The One Change That Would Make Deathloop Great
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
- Deathloop is a good game. With one change, it could be a great game.
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Steve Saylor's accessibility review: • DEATHLOOP - Accessibil...
Intro - 0:00
What I like - 0:41
The Hitman Problem - 3:19
Other issues - 7:46
#Deathloop #ArkaneStudios #Arkane #Hitman #Bethesda 
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Hi Chris, thank you really for taking the time in making these vids. I know in your last video you said you were unsatisfied with your sub numbers, but I am one sub who really appreciates your work
likewise!
Same
Same here! I love his videos
Agreed love his videos.
Make that over a 100. 😃
Hey Chris.
If no one has told you lately... You are loved and appreciated.
Thank you for your reviews
Thank you for everything.
Been subbed since that cyberpunk video you made and I'm still blown away by how consistently your videos entertain and provide a unique perspective when you still have less than 100k subscribers. I hope the algorithm picks up another one of your videos soon, because you deserve it.
I found your series on CRPGs when I started getting I to BG3. Then I watched the whole series, then the whole backlog and then the CRPG series again. I really appreciate your views on game mechanics and the concise format of your videos. I hope you're able to keep making videos like these
I'm from Brasil. Played it entire dubbed on portuguese... I loved it too...
~Wow that's crazy to me, I didn't activated ANY MAKERS during my gameplay, I mean I did activated some, but when I knew what I was doing, it was more of a thing to remember what I was after when entering the zone and going to find clues about it, like the safe under Dorsey Square, it was always activated as objetive, but it was because I wanted to find clues and solve how you open it, never marked any of the Targets, never marked any of the Guns to go after, so it really didn't felt like the game was holding my hands. It only really helped me with the auto complete codes, that could be considered holding your hand, because needing to remember all the codes would definitely make the experience different, but in my opinion wouldn't be good, wouldn't be something fun, it would be more of anoying thing, but it really allows you don't give a fuck about the story because you don't need to memorize anything, and then there are the cinematics, but honestly I don't think that is a problem, but without them infact would be more hard to know what you have to do, if you aren't paying attention to documents and things scattered around. But yeah other than the codes and cinematics, that didn't really mattered to me because I was paying attention to the story, it really didn't felt like the game was holding my hands... so this "problem" would be very easily avoided, just don't track things... because it doesn't make a real difference if you are reading everything and following the story... and if you want to mark them and don't pay attention to anything you can to, so in my opinion it kinda doesn't matter, you can do either way.
Shame the connections to Dishonored weren’t more explicit, post-Death of the Outsider world 100 years later is fun.
Agree with everything you said. I fully enjoyed my time with the game, and will certainly play it again, but that final loop was underwhelming.
I found it harder to change the music at Wolfboi's party than I did to finish that last mission.
Wolfboi X,D
Y'know, I for one really enjoy the short video, and the format. The gameplay shows what to expect of your time in game, there are no real spoilers, and you made your points without dragging it out. It's different from the analysis stuff you do, and I actually dig that. Smaller bites are sometimes more savory, if you catch my meaning.
dishonored 2's difficulty settings are so good and make this game's lack of them extra disappointing. the game is so easy to the point where it just doesn't feel rewarding to play. i have little incentive to finish it at this point even if i like everything else about it, including the way the gameplay feels and even the clue system.
even with pretty normal guns i can just blitz through entire groups of enemies with ease because everything one-shots them in the head and once they see me they always take too long to even begin shooting me. and even after a huge firefight in a room the enemies in the area right next door are always clueless and i can sneak in as if nothing happened
i think its extra egregious when you fight the wenjies in their base, even if you fight them all at the same time its easy and then the wenjies right in the next area have no idea it even happened
Love the videos man the long form ones especially since they are so well researched and well articulated in a way I can’t put it so if I know you do a video of a game I like to recommend I just send someone over to watch your video keep up the great work man
Thanks so much for putting out more content. I was worried you were going to give up on yt but I'm here to tell you. Your are one of the best content creators out there and you would be highly missed. Keep up the great work. Sub for life 😃
I consistently get really excited to see your videos in my sub box and am never disappointed
I'm glad to hear your opinion on this game even if it is a shorter video. Thank you!
