. So I believe Arkane made Deathloop to be as fun as possible for both the casual and hardcore player at the same time.
Additionally, while I personally agree with Mooncrash having super clean design, not nearly everyone does. It was a super niche game. Even the main Prey fanbase is divided if it was great, or not appealing at all. I think its fine they changed it up for Deathloop, they're both awesome in different ways.
Submission to two masters will make you trouble for both. "Appealing to a wider audience" is merely marketing-speak for "we want to sell five million copies, not just two million, and we don't care if it drops the maximum enjoyment possible for anyone". People enjoy particular games because it matches their modes of thinking; trying to make a game fit every mode means it necessarily cannot meet any, because of the inherent conflict between too many of those modes. Player A loves linear missions because they're all about the scripted story; Player B loves open worlds because they're free to craft their own; Player C loves the challenge and planning required of permadeath; Player D loves the ability to reload a level ad infinitum with the same team until they get a perfect run. And that's just two of thousands of conflicts. The balance may not tip on all of them for every player, but it will tip somewhere for many, at which point you've sacrificed the quality for just one more zero you didn't actually need.
they did a good job? as evidence by both ends of the spectrum being upset...? what?Just commit to your vision and don't try to please everyone all at once, it's greedy and unrealistic.
Mark's already excellent editing is even better today. Grear video as always!
I feel mixed about the "invasion mechanic", as both "invaded" and "invader". The "invaded" has to play a bait and switch game if he does not want to get the attention of all the enemies in the area (and he doesn't) while the "invader" (potentially) has to search for the "invader" on the whole map or bore themself to death when waiting for the "invaded".
The "invader" should be able to see the "invaded's" vague location and the "invaded" should be able to leave by killing a target or similiar. That could maybe make the encounter more dynamic.
I had some connection and latency issues too, but that might be not the game's fault; I'm not sure.
@Comment Commenter also, knowing points of interests around the map can let you setup ambushes, while knowing vantage points can let you scout the level to see if Colt has been or is anywere. Its all about map knowledge
Invasions absolutely don't need these changes. Colt's last seen location is revealed whenever he is spotted by eternalists. Plus, part of the fun of invading is "tracking" Colt by paying attention to which enemies have died, which machines are hacked etc. As to the second suggestion, Colt isn't required to kill Juliana nor his target to leave, he only has to hack to antenna.
It’s remarkable how good Deathloop manages to be despite its tragically lackluster gameplay. For a mostly open-approach game, its story is consistent and tight; the art in general kept me engaged despite my early recognition that the gameplay just wasn’t what it could have been.
A lot of open games (even some linear ones like Doom) leave me feeling lonely. Take Prey as an example: for the most part Prey is an intensely solo experience, with only a little character-character interaction dispersed across wide swaths of gameplay and soft worldbuilding. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I personally care a lot about character interaction. I finished Deathloop, but I never finished Prey-entirely I think because of this difference. It’s a shame though, because gameplay-wise, Prey has a lot to offer-a lot more than Deathloop to be sure
Wat. I have the exact opposite opinion lol This is fascinating.
The gameplay is the only Part I liked. The story is terrible. It's carried 100% by voice acting. The actual STORY is... nothing. The twist is just one wrinkle but I was so disappointed it didn't go anywhere crazy. No major reveal how your memory reset or any significance to the very first cutscene. Just... happens. The endings are so flat and the climatic final loop is boring too.
I was hoping they'd go nuts with the Loop part of the story. Like... what if you became the Other Colt from rhe start of the game? I'm talking Timesplitters type shit.
What if you started invaded other players game AS COLT.... to kill Juliannas who are hunting Colt earlier in the story.... as in YOU. How dope would that be.
Also the loot on the game is all trash. I was disappointed quite literally 100% of the time I got a new gun or a reward for a puzzle. The obstacle course, the haunted House type button room, the Visionaries.... all the unique guns suck.
They should have ramped up the insanity a bit. Gone a lil Borderlands. Have a gun that can become a turret or one that freezes enemies or shoots karnesis blasts idk something.... interesting.
