The island of Blackreef where Deathloop takes place is trapped in a 24-hour time loop from a science experiment gone horribly wrong. Or at least that’s the take from Cole’s perspective, a mystery man who awakens on the shore with a crushing hangover and some surreal aftereffects. For the partying residents of Blackreef itself, though, everything is going exactly as planned; these “Eternalites” are content to party hard until sundown, loaded and loosened by booze and firearms, always rewinding back to the beginning of the day and a tabula-rasa brain primed to party hard anew.

In Deathloop, players take on the role of Cole, the ultimate one-man buzzkill. He determines that the responsibility for this eternal time loop falls upon the shoulders of eight “Visionaries” who he needs to target and dispatch before midnight. This basic expectation makes the game’s flow tricky to describe in detail, a challenge steadily faced in its previous trailers. In practice, the game uses a quadrants system, with four island areas and four sections of time – morning, noon, afternoon, and evening – allowing players to engage any area and time period at will, even able to skip whole chunks of the day if desired. At midnight, every day, if the player doesn't die or achieve their complete octo-kill goal, the loop resets again and any Eternalites or Visionaries are "un-killed." Only Cole (and Julianna, who will be discussed shortly) remember what transpired before the reset.

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Of course, this being Arkane Studios, there's plentiful firepower and weird playful powers to carry the experience aloft. In our virtual-closed-door gameplay video we got to see Cole teleport around with a snazzy “Shift” ability (which seems like the next slight but substantive evolution of this ability type previously used in Dishonored and Prey), dashing between targets, over cliff edges, and through windows, always outgunned but rarely outmatched for speed. From what we've seen so far, the Eternalites do seem like little more than cannon fodder, though a rotation of different armaments, turrets, and patrol routes help them even the score.

Deathloop Preview Map of Blackreef

Arkane games tend to center an idiosyncratic visual presentation as an integral part of the experience, and Deathloop proudly continues this trend. It presents a fetching blend of hep psychedelic party-life 60s vibes with wacky sci-fi architecture, creepy cult madness, and hallucinogenic superpowers. The supernatural abilities all have a sublime freaky quality which pairs nicely with the vicious violence; snapped necks in the game have particularly queasy and visceral results, though the prevalence of masked enemies seems a deliberate design choice to keep the effect from coming off as too disturbing.

Blackreef’s four zones are The Complex, Fristad Rock, Karl’s Bay, and Updaam. The gameplay we witnessed primarily surrounded the Updaam area - which has probably seen the most attention thus far in Deathloop trailers and publicized information - and starred Deathloop’s king of the party, Aleksis. In keeping with the mask theme, Aleksis’ guests all wear bestial guises and can be found drinking heavily in and around a sprawling club-styled estate, prepping for the party to end all parties.

As Screen Rant opined earlier this year, the Deathloop preview is all tooth and nail, with nary of Arkane’s tendency towards light/dark duality themes. Cole is here to kill (and re-kill), and nothing in the game preview revealed anything of a morality system. The choices to be made are all tactical and assassination-oriented, allowing for moments of careful stealth, subterfuge, and lore investigation to grant Cole the upper hand. We were able to see a few examples of Cole scouring a studio for intel on how best to take out Aleksis, eventually getting the drop during a deadly talent show that saw him drop into a chute of spinning blades.

Deathloop Preview Dual-Wielding Combat

Of course, a la the Hitman series, none of this method is set in stone. The guns-blazing route is always an option (maybe even more of a likely option in many cases), and enemies do seem to have fairly distant triggers and view cones. This means that Cole can successfully get into a fracas a few dozen yards from a cluster of enemies without revealing his position to them, which does seem like the right move in preventing a domino effect rendering one approach into all-out war. Deathloop's weaponry looks to have a fair bit of variety, though the silenced PT-6 Spiker nail gun looks like a reliable go-to, and the all-purpose Hackamajig allows Cole to hack doors, turrets, and mechanical objects in the environment in a way that seems simple and streamlined.

And then, of course, there’s Julianna Blake, who counts herself among the eight Visionaries on Cole's chopping block. While there’s very little we can reveal about exactly how she and Cole click together, she persists throughout any of Cole’s assassination excursions, hiding and stalking him from the fringes of the map. In Deathloop’s sole multiplayer inclusion, Julianna is fully playable, and game director Dinga Bakaba even described the opportunity to target specific online friends’ game instances to keep things personal. Persistent rewards for doing so seem admittedly meager at the moment - they seem to orient around swappable cosmetics for Julianna and Cole - but having a multiplayer feature entirely centered on ruining someone’s run carries a few shades of the Soulsborne series’ invasions.

Deathloop Preview Julianna Sniping

If Cole does get killed during a loop, the Reprise ability offers the opportunity to reclaim his dropped residuum, a special collectible resource which secures his equipment upon the end of a run (again, reminiscent of bloodstains and such in the Soulsborne games). This means Deathloop players can at least breathe a little easier about whiffing an otherwise well-played attempt and reclaim their bearings. Residuum collection joins other consistent upgrades, weapon mods, and unlocks through subsequent loops of the game, though our preview sadly did not venture very deeply into any of these mechanics.

Probably the most significant takeaway from the Deathloop preview was the wit, humor, and overblown sense of character on display, something hinted at in the stylish trailers but doubly apparent in the gameplay itself. The voice actors for Cole and Julianna are buoyant and emotive, with the former a combination of grizzled defeat, self-deprecation, and relatable frustration, and Julianna a vicious spider mercilessly taunting her dumbfounded prey while playing it close to the vest. When constant self-narration is key to the experience, it helps that there’s top-shelf voice talent in the booth for this one.

There’s no specific timer per se, so no need to sprint through different portions of the day to tackle objectives. Dividing the day up into four sections to experience over four areas means that each time of day presents alternate enemies and circumstances, aside from keeping the basic map intact; Bakaba described how one area sees the beginning of a stage being set up in the morning, continuing to stage construction at noon, then a concert and aftermath. Using this rationale, one could say that Deathloop essentially contains 16 “levels,” for lack of a better term, though actions committed in earlier time periods may affect which of the Visionaries appear in the different corners of Blackreef.

Deathloop Preview Ramblin Frank Spicer

One reason to be excited for Deathloop is its titular loop. The loop as a mechanic is potentially revolutionary when it comes to the immersive sim FPS genre for which Arkane Studios is known. The wider story of the game is pre-written, but the way it's told looks to be entirely player-driven; in the Q&A, Bakaba shied away from phrases like "side missions," because the upfront concept renders virtually anything which involves not assassinating a target as a side quest. The trick will be filling Blackreef's areas with enough rich content and interesting surprises while empowering Cole to the point that retreads maintain their appeal and keep player attention. It's a gutsy move for a trusted studio, and the proof will be revealed come fall of 2021.

Next: Bethesda: Yes, Deathloop Is Still PS5 Exclusive Despite Xbox Buyout

Deathloop releases on PC and PlayStation 5 as a timed console exclusive on September 14.