It certainly isn't perfect but I loved Deathloop, the voice acting as you say really makes me want to see more of Colt and Julianna. That said, much as I want a sequel, I would be amazed if we get one. The game just isn't doing the numbers to justify one.
Awesome video as always Chris keep it up mate
Two things I love: video essays and deathloop. Sick video, keep it up man!
Thanks for another great vid chris. Love your content. Been following you since your Andromeda review!
2 Chris Davis videos in a week? Is it Christmas already?
Great video as usual, but the AI critique is a little flimsy. The simplest method thing for Arkane would be cut-and-pasting Dishonered's A.I., which is vastly superior.
The dev's were definitely worried about average players clearing the game, in a reverse of Returnal's development choices...
Prey sold like crap and it's complication is often cited as one of the main reasons for that.
Really, it's no surprise. We want more deep immersive sims, but they sell like garbage. Deathloop feels like a way to make them more accessible, and therefore not financial suicide.
Great work as usual. Keep it goin
Absolutely agree with you on the slabs issue - let us take reprise off, please! After roughly the half-way point, even dying once became quite rare for me. Allowing me to use another slab in place of reprise would have made the game more fun and would have increased the tension and difficulty as I would have to be a bit more careful without the extra lives. Julianna invasions would also be more threatening and more fair for the player acting as Julianna.
It feels like a game that was hamstrung by their fear of it being accused of being too difficult. I can easily imagine a world in which Arkane gave the game more actual teeth and required more player thought to complete, but they feared that people would give it bad reviews, much like they did to Prey. Fearing that, they went the opposite way and made it a bit too easy. And the inability to remove the reprise slab was probably due to this fear of the player making the game "too difficult" for them, so they made it mandatory.
I still enjoyed my time with Deathloop. The art design is fantaastic, it still has enough side-areas and fun little things to do and explore (which are the main high-lights for me with any immersive sim game). I'd still give it a 7.5~8/10 (I'm generous). But Chris has raised several points that are worth noting, and hopefully Arkane will take them on board. It's all good and well to make the game easier for players who want it easier. But they could have easily given options to make it more challenging if they wanted, and it's a bit disappoint that they didn't.
Just wanted to let you know mate that I love your content and appreciate all the work you put into your videos.
Your work is amazing and I'm really grateful for your videos
i love getting notifications about your videos. i dont think this counts as 'a crappy video'. i love reviews like this as much as your long form content
Thank you, Chris, for all your hardwork.
Great review, Cheers Chris
Thanks for a great video. I really enjoyed it and agree with the message
Totally agree it some thing I was thinking but not as thought out as you
Another one!
Fantastic video!
Thanks for the video!
If it helps any, I do share your videos out where I can. We appreciate you dude.
This video may be little, but it's sure as hell not crappy. Thank you for your effort!
I like the video and completely agree with your point. Quick note, the game already plays a cut scene once you've figured out the correct path to killing a visionary. Which makes me think that the hand holding was a later addition probably from playtest feedback (pure speculation)
Well said, I agree with all your thoughts. Great video.
On the bad/stupid AI; As a player with almost 400h into another PvEvP game, Hunt: Showdown, I might provide some insight.
In my experience and to my knowledge, in a PvEvP game, you don't want the artificial challenge to be too influential as that quickly can mean a (PvP) situation quickly can spiral out of control, leading to frustration for the players. I'm not gonna claim that Deathloop got the balance right, but I think their intentions are based on a vision that the "true" and exciting gameplay of Deathloop would be the PvP aspect of the game or that Q&A players voiced a lot of frustration of getting overwhelmed whenever they got invaded as the odds were heavily stacked against them.
Ofc all these are just speculations from me, it can ofc also be bad programming/no attention to the AI during the development of the game.