The only thing that held my interest was the gameplay. And it's basically just Dishonored and dishonored/2 does it all way better.
thank you for this take! it's interesting and i totally get where it comes from.
i love deathloop and i love mooncrash, probably more than original prey, however i feel like both games try to do and be a different things. mooncrash want to be roguelike as you said, while deathloop want to be groundhog loop game with all the repetition > boredom > less cautious > more mistakes. for me, that's why the game are so different even though they are so similar.
oh yeah and one interesting fact - dinga bakaba, creative director of deathloop, said for noclip documentary that he haven't play mooncrash. :)
I love that both Jacob Geller and you put up stuff related to time loop games
I found I was feeling déjà vu for reasons beyond the gameplay. "Rich folks' science experiment/playground gone wrong" is a fine idea, but actually kind of tired within the immersive sim genre, I didn't feel like there was any effort made to establish the antagonists in Deathloop, like they knew we'd already played Prey and Bioshock and would just "get it", they're completely unmemorable despite dealing with them over and over. Visually, it's a similar thing, "gaudy retrofuturism meets Victorian aesthetics in a bleak environment" sounds good, except half of that equation is Prey's schtick and the other half is the original Dishonored's, I know Deathloop's retrofuturism is referencing the 60's and Prey's is more art deco, but in execution they're not that far apart.
In gameplay terms, the abilities, the combat, the stealth, the core bits and pieces haven't really evolved from their implementation in Prey and Dishonored, which, again, would be fine if the timeloop element hadn't been so underbaked, it's not really a game I'd recommend to fans of time mechanics in games, because it just doesn't really deliver that, only the idea of it. To me, Deathloop feels like Arkane did a lot of hacks to make a game that could stand up with their other games but maybe cost less, or at least, once I saw all the recycled ideas and assets (and realised having 99% of your characters wear masks removes the need for a lot of expensive face modelling and animation), I couldn't think of anything else.
Deathloop had some of the funniest dialogue I've seen in a while. The sheer amount of voice recordings they must have done is amazing and the writing- although cringey at times, was hilarious. Just sneak around karl's bay and listen to the NPC's man, it's so good.
This video makes many similar points to the SkillUp review of death loop. Both great vids
Great Video
9:00 I had an even more anticlimactic ending... I got access to the hourglass schematic, learned that spore pods make the moonshark a pushover and figured out that killing the harvesters is both easy and extremely profitable all around the same time, after which I almost immediately just decided to go for the 5 escapes in the same run while simultaneously completing Riley's, Joan's, and Clair's story objective and also unlocking Andrius' story objective. The total run took a few hours, but I only went up to corruption level 2 because that's just how busted the delay_loop.time things are when you can manufacture them, and the only actually challenging moment was when I got a bit greedy and decided to wait for the corruption level to increase so I could kill more stuff and overall get more sim points. After escaping with Riley, who I had saved for last because her escape method is easy and she isn't useful, I was kicked out and got the same cutscene that you probably did saying that I only had one more task, which was the hardest one. The only problem was that the last objective was Andrius' story objective, which is by far the easiest story objective, making this run the second easiest I had done (only being beaten out by the first one, where you just walk to the escape pod).
What a very similar experience we had.
Yeah, Mooncrash was great, but once I figured out that A. You could share gear between characters with the robot companion, and B. You could craft the delay_loop.time items, this big all-5-characters-in-one-go run that was hyped up so much in reviews was a complete joke. Didn't have to make any interesting or difficult decisions, I even had to basically use a set order of characters, and just casually waltzed my way through everything. Highly recommend against using either of those methods unless you're just looking for an easy out.
@@Leap623 what order did you use, after the janitor first and engineer last, it didn't seem to matter what I used next.
Also if you wanted to make it even more of a joke, there is a super easy and reliable way to take out the moon shark, which removes the last bit of threat... Won't point out WHAT it is so that fewer people have the game ruined completely, but holy hell it is stupidly easy. To the point where I felt more threatened by random phantoms than by the shark once I knew about it.
The key concept of roguelikes is not that the map changes "to keep things fresh". It's that EVEN if you lose everything (even the space you played in), nor everything is lost: YOU as a player still remains with the memory of what had happened
I really liked your point about power creep in roguelikes. This made me appreciate Hades' end game difficulty with the pact of punishment, assuring that no matter where you are in your post story progression, you can fight at a reasonably challenging level (or an insanely difficult one if you're just cranking up the heat every time).
One of the most clever mechanics in Mooncrash was how if you bought enough typhon abilities, the typhon gates (which block off certain areas until you kill all the enemies) will now detect you as an alien and stay shut. However, the layout of the moonbase has enough ways to get around these gates that you can do all the exits in one loop, even with everyone who can be maxed out on typhon abilities.
