While playing through the stunningly chaotic environment of the island of Blackreef and investigating their targets, a couple of players noticed a few key elements that would link Deathloop back to one of Arkane’s previous games, Dishonored.
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Deathloop is a first-person shooter action-adventure sci-fi game that had been developed by Arkane Studios (who were well known for their 2012 game Dishonored and 2017 game Prey) and published by Bethesda Softworks (a gaming company whose best-known work was their 2011 game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and their Fallout game series). The game can be played on PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox Series X|S, though it did take a bit longer to become available for the Xbox.
Deathloop centres around the mysterious island known as Blackreef, whose inhabitants are stuck in a never-ending time loop. Throughout the first-person shooter, we follow Colt, an assassin and the main protagonist of the game who has amnesia. He sets out on a mission to put an end to the time loop by investigating and killing 8 key targets in a variety of ways with a collection of different weapons and abilities that he gains along his journey. Trying to prevent him from reaching his goal is Julianna, one of Colt’s targets who is also an assassin, who wants to keep the loop going. In short, the game tells the tale of the two assassin’s eternal struggle that will eventually determine the future of the island.
Now, in a recent episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, the show’s co-host Jeff Rubenstein spoke with Deathloop‘s creative director, Dinga Babaka, who confirmed that the two games (Deathloop and Dishonored) were in fact linked and then proceeded to walk people through his thought process behind linking the two games. “There are a lot of clues in the game, actually,” Babaka said. “But there are a lot of small things, and some that were under people’s noses all the time, but people are just figuring out.”
He went on to say that Deathloop was designed to be the future that followed after the events of Dishonored: Death of the Outside (a standalone expansion to Dishonored 2). “Yes indeed, we envisioned Deathloop to be happening in the future, after the events of [Dishonored] Death of the Outsider.”
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Where you Can Find the Connections
The hints towards Dishonored are not glaringly obvious pieces hidden throughout the Deathloop as the developers still wanted the game to stand out on its own. Instead, the hints have been sprinkled throughout the island of Blackreed and left for players to discover along their journey of investigating their targets. Bakaba has described it as a “little scavenger hunt inside the scavenger hunt.”
One of the more obvious hints can be seen after Deathloop has been updated. On a shotgun called the Heritage Rifle, there is a logo on the side that is originally not very clear so players are unable to determine what it is. After the update, many gamers who had previously played through Dishonored 2 would recognise it as the logo for Dunwall Tower, one of the main locations features in the game.
The fans that had managed to spot the small details felt rather proud of themselves after the connection between Deathloop and Dishonored was confirmed and the ones that didn’t decided that it was high time for a replay.
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