It's entirely possible that after all these years they brought back the (infamous) game testers used for Dishonored. Or maybe they never left, i wouldn't know since i haven't played an Arkane game since Dishonored.
The invasion mechanic shortens the games shelf life in my opinion, i don't get the impression Juliannas and Colts AI is above average npc AI.
After completing the game all I didn’t like was the a.I and lack of options for certain visionaries ie frank harriet, the lore in between events (loved the story I could piece together) felt internally vague; Lila, loop, op horizon, I had questions some answers but so much to fill in I’m going to keep digging 👌
Great review!
Thanks for the vid
Great video. Have you played Prey: Mooncrash? Did you like it?
Great vid. Appreciate the shorter content as well
Great video, as always. You're pretty much the second RUclipsr I've heard who points out the incessant handholding in Deathloop (first one being Luke Stephens) so I imagine Arkane better start listening!
Prey and Dishonored had a very similar system of clues and waypoints too. The difference seems to be that Deathloop lacks the super creative level design and interlocking systems to navigate and dispose of threats.
well put
Thank you for speaking your mind. You can't both like and think there are flaws in something nowadays.
The weak NPCs are an Arkane hallmark at this point (I haven't played Prey). Most people don't realize it in the Dishonored 1 and 2 because the game's clever design makes it feel like you should play stealthily. In those games you're not actually an assassin you're a demi-god. Dishonored is my favourite game of all time but it's stupidly easy. In Dishonored 2 for example you are taught to fear bloodflies and sneak past them while if you run through them swinging your sword and go straight for the nest you don't even take any damage and with the nest destroyed they will become passive.
Was thinking a system similare to compiling clues in return of the obra din would have worked well .
The only time I died all 3 times was when you flood the bunker and I didn't get out in time then it looped me under water to instant death twice
This video sums up most of my criticisms dead on. I liked the game but was still disappointed by it. It's a detective game that does the detective work for you, an immersive sim with only one valid path and a roguelike with no replay value. Really hope they do a DLC like Mooncrash that takes the premise and does a smaller but more varied experience.
Im not sure ''Casuals'' is really an insult anymore, or at least I've stopped seeing it that way. Some people just dont have the same level of time to dedicate to a game. Loved the review overall, it was never a game I was planning to play so its nice to hear some critical feedback from someone who still enjoyed the game.
Also yes Hitman is criminally under rated and I also wish it had a bigger fanbase.
Unrelated to this video. I'm wondering if you've had a chance to play the Outer wilds dlc and if you might make a video about it?
I really loved your thoughts on the base game and the dlc is absolutely stellar so I highly recommend it.
When I finish the 5 games that I have on my backlog I may be able to play this one. Looks fun even if it may be too easy.
It’s not easy idk what the fuck he’s talking about.
Fuck this channel is underated, I assumed this channel was a huge success only to see the current view numbers, this is honestly criminal
I enjoy your videos.
At least cyberpunk's ai knows how to take cover and avoid grenades.
I know this is about Deathloop, but:
On Hitman, I really think they should tie the help stuff in with the difficulty level, instead of having it be an options setting. A lot of people don't touch options settings, and I feel like they'll miss out on the brilliance of Hitman's investigative / planning angle by just following the guides, even on high difficulty level.
A lot of people also don't have time to listen to a dozen conversations in each level
@@oh-not-the-bees7872 Yes, they can choose the lower difficulty level
... a Voodoo doll of Largo LaGrande?
What are the other two timeloop games? I love timeloops!
What are the other two timeloop games? I love timeloops!
@@807D14M0ND5 One of them is probably the new Outer Wilds DLC and I think the other is Twelve Minutes.
actually the other might be The Forgotten City, not Twelve Minutes. Or maybe it's Twelve Minutes and The Forgotten City, not Outer Wilds, since that is just a dlc and not a "game" technically.
Lots of time loops.
It sounds like this is another perfect example of why deep difficulty options should exist.
When did 7 or 8 become "average"? Are people so out of it they've forgotten that 5 is average?