Removing battery power from a sector will disable all its typhon gates, you can take a tram into a sector to avoid its main gate, one character can burrow under the gates, and there are various other shortcuts that you can take with typhon powers. There's also 2 characters that can't become typhon, and they can do a lot of earlier leg work to set up the base for other character's runs. Planning the whole thing out is a really interesting and satisfying exercise.
It's kind of undercut by the fact that all typhon gates can be bypassed by anyone with electric powers or the universally accessible taser gun, and I wish they'd gone in harder on this concept, but if you ignore that, it's a really cool mechanic that makes spending upgrades on typhon powers feel like a genuine downside, unlike the main game where it was just kinda "turrets shoot you and occasionally there's an easy boss that gives you a ton of resources"
I really like the comparative approach!
But yeah in this case like mentioned in the video, even though they're both called Arkane, these are two different studios. Other people have also confirmed this, but I remember someone from Arkane saying the similarities in Mooncrash and Deathloop are just convergence, one game doesn't build on the other. Even though a lot of people (myself included) thought Mooncrash was a less risky way to test their ideas before Deathloop, it wasn't at all.
So yeah, I guess it could be like comparing Deathloop to Outer Wilds 😅 (not that it wouldn't be interesting, but there's no real link between the games)
Unrelated to the video, Im loving the chapters. Would love if you keep making them!
If they make sense for the video, they'll be there!
Was reeeally hoping you'd cover this game
Now I have to go play Mooncrash AND Deathloop before I watch this video. Thank you for the recommendation in Mooncrash that I had honestly forgotten about!
I’ll be honest, I hate the ‘Roll the Dice’ thing. I want to master a space and move as fast as I can through it, by understanding the layout thoroughly. Putting wrenches in the machine of my run would only frustrate me, and feel like my knowledge is only peripherally useful, it’s feels like luck guides how much fun I would be having.
Sifu is the best example of this. I’m absolutely loving it, and it’s because I know where every character is, where the rooms lead, what the environment can give me. The challenge is doing it the best I can.
Is Sifu an acronym, or the full title?
I guess that's really a question of taste. It's either immediate problem solving on the spot, or planning ahead, learning and repeating, both are valuable, I think, but they don't speak to the same people
@@steamtasticvagabond474 full title.
Also, for a channel that yearly talks about accessibility. The final run layout really helps for people with difficulty putting all the parts together and remembering all the elements without having to get a notebook out and jot everything down for +20 hours
@@J_Tevo there is a difference between simplifying puzzles and choices, and making sure no one is disadvantaged for reasons beyond the developer’s control, such as motor control issues or colour blindness
I do feel like a lot of the points that were brought up, especially in the first half of the video, make assumptions about what the games should be that I do not agree with.
Particularly, a lot of them could be boiled down to 'I wish the game was more challenging', and I do not think that Deathloop necessarily requires a sense of challenge to be compelling - as it is, it's a sandbox, a toy that can be easily learned and mastered. And that feeling of mastery is itself a compelling one, of having enough power and foreknowledge that you might as well try cutting up everyone with your melee attack, just because you can. That sense of wholly consequence-less violence, of being above your own actions and the world around you is very central to the theme and mood of the game - the kind of hedonist abandon the time loop represents would be impossible if the game kept constraining you at every turn.
Additionally, I feel like the multi-character concept is not necessarily better, either - the ability to freely choose how you approach problems is one of the most defining features of the immersive sim genre, and Mooncrash's character system takes that away. You're never naturally brought to a point where you can decide to try or not try a certain power or playstyle, you're forced into executing every last one by the premise of the game - it doesn't allow you to build a sense of personality and specialization the way that being presented with all the options, and making the choice to use any one of them of your own volition does. Deathloop takes its own steps in making transitioning between playstyles easier, as the requirements to do so are much smaller than in something like the Dishonored games - the player is free to make that pivot at their own leisure.
I still don't love Deathloop, but your comment helped me understand why some people do.
Yeah, I feel the same as you. I love Deathloop and I understand some of the criticism, but he's just assuming what the game should be (for him to like it more) and not what the game is.
@@MrRogordo
Imagine wanting to like a game
@@DemagogueBibleStudy imagine critiquing a game for what it is (and what the devs promised) and not what you want it to be
@@MrRogordo
Cry about it
Lol, the day I finished Deathloop you release this video haha. I really liked Deathloop, but my two main problems with it were the crazy amount of handholding throughout the game, and also, that there's only one correct way of putting it all together. Beyond that, well, I think it still has some great qualities, though I don't know, I felt something was missing overall... Kudos to the fantastic artistic direction though!
