Wait, Didn't Arkane Already Make Deathloop?

When I played Deathloop - the latest game from the makers of Dishonored and Prey - I got a strange sense of deja vu. And not just because the game features a Groundhog Day-style time loop. Yeah, you see - in this game you’re trapped on an island that’s stuck repeating the same day over and over again. And so whether you die, or make it to midnight, you’ll wake up on the same beach, on the exact same morning. The only way to break the loop is to track down and assassinate seven elusive baddies.

Oh, and for it to count, you’ve got to kill them all in the same loop. So, no - the real reason I got deja vu is that the whole premise strongly reminded me of another game - one of Arkane’s own, actually. You see back in 2018, they released a wonderful piece of DLC for Prey, called Prey: Mooncrash. Mooncrash takes place in an infinitely-repeating simulation of a lunar base. And so whether you die, or the simulation runs its course, you’ll start the whole thing over again.

The only way to complete the simulation is for each of the five characters to track down and use the five different escape methods. Oh, and for it to count, you’ve got to do them all in the same loop. Yeah - sounds a lot like Deathloop, right? Sure, they couldn’t be much further apart in terms of tone, and style, and story - but the underlying gameplay structure is very similar. And that’s no bad thing, of course. All games are built on what came before - especially games made by the same company.

And I think bonus content like this can be a great way to experiment with new ideas and concepts. And if they’re good enough, they can be improved, expanded, and fleshed out for a fully featured release. But… that’s not quite what happened with Deathloop. Sure, the game builds on the main idea on Mooncrash - but there’s more to Prey: Mooncrash than a clever concept. This DLC is, in fact, jam packed with super smart design decisions that patch up problems with the underlying concept - and also address some issues that Arkane identified with the wider immersive sim genre.

But Deathloop seems to ignore… pretty much all of them. Which, actually, leads to some of my biggest gripes, frustrations, and disappointments with the game. So in this video I’m gonna go through all the smart stuff in Mooncrash - and look at how Deathloop failed to learn those same lessons. I’m Mark Brown, and this is Game Maker’s Toolkit.

Part 1 - Roll of the Dice Okay, so according to a GDC Talk, Prey: Mooncrash came about because the team at Arkane was obsessed with roguelikes. Games like Darkest Dungeon, Risk of Rain, and Dead Cells. And so they wanted to make something with a similar vibe. Now, one of the key aspects of a roguelike is having randomly generated levels. Even though you’re repeating the same game over and over again, the jumbled up level layouts keep things fresh and surprising. But this is something that’s a lot easier to do in 2D than 3D. Especially when you want to make highly detailed environments with the same level of quality as a game like Prey.

So, the moonbase isn’t randomly generated: it’s the exact same layout every time. There’s a giant crater hub, a crew annex, a mining quarry, and a lab - all with the same floor plan and room locations from loop to loop. But, that doesn’t mean every run is identical. Because while the overall layout is the same, there are many smaller elements which are, indeed, randomised from run to run. The biggest one is environmental hazards that can affect those areas, which includes raging fires, a radiation spill, and electrical failure.

You might also see changes in the architecture, so a tunnel could be destroyed, or a staircase might have fallen down. And the tram network may be perfectly functional on one loop, but then a specific station is inaccessible on another. Plus, escape pods and service closets may be found in different places, enemies can spawn in different locations, items might be in different spots. The list goes on. And this is actually… really cool. You should know by now that I really like revisiting a space and gaining familiarity with it - and you get that in spades in Mooncrash. You learn shortcuts, and safe spots, and the best place to track down a Medkit. But the randomised elements keep you guessing, they stop things from becoming stale, and they force you to think on your feet.

So, a favourite shortcut might not work on this run. An easy escape route now needs a new solution. Your perfect plan… is scuppered by a broken-down tram. Some of my favourite moments from Mooncrash came from these random elements ruining my plans. But, I could then use my familiarity with the space to find a novel solution. Now, back to Deathloop. And this game really is the same from loop to loop. If you revisit an area at the same time of day, you’ll find that it’s almost identical - down to the placement of enemies, security turrets, and Fiz-Pops.

So you do get the fun familiarity of revisiting a well-known space. By the 6th time you come back to Updaam in the afternoon you’ll know the perfect route to zip by enemies undetected. But you don’t get the surprise of an unexpected change. You don’t get the think-on-your-feet problem solving of a broken shortcut or unpredicted turret. And after many hours in the game, it’s entirely possible that you’ll be getting bored of seeing the exact same patterns, events, and layouts.