Honestly what you are saying calms me down about the game. Dishonored was much the same way, and I vastly prefer that to Hitman. No offense to the Hitman games, but I find them tedious and unintuitive. In all the Dishonored games, reading info put concise mission clues in your journal or triggered some reflection from your character (aside from Corvo who's a mute in the first game), but I cared about the world so I read the entries anyways. Again, personally prefer it that way to Hitman's approach. Thank you for the video :)
I liked the game overall, but the handholding aspect of figuring out the perfect loop was a huge disappointment.
Interestingly, I've heard Deathloop praised from other places explicitly because of the handholding. I agree it would be good to have it turned off, but I think people who only can play games in short bursts appreciate how Deathloop leads you down the garden path. I agree Deathloop is too easy and needs a better difficulty scale.
Its kinda meant to be easy
The one change that would have turned this from decent to great:
Actually running with the idea. And trusting the brains of your players. Rather than subsequently nerfing it for playtesters who found the very concept to be "tedious". And in parts didn't even realize they were stuck in a loop. You know, initially you WERE tasked to piece it all together yourself. As it is, the real loop of this game is a tutorial you cannot ever escape. And as it is, I don't think it would be as easy as making the "hand-holding" more optional throughout. See Gamespot's "The redesign that saved Deathloop" feature. You've got to wonder how "A crack in the slab" in D2 ever made it through a process like that, letting you actually engage with time and space in its own and far more engaging way.
This is akin to Hollywood recutting Christopher Nolan's "Memento" into chronological order, as test audiences were confused. And it's showing that video games as medium are still rather immature yet. Luckily Larian and even FromSoft more recent have shown that there's a way beyond maximum handholding and maximum accessibility. Those are fine -- but not when they're the default modus operandi. A Sherlock Holmes kind of game that connects all the dots for you or makes it trivial would be failure by design. Larian even THRIVED in parts by letting players off the leash, finding creative ways around challenges. All the stories of players stacking boxes etc. to get into places and similar were free marketing for them which they fully embraced.
In a market like that, there's no logical reasons for ImmSim-design to be niche by default. Unfortunately, Bethesda more recent gave the Indiana Jones game to Machine Games. When Arkane would have been the perfect fit -- see also Thief's grave robbery kind of missions as an early template to start from.
Okay, but yo, unlocking Super Sonic in Sonic 2 is hard as balls.
Are you going to make a hit man video ?
The greatest A.I. that I have ever seen is in Rage 2. These enemies literally do backflips over your rockets, play dead then attack you & change strategies every single fight. No combat situation is ever the same and it is absolutely incredible.
I've heard the performance is pretty bad. Even in this video there seems to be a lot of instances of stuttering, framerate drops and frame pacing issues.
The powers you described are litteraly taken one to one from Dishonored one and two...
So it's like Dishonored if you removed the functionality of the stealth and made the targets less memorable.
The targets in Dishonored are so dull, I actually remember the Visionaries and their names.
@@wildonionchase3934 That could just be because of recency bias but I'd have to disagree. I'd say Lady Boyle and the Pendleton Twins are quite memorablez
Adding an I. to the end of the A.
These devs make the best games i don't play
Tried Prey 2 times for 5-10hrs, kinda loved it, never continued
when you get the time i highly recommend digging into prey again, it's the best game they've made imo and exactly what i would envision a modern system shock to be like. curious how much of it is going to influence system shock 3
I wouldn’t know if I like it. My city/county still doesn’t have PS5/Series X systems
The accessibility options being what they are is the most egregious flaw. They literally couldn’t care less.
The art style kinda reminds me of the Outer Worlds
Wholeheartedly agree with this, even though I did enjoy Deathloop as well. Would have loved to do a little investigating myself and have more clever enemies, visionaries in particular. They could have easily used the "some things CAN be made persistent throughout consequent loops" to make later parts of the game more challenging in general or set your own challenge level by activating certain conditions, which change the setup of following daytime scenarios.