Looking forward to your next dev log
well, Red fall part aged like a milk.
I haven't played Deathloop so I'm hesitant to comment on it, but the way you describe it really makes it sound like Outer Wilds - a game with a rigid time loop where everything happens the exact same way every time, and you're supposed to master the environment like a puzzle to solve the mystery narrative. The kind of game you truly can only play once. If that's the case, then I would specifically love Deathloop *because* it doesn't try to mess with my learning with randomly generated obstacles to arbitrarily "mix things up".
There’s lots of mysteries in deathloop. It’s really cool
This is exactly it. I really loved this game tbh
thx for the loop game talk.
i skipped mooncrash before, seems it will be an interesting that i would enjoy.
I haven't played Prey but enjoyed Deathloop although after watching this I now realize how much better it could have been and a game you could have jumped back into way after completing the main story.
Having the enemies in random places in the run alone would have massively changed the game and made it more challenging. Hearing all the other ideas missed out if only added would have made Deathloop a game that you could revisit again and again.
will definitely be checking out the Prey DLC now thou. Thanks for the good content :)
For the first 20 or so hours i played death-loop wo ever looking at hints or objectives trying to figure out everything by myself.
I only started using objective markers when i got a bit tired of the game and just wanted to finish it because it felt like iv seen it all and was reedy to move on.
I was hunting down every slab upgrade and weapon thou during that time and eliminated every visionary a few times.
Good video. There's a lot to like about this game, but in the end, I never felt any ownership of the progress I made. The game kept telling me I had discovered something or made an important connection, but not once did the game allow me as a player to figure something out before brazenly announcing my newfound deduction as an absolute fact. And written as if in my own words, no less.
Skill Up and his commentary on Death Loop put me on to Prey and Mooncrash just recently as well. Glad I played through them before I shilled out more money for a game that many consider a downgrade on much older games. You expanded on many of Skill Ups ideas on Mooncrash here, solid topic on roguelike fps sim games.
Thank you always for adding subtitles!
Always!
I've just finished Deathloop and do absolutely agree. The 'deathloop' feels like a glorified mission select screen, but with extra steps which make you do the same stuff over and over again. The game's moment to moment gameplay loop is solid, but it lacks behind what Prey (Mooncrash) already offered, like the elemental hazards for example. I enjoyed the setting even though the story does not evolve in any meaningful way throughout the game; it is exatly what you can see at face value. Dishonored 1 was better in that regard due to multiple organic and meaningful choices as well as the "plague system".
Edit: I have to add how good Deathloop's dialogue and performances are.
yea remove the atmospheric storytelling of deathloop and you're left with a very middling game, that lacks the ambitious vision its aesthetic tries to convince you of.
The one thing I appreciate about death loops design of doing the same 4 levels again and again, is that as you play, your gameplay style changes the more confident you get in your map knowledge and skills.
The first few rounds, I was cautiously, stealthfully exploring, because the maps were confusing at first and it was easy to get gunned down. Then in the middle part of the game, I was bombastically shooting everything in sight. By the final loop, I was parkour speedrunning everywhere, assassinating my targets with ease.
The biggest disappointment however was the game pretending you were going to solve this massive puzzle on your own, when in reality it forces you into a handheld follow-the-marker chore list. Sometimes the game spells things out for you way too obviously, and sometimes the game blocks you off at obtuse puzzles I had to look up a guide (the casette puzzle, the dj puzzle) because I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I felt brilliant when I figured out how to activate the horizon doors on my own, and then annoyed when I had to do it all again step by step so that the quest log would update.
I enjoyed deathloop because it was such a lighthearted "simple" game. A power fantasy. But yea, it did get repetitive quickly.
I feel like some of these issues aren't as universal as you make them seem. Take the difficulty and skill problem for example. I like it when roguelikes get easier over time. It gives me a real sense of progression where relying on skill doesn't. If the game relies on skill, I can do a run and perform worse than last time. I'm then left wondering if I've even improved at all. If instead I can unlock something that makes the game easier, then I feel like I'm making progress every run.
while that is a valid point,
rogelike that do that but habe to cramp up the dificulty of later areas beacuse they Expect to your character has gotten stronger (ex roge legacy) feel more like i m trying to Farm to win instead of completing a game with random tools and knowledge
Exactly what I was thinking, but you worded it better than I could have. Great video, but I found myself disagreeing with a lot of his points.
