Deathloop

Deathloop rebuilt Arkane's Mooncrash loop but dropped the fixes that made it work. Both games reset on death or at the end of the loop and make you finish every target in a single loop: seven visionaries in Deathloop, five escape methods in Mooncrash. Mark Brown argues Deathloop ignores nearly all the patches Mooncrash made to the loop concept, so it plays like a weaker version.

Tone, style and story differ, but the underlying structure is very similar. Mooncrash came from Arkane Austin and Deathloop from Arkane Lyon, with little staff overlap, which may explain the lost lessons. "I can't shake this feeling of deja vu - that Deathloop is just Prey: Mooncrash - but not as good."

Prototype in DLC, then carry every refinement into the full game. Bonus content is a good place to test ideas that can later be expanded, and reusing a DLC's idea is fine if the full game improves on it. Deathloop took the core idea but not the details.

"bonus content like this can be a great way to experiment with new ideas and concepts."

Deathloop's levels repeat almost identically, so surprise fades fast. At the same time of day, areas repeat down to the turrets and Fiz-Pops. By the sixth afternoon visit to Updaam, you know the perfect route past every enemy.

Mark Brown's favourite moments in Mooncrash came from random changes ruining his plans, which Deathloop never produces on its own.

Juliana's invasions are the only thing that breaks the predictability. Juliana, modelled on Dark Souls invasions, can place traps like mines that weren't there the last five times, forcing a sudden change of plans. Without her, the sameness gets boring.

"Juliana does make sure that Deathloop is never perfectly predictable"

With no pressure system, players comb emptied levels for loot. Deathloop lets you clear a level and wander around collecting Residuum and trinkets. Only the Wake Up Challenge at The Complex, with four boxes to find in a couple of minutes, adds time pressure.

Roguelikes use pressure to force hard choices; Spelunky designer Derek Yu wanted players to "make difficult decisions and experience both the satisfaction of choosing correctly and the regret of choosing poorly".

Permanent infused gear made players overpowered, since enemies never scaled. Infused weapons, trinkets and slabs stay forever while enemies stay the same. Mark Brown felt nearly invincible early on and lost all sense of challenge after 7 or 8 hours.

Loop Stress makes visionaries stronger as you kill their allies, but he never felt its effect. Permanent progression leaves only a handful of runs in the balanced sweet spot unless something pushes back. "With almost no way to counteract the player's ever-growing power creep, the game rapidly loses its balance"

Infusion cancelled the variety that losing gear each loop should force. Wiping gear every loop could push players to try new tools, like weapons shattering in Breath of the Wild, but infusion lets them keep favourites. Mark Brown hacked turrets for about 30 hours and never swapped out his Shift power.

Many slab powers and weapons went untried because the current ones worked. Arkane's Rich Wilson has named comfort patterns like pure stealth as a known immersive sim problem, yet Deathloop does nothing about it.

The finale is scripted, which undoes the game's non-linearity. Deathloop's final loop has one set route, order and method, laid out in a cutscene and quest log. Only how you find Alexis at his party is left open.

The anticipated murder spree turned out strictly controlled by the designers, removing the planning Mark Brown had looked forward to. "Deathloop tells you exactly what to do. It's a shame."

Accumulated power made the finale an anticlimax. Mark Brown beat the seven-visionary finale on the first attempt because of all the power he had built up.

It was fun as catharsis but not a test. "it was laughably easy because I just had so much power at my disposal."

Only a few actions carry across Deathloop's four time periods. Cutting power to Otto's workshop in the morning keeps it usable later, but most changes reset: looted Fiz-Pops return in the afternoon and a cleared level has a fresh army by evening.

Carry-over is limited to specific story beats and puzzles, since tracking every change would be maddeningly complicated.

Phone calls on entering each level pace a non-linear story. Every time you enter a level, Juliana and Colt have a short phone call, giving ordered, frequent narrative snippets that build their relationship.

The trick is borrowed from Mooncrash, which sends you back to your spaceship after a set number of Kasma orders for the next plot chunk. Colt tries nicknames, and Juliana responds to "Julie" with "Better than some of the other names".

Lots of parallel content offsets the boredom of repeated spaces. Deathloop has seven mainline missions plus many secrets and side quests zig-zagging through each other, so there is always something new to do in familiar locations.

This scale is its main advantage over the low-budget Mooncrash DLC. "There's always something new to do in Deathloop"

Prey: Mooncrash randomises small details inside a fixed map. Mooncrash keeps one layout but randomises hazards, broken stairs, tram stations, escape pods, enemy spawns and item spots, so learned shortcuts still matter but a broken route forces improvisation.

Random layouts are hard in detailed 3D, so the team fixed the map and randomised within it, inspired by roguelikes like Darkest Dungeon, Risk of Rain and Dead Cells.

Prey: Mooncrash raises difficulty as the player grows stronger. It adds fire and radiation at 25 percent of missions, a shorter time limit at 50 percent and dust storms at 75 percent, plus a corruption meter that forces a reset when full.

The counterbalance is imperfect: players found corruption anxiety-inducing, and Brown still had enough sim points for a superweapon shopping spree before each run.

Prey: Mooncrash splits the hero into five specialists sharing one loop. Restricted characters pushed players into new styles, and earlier characters set up later ones: the engineer repairs a portal, the custodian hacks it, then the volunteer escapes through it. The finale lets you choose who takes which route.

Brown's one complaint is that the psychic characters can still use guns.

A sluggish virtual cursor and fixed font make Deathloop's menus hard. Deathloop's menus use a virtual cursor with no d-pad alternative, and its menu font is absurd and cannot be changed.

Far Cry 6 and Pokemon Snap keep similar cursors but also let you click through menus with the d-pad.

Partial toggles show options must be consistent, not just present. Deathloop lets players toggle running but not aiming, while Hitman 3 does the reverse.

"It's no longer that noteworthy for a game to have these features - now, they need to be robust and reliable."