And since you mention the party: Most of the time I simply murdered everyone as it's ridiculously easy. There is even an issue with the mission objective "have the guy reveal himself" or whatever, because it's not triggered if you just kill him - even though that's when he is, in fact, being revealed. After killing each visionary I had to redo the final mission, because I never did that objective the way they are forcing you to.
Great review. I ended up stopping about 6 hours in because I hadn’t died yet and never really came close. This was a weird mixture of the story being interesting, colt and Juliana being fun to listen to but game play being so so easy that I just lost interest. I didn’t find any of the characters themselves look any different like you I killed a few bosses on accident. I guess overall I thought it was fine but was baffled by some review sites saying “maybe greatest stealth game ever” while it’s not even the companies greatest stealth game let alone close to best one ever. I guess we live in a weird time where anything is either the greatest of all time or the worst of all time it seems. Anyways keep up the great work I enjoy your take on games :)
Most "Game journalists" serve as unnofficial promoters for a game, some of even get reprimanded from their bosses for unfavorable reviews (e.g. 7/10 instead of 9/10).
I can buy their ai excuse because it's the same engine as Dishonored and that had all you mentioned. So someone has to deliberty shrinken their field of vision and make them deaf.
this game feels like returnal in a way and that's a good thing
I can't play games with bad AI it kills my immersion
Kicking people is fun from what I have seen but sometime I will get this game when I get a ps5
Really looking forward to playing it in a year as I'm a poor xbox pleb
$300 for a 4k experience... Who's the pleb and whos really the master race.
make the ai not brain dead? make it more immersive sim not just 1 correct path?
i counted many more than 1 change
😎
Don't know if it fits, but if you ever do Dragon Age Origins, its great!
Hello
I think this is a decently explained video. I'm one of those who argue the enemies are stupid on purpose. If you make the AI smarter and the game more hard, it encourages slower play. This is a game in which you have to replay the same few levels over and over again, so having to slowly go through them each time would become a grind very quickly. Deathloop wants to get you to the point where you know you can storm through people to get on with your objective. I'm reminded of Bloodborne, in which you want to take on a deadly boss for the eighth time, but not before tediously killing the same bunch of low tier - yet extremely dangerous - enemies to stock up on supplies and reach the boss fight. It artificially extends the run time and gets in the way of what you are aiming to do, especially if one of those dumb low tier enemies happens to get a lucky hit in on you, so you have to waste even more time getting more health.
Also, I can understand why the game only offers two powers at a time. The whole thing is to stop you faffing with game menus. It serves the same purpose as the simple enemies. If the game were to offer you all the powers and all the tools, it encourages you to stop and carefully select optimal gear for every single situation. Which is again bad for the long term, dragging the game to a stand still.
Nice vid! I totally agree, I wish Deathloop had an option to make the game more challenging by removing any hints for puzzles or clues, or even removing the menu hints. I’d rather have to play this game with a map and a notebook and keep all my information sorted myself, plus have to deal with a more aggressive and intelligent AI with the Eternalists. I wish that had been in the original game, but honestly if Arkane made it into a mode for the game as dlc or something, I’d probably buy it.
Yeah well, you can deactivate markers from the menu and the pop up screen from the options, and that make let you play the game with almost no guidance without the annoyance of having to write everything yourself.
Basically the game needs a hard mode option.
Big love from one happy subscriber. I'd sub a million times over if I could
Bold of you to assume any arkane game is getting a sequel.
Your commentary on the power fantasy is so apt to me. I recently played Pillars of Eternity 2, and I deliberately cheat engined my stats so that ALL of my dialogue skills were over the maximums. I don't want to play in which I miss out on dialogue I want to take because a number. I understand it, I played Fallout 1 & 2 legitimately, but I don't have fun with it anymore as I have a day job and I don't want to replay games much anymore. There are so many novels and movies I want to watch and read, and games I'll never get to, that it feels ludicrous to play a 60 hour campaign *twice* let alone *thrice* to see all the dialogue.
But I avoided tweaked combat stats. Because I want to be threatened, I want to be challenged. If I have to fight, I might as well be afraid for my life. Deathloop bounced off me because of this sadly, it's the first Arkane game I won't be finishing and that makes me very sad. But you can't like everything.