Me too, I enjoy Rogue games more when they get easier over time. I think most of the youtube video game critics sometimes fail to understand that there are no hard rules when it comes to enjoying video games, different people enjoy different things, some people enjoy skill based rouge-likes and some people enjoy rogue-lites with permanent progression, and neither of these two types are right or wrong.
I see it almost the opposite. One of the problems I've encountered with most new rogue-lites is that they are almost impossible to beat on skill alone. Even if you play well, you get to a point where enemies are tuned to be near impossible to kill without amassing enough upgrades. Unlocking the progressive upgrades to make the next run easier makes it feel grindy. Some might point to speedrunners as an example otherwise, but they have already put hundreds of hours into optimising the gameplay and memorising the glitches and number generation to be able to not die on a fresh file.
Evidently its hard to make a balanced roguelike between the players capable skill level of a video game and the progression system that becomes the barrier that all players have to go through to play the game.
The oubliette in Enter the Gungeon is good for that, this hidden area is full of good loot and challenge. It makes the game easier, but it's due to you developing knowledge of the map rather than the character getting stronger.
I also thought of Mooncrash when I played Deathloop! And I was equally disappointed that there was only one way to "break the loop". Still really enjoyed the game, though. It'd be pretty cool to see a sequel that addresses the issues you've brought up on this video!
Part 2, power creep, since you showed Enter the Gungeon, made me realize a lot of these games do something in that vein. I do believe certain enemies only start spawning after your first win, or after x amount of items are unlocked, or whatever the metric it uses is to gauge your progress and how much to throw at you. I haven't played Deathloop, but I do recognize how most of these games with persistent upgrades have some way to make the game respond in kind.
Deathloop made itself my favorite game of all time. Everything about it vibes really well with me. That being said, the points you make are all spot-on. I remember writing out the plan on my phone, then being disappointed it was already spelled out for me. I do wish they had toyed with more "do this at this time so you can do that at that time." Irrespective of its flaws, Deathloop is an amazing game and I recommend you play it if you haven't.
Haha, I did the same - I still have the plan in my notes app
Mooncrash was awesome, i wish the difficulty curve wasn't so extreme, as i got stuck trying to pilot the spaceship, after literally doing everything in the dlc, and i was like what do i do now? XD
23:34 oh yeah i wish we could hear those!, because I can already think of the madness that would spawn from trying to incorporate anything specially with the scope of the game. Sounds like any of these mechanics or things would be just spread on the whole game making it super expensive
I will have to rewatch the roguelike/lite video you made. Dead Cells is my favorite in the genre but it does have some elements of the difficulty scaling and skill issue. However to me at least it seems it did it correctly compared to other games in the genre
Great video! I disagree with pretty much all of your arguments, but you do argue them well and I see your point of view. I'll give mine, because Deathloop is one of my favorite games (bought posters for each of the visionaries which was a very poor financial decisions) and I like talking about the things I enjoy even if nobody reads them.
(Making this comment again with a link I was using as an argument removed to see if that changes anything...)
I haven't finished Mooncrash yet, but I'd assume I'm close to finishing it? I got like 2/5 of the stories finished and can definitely clear up those other 3 in the next run + (I think? I can't remember if I already did, or if I have an escape with Riley queued up on my save) finished a run with all 5 characters, I'm not sure what's after that if anything.
This far in I have barely noticed any actual changes to the world other than the Moon Shark in the crater, which is only a threat if you make it a threat, and it's really easy to avoid that in the first place. To be fair I've also been hyper-careful in runs, doing pretty much everything possible at the moment and haven't died once, so I've only had a small handful of runs so far, but it still makes me feel like I'm missing something to Mooncrash. Also, I've never seen a corruption level above 3 because I just don't let it get that high. Time Delays are easy to make and buy, and I don't ever feel like I need to waste time with things that aren't on my checklist.
I'm honestly happy that variation isn't too present in Deathloop. The whole appeal of a time loop for me is learning the ins and outs of the world, and luckily Deathloop has so many ins and outs that it never got stale for me. If I perfected a route I'd almost always find a new one, and probably some new unmarked side mission in the process. Deathloop's combat is good enough for me to want to partake in it, so I'd alternate stealth and guns-blazing. Prey does not have this similar want. The environment doesn't have as many alternate routes (at least that I found) as Deathloop or even base Prey. I'll see an enemy and shoot the absolute hell out of it with a silenced pistol that does an absurd amount of damage very fast before they can even notice me. Because of that, even with the small amount of runs I've done I'm already kind of tired of Mooncrash's gameplay. I love the base Prey but it's just not hooking me the same way. Prey and Deathloop have level design that feel much more geared towards experimentation and realization than Mooncrash.
