Deathloop does take place in the same universe of Dishonored, or at least in one of its possible futures. Many fans had surmised as much due to many easter eggs dispersed throughout the game, but it has now been made official.
The news was first broken by Deathloop Game Director Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Lyon, who was featured alongside Harvey Smith (from Arkane Austin, he worked on the first Dishonored and then on Prey and the upcoming Redfall) in the latest episode of Major Nelson’s Xbox podcast.
Bakaba confirmed that Deathloop has been imagined as one possible future of the Dishonored universe following the events of Death of the Outsider (the last installment in that franchise, released in 2017).
It’s funny because it was nice to have a game that is about disposal. So yes, there is this story that you’re going through, but all around you are a lot of little puzzles, little mysteries. And due to that, we have a number of systems that will make sure that not everyone has seen the same thing. Not everyone has heard the same song that you might have heard hidden somewhere. Not everyone has seen every room, etc. So it was nice to see the community peek at the little clues that we did sprinkle everywhere. Yes, indeed, we envisioned Deathloop to be happening in the future after Death of the Outsider. It’s something that we didn’t want to make something too big about it because that would be its own story, its own character, its own time period that we wanted to flesh out. So we wanted that, but at the same time, there were a lot of things that we wanted to say. After Death of the Outsider, obviously, the Outsider is not in function anymore after that, clearly. And we always wondered about what would happen after that.
As we were making Deathloop, we said, hey, that could be one of the things that could happen after that. So we have a certain timeline to link that. There are a lot of clues, actually, in the game. Lots of small things, some that were under people’s noses all the time, but people are just figuring them out. My favorite about that is we have a shotgun that’s called the heritage rifle that can switch to different modes between scattershot and slugs, et cetera. Everyone has been seeing that it’s from the imperial armories, but actually, on the side, there is a little logo that you can barely
see. But now that we’ve added idle breaks where the character plays with his guns, you can see that the logo is actually the Dunwall Tower, so it’s pretty clear. There are a lot of little things like that. We meet a character talking about a concept that is very unique to the Dishonored world. And then you can start to say, hey, wait a minute. So if this is the Dishonored world, where can it happen? And then you can actually follow the thread.
It was nice to have this little scavenger hunt inside the scavenger hunt, so to speak. Then yeah, when you just take a step back and look at the Deathloop world, the magic and the technology, there are some things about classes and inequalities. Even though that’s something that those characters flee, but you can see that those differences are still there.
We tried to see everything as an evolution, but each time they mentioned the past, either we were vague enough or we disguised in, I would say, natural ways the names. They talk about the motherland and not about Tyvia, but once you know, you can unravel everything. And yes, it does make sense. So it was nice for us to be imagining one of the futures of the Dishonored world and to have that make sense.
Deathloop recently launched on Xbox (it was a timed console exclusive on PlayStation platforms) and Game Pass. The Goldenloop update added a new ability, weapon, enemy, four new ability upgrades, 19 new trinkets, and an extended ending.
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