To me it’s totally wild to hear game critics wanting to implement more of the mechanics from Hitman. The game flopped twice to the point SE shut down the company. Thankfully it made it back by developing and selling in the third installment, but I think the writing is on the wall for stealth based clue-games (look at the 180 turn assassins creed did) and therefore devs shouldn’t touch that shit until indie-market can reinvent it. Like I don’t hate the game but taking notes from Hitman is like using the Hindenburg as a roadmap for how to make air balloons.
Honestly, I'd say even more from Hitman could have made its way into Deathloop. The structure of Deathloop and the (typical) freedom and world-building of Arkane games seem like they would've lent themselves perfectly to a game in which you get to really take out your targets in your own way, without one specific, prescribed method of completing the ultimate 8-kill objective. It just seems like the developers were afraid of making the game too complex, in a way, as though they didn't trust that players could possibly find a way to accomplish the goals themselves, which is weird since "failure" in this is much less common than in, say, Prey: Mooncrash. Hell, honestly, Mooncrash is a much better example of how the game could've allowed more freedom in how you accomplished tasks, as the method and order in which you escape with each character in that DLC could've been translated to a variety of methods and orders of kills in Deathloop that would've given players greater agency.
I just can't shake the feeling that Deathloop could have been much, much more. I agree that the 10/10 reviews seem crazy considering issues with A.I. and the general lack of real replayability and depth (especially when compared to Arkane's past work), but there are such great ideas here that the missed opportunities are made all the more disappointing.
I wouldn't say great voice acting but the bannter was annoying between the girl & him, but it wasn't terrible either.
The only difficulty in this game comes from me getting impatient after a while. In the end, I didn't really care anymore, I just shot whatever I saw. I was ignoring the mines on the ground because sneaking up to them was boring and sometimes I just shot everyone I see because the NPCs stopped being a threat. And this is the biggest problem with Deathloop for me. After going through the same map for the 20th time it just stops being fun to kill everyone and navigate through the map.
The A.I. is so comically bad it seems to be done almost on purpose.
BTW. PSA: Play Mooncrash :)
I really wanted to love Deathloop, Arkane’s games are probably my favourite ever. But I found myself stumbling on the Visonaries kind of accidentally & killing them far too easily, despite having scoured every inch of every map for every clue. It just seemed like there was constantly something better & more climactic coming, but before I knew it, I’d finished the game… I found the powers to be really uninteresting as well, i basically ended up only using 2 of them, with most of them seeming confusing & not particularly useful. & I was constantly waiting for some really cool & unique trinkets to make things moire interesting, but all I kept getting was duplicates, & the only interesting one was some grey one that had the only effect of draining my health. It just felt way too easy & simple.
The aesthetic, voice acting, world, all the things that Arkane usually knocks out of the park, were knocked out of the park, but even they felt under-developed in some regards. Or, at least, the usual sort of museum tour Arkane experience was so limited that I found myself desperately spamming use on all these items & bits of furniture & posters etc hoping for some tactile response, but almost always would be left cold. Everything was so sterile & uninteractive, even the pieces of furniture from Dishonored I noticed around the world were lacking any of the functionality they had in those games. The only interactive thing I remember from the game are the goddamn alarm clocks, which I never actually used for their intended purpose. It’s all just so lacklustre.
I’m really hoping they bring out some cool & experimental DLC…well, I’d prefer it be free updates considering how barebones the systems currently are. I still really liked the game, but it was really lacklustre. It just felt like I was waiting for some escalation & climax that never came. And the ending…I was genuinely surprised that it was the end. All in all, it’s a really great game, but I just constantly found every aspect to be completely limited & under-developed, I found myself wishing for it to be more, for it to be developed & expanded upon, and it never was…
Hopefully the post-launch will fix that.
Algorithm demands comments
disagree. As someone who works a lot, it took me six days to finish the game. If there was less guidance, it would be more confusing and less enjoyable, because between the game sessions you forget some things