Infusion's kind of a mixed bag for me. I think the Residuum costs should've been a lot bigger, so you would only be able to infuse a slab at the end of a really good run. I liked it a lot though because it meant it gave me more gameplay options and freedom for subsequent loops. It definitely lessened the difficulty but it made playing the game a lot more fun in the process, which I'm fine with - I don't need a game to be hard to enjoy it. I love me some difficulty (Doom Eternal's Ultra Nightmare was one of my favorite game experiences outside of the Gladiator) but I love being able to do whatever the hell I want and not be immediately smashed in the curb as well. Having every ability at my disposal also let me easily switch it up and try new things. Karnesis is intensely fun to use even if it's not the most efficient.
Only thing I even noticed of "Loop Stress" was enemies having more purple gear than usual.
I haven't felt the Corruption Meter's presence in what I've played of Mooncrash other than respawning the crater's Moon Shark because I've never finished a run at a corruption level over 4, and I'm not sure if it gets any more notable later, so I can't really comment on how it actually affects the game - but I'm glad Deathloop doesn't have it. I like being able to spend an hour looking for everything on the level without ever being spotted just as much as I like being in and being out in less than 2 minutes.
I liked the aspect of continuity with the Mimic Portal in Mooncrash but I don't feel that anywhere else much. Like you, I think the concept of having to think of what you take in case another character needs it is really nifty but Sim Points existing really shoots that idea in the head. Start every character with a silenced pistol, a few Time Delays, a couple hundred pistol bullets, a propulsion system, and your run is basically a guaranteed win. I think Deathloop's limited inclusion of it was better than Mooncrash's even if it's less complicated or involved.
I'll agree that the one ending part of Deathloop is a bit disappointing, and it's one of my only problems with the game. It makes some areas just feel pointless; why would I go to Frank's in the morning or go to Charlie's Condition Detachment, or sneak into Fia's nuclear reactor/art gallery in order to kill them, when I could kill Frank without even seeing him and get both Charlie and Fia out of the way at the same time? It feels like they understood the pointlessness of Frank's appearance because he only drops a gun and not a slab like other Visionaries (Wenjie doesn't really have anything either, but she's at least required for story progression).
I did at least like finding the process in whatever order I wanted. Less objective markers would've been nice though.
Repetitive? Sure. Unchallenging? Yeah. Restrictively hand-holding? Definitely. My favorite Arkane game? Hell yeah.
Side note - I very much appreciate the inclusion of accurate captions in your videos. Thanks a lot for those.
"I like talking about the things I enjoy even if nobody reads them" - read it, and it was a very nice read.
You like bad games.
I just started playing Prey last night, got maybe one hour into it. Watching this video however makes me really really want to play Mooncrash. Should I complete the main game first or could I just jump straight into Mooncrash?
They’re completely separate, so feel free to jump to Mooncrash!
Prey is truly one of the greatest games ever made. I favor finishing the main story first, but you can do either one.
Great analysis! I saw an interview with the dev lead and she says how hard it was to make the game flow. In the first tests, the general perception of the testers was that the game was too hard, almost anyone was able to progress. I feel like the late changes to the game is where the hand holding mechanics were added. It makes the game more accessible, but maybe it should have been implemented as an easy mode, instead of the only mode. Well, I absolutely love this game... só I can't get enough of it, 50 hours deep into it and haven't finished the main story yet. Just savoring this delicious game...
Left a like because your videos are always so well made; but I feel like most of your frustrations come from your extensive experience with both immersive sims as well as rogue likes- and your preference for the “pure” forms of both. Arkane was trying to take elements of both for a wider audience, as most players fall outside of the niche of wanting the hard core of rogue “likes” rather than rogue “lites”.
It’s like seasoned Souls players claiming that Dark Souls 3 is too easy. It really isn’t, you are just well accustomed to it based off of your time with the previous entries.
Thank you for this. It’s been nagging at me why deathloop fell so flat considering I was such a fan of dishonored and prey. Now I get it, I played it already before