There is, however, one big caveat to this. and that’s Juliana. Deathloop lets players “do a Dark Souls” and invade another player’s game as a multiversal malevolence who can hunt down Colt with a massive arsenal of weapons. And when Juliana spawns into your game, these moments do provide some of those feelings I got in Mooncrash. The surprise. The sudden change of plans. The problem solving. Juliana can even place down traps that will catch you off guard simply because in the last 5 times you played this level… there weren’t any mines there!

*Boom* *Colt screams* So, Juliana does make sure that Deathloop is never perfectly predictable - but, whenever she wasn’t invading my game, I missed the clever, fine-grained randomisation from Mooncrash.

Part 2 - Power Creep So Mooncrash really bent the roguelike rule of random levels. And it does the same for the other key directive: permadeath. The idea that when you die in a roguelike you’re sent back to the start of the game, and all your progress is reset to zero. Here, the designers took inspiration from more friendly entries in the genre like Rogue Legacy, and actually let you keep some stuff between runs. So, any skill tree unlocks you make are permanent.

Finding blueprints for items means you can buy a new copy at the start of your next loop. And you can stash a permanent currency that you can spend on those items. Now I’ve talked before about my, uh, displeasure with such permanent progression in roguelikes. In short, if you let the player make the game easier over time, then you get a weird curve where the game starts off way too hard for the player’s current skill… and then as the difficulty decreases, and their skill rises, you end up with a game where the player is completely overpowered. And so the sweet spot exists for, like, a handful of runs.

And that could have absolutely been the case in Prey: Mooncrash, but the developers do something really clever to account for it. You see, the game has a list of objectives to complete, like unlocking different escape routes and completing story missions. And when you finish a certain number of these challenges, the game amps up the difficulty level. Finish about 25 percent of the missions, and you’ll start seeing radiation and fire hazards. At 50 percent completion, the time limit will shrink. And at 75 percent you’ll start seeing random dust storms in the crater.

And so while you are making permanent progress that absolutely makes the game easier for yourself - the game is fighting back, and making things harder. There’s a sort of balancing act where the game isn’t crushingly difficult at the start of the game, but isn’t a complete pushover at the end either. And if works perfectly, it should keep you in an ideal flow state of difficulty for the entire experience. Of course, it doesn’t work perfectly. It’s still very easy to get overpowered, and by the end of the game I had so many sim points I could go on a superweapon shopping spree before every run. That final mission to escape with all five characters in a single loop was so easy it was completely anticlimactic.

But for a lot of the game, it was ratcheting up the difficulty in a neat counterbalance to my own skills, familiarity and unlocks. And, I mean, it certainly did a better job of it than Deathloop. So, just like Mooncrash - the majority of stuff you find in a run of Deathloop will vanish when you wake up again in the morning. Weapons, stat boosts, and even those Dishonored-style superpowers will leave your inventory and need to be replaced. But, you’ll soon get the ability to “infuse” your goodies, which makes the item permanently stay in your arsenal between loops.

And so, pretty quickly, you’ll find yourself with a really powerful collection of guns, trinkets, and slabs that you can use on every single loop. But unlike Mooncrash, there’s no obvious counterbalancing system here. The game does not seem to get more challenging or complicated over time and so the baddies you fight at the beginning of the game are the same ones you’ll fight at the end. Only you now have an entire rack of weapons and magic powers at your disposal.

There is a simple system called “Loop Stress” where visionaries get more powerful when you defeat their pals. And according to the tutorial, it does have some residual impact across multiple loops. But it must be minimal because I never felt its effect. In fact, I personally found myself to be an overpowered, nearly-invincible killing machine rather early into the game. And that final mission to kill all seven visionaries in a single loop was… again, anticlimactic. I did it on my first attempt and it was laughably easy because I just had so much power at my disposal.

And that was actually… kinda fun. It was, admittedly enjoyable to be an overpowered super soldier just wiping out all seven baddies in a cathartic finale of death and destruction. But… there was also the rest of the game and after about 7 or 8 hours I lost all sense of challenge. With almost no way to counteract the player’s ever-growing power creep, the game rapidly loses its balance - and topples onto its face.

Part 3 - Under Pressure So this one is gonna be a bit more… contentious. There’s one more thing that Mooncrash took from roguelikes, and that’s pressure. You see, if you stick around in a Spelunky level for too long, you’ll face an invincible ghost who will either kill you - or chase you out of the level. Designer Derek Yu says he added the ghost because he wanted to force players to “make difficult decisions and experience both the satisfaction of choosing correctly and the regret of choosing poorly”.

And almost every roguelike has a system like this - from the fleet chasing you in FTL, to the hunger system in Don’t Starve, to the timed doors in Dead Cells. And I think it’s pretty apparent why it’s needed when it’s not there - like last year’s Returnal, which gives you no incentive to hurry up… and so you can end up spending hours joylessly scouring every level for the perfect gear. Anyway - Prey: Mooncrash has its own take on this: the corruption meter. Over time, the simulation becomes more and more corrupt, which makes tougher enemies spawn, and makes computers harder to hack, and so on. And when it bottoms out, the loop is forcefully reset.

Now, this feature did get a lot of pushback from players. Just like every time limit, a portion of players found the pressure frustrating and anxiety inducing. And I will admit - it’s not the best implementation of the idea. Having the game just unceremoniously kill you when the timer runs out is too harsh of a punishment. I mean, having to play on corruption level 5 is reason enough to speed up. It doesn’t fit perfectly with a game that has much slower elements like stealth, exploration, and environmental storytelling. And it kinda breaks a system I’ll talk about in a sec.

But, I do think a certain level of pressure is worthwhile. Because if we look at Deathloop, which doesn’t have anything like the corruption meter, you can often find yourself in situations where you have just killed absolutely everyone in the level - and you’re wandering around by yourself picking up Residuum, and item clues, and trinkets, and more. Which - isn’t the most exciting way to play the game. Again, there are small features that go in this direction - there’s the Wake Up Challenge at The Complex, where you have a couple minutes to find four boxes before they go boom. That’s a nice reward for putting pressure on yourself.

And, overall, this wasn’t my biggest gripe with Deathloop. I wasn’t yelling out for a time limit. But, I do think the corruption meter added some really interesting wrinkles to Mooncrash - and it’s a shame that Deathloop didn’t iterate on the idea.

Part 4 - Split Personality While Prey: Mooncrash was made with an eye toward roguelikes, the designers were also thinking about their own genre, the immersive sim, and the problems they face there. In that GDC talk I mentioned earlier, Arkane’s Rich Wilson points to the way that players can get into comfortable patterns with these games. That could be a way of playing - like being stealthy. Or a way of engaging with the world - like deciding to never kill humans. And while it’s awesome that players get to choose how they play - it can also mean that they only engage with a small part of the game.

Or they never explore certain parts of the skill tree. Or they play in restrictive, and potentially frustrating ways - like reloading a save game the second you get spotted. So Arkane wanted to challenge this in Mooncrash. Here, you play as five characters instead of one - and they basically take Morgan from Prey and split them into five parts. A stealth expert, a repair woman, a heavy weapons tank, someone with loads of PSI skills, and someone with loads of Typhon skills.

This means that when you’re playing as certain characters, your preferred play-style might be discouraged or even impossible. (In fact, I wish they went further and made it so the psychic characters can’t use guns at all - but, nevermind). The idea is that you’ll end up trying different gameplay styles - and it totally worked. I used abilities in Mooncrash that I never tried in the real Prey. And sometimes I would need to find new solutions to a problem because my go-to answer was simply not viable with the current character.

I was forced out of my comfort zone, and had to think about the world in a different way each time I spawned in. That’s not what happened in Deathloop, though. So this game is very much built in the same vein as other immersive sims like Prey, Dishonored, and Deus Ex - you play as a single character, with complete access to a large array of items, powers, and play styles. And, yeah, I went straight back to my old ways.

For some reason, I really love hacking turrets in games - and so I did that for about 30 hours straight in Deathloop. And there were slab powers and weapons that I never tried simply because the ones I had were really working well for me. I mean, I don’t think I swapped out blink - sorry, shift - after I unlocked it because I like zipping around levels too much. And so, yeah. I wasn’t expecting Deathloop to be split into multiple characters like Mooncrash. But there are problems with immersive sims - I mean Arkane themselves acknowledge them - and yet Deathloop does nothing to fix them.

And the frustrating thing is that there is a potential solution to this in the game. Losing your tools every loop should force you to find and try new ones. Like how your favourite weapons shatter in Breath of the Wild. But, alas, as I’ve said, infusing your weapons stops that from happening to any real degree. But shaking you out of your comfort zone isn’t the only advantage to having multiple heroes in Mooncrash.

Part 5 - Playing with Yourself So here’s how the game works. You try to escape as one character. If they pull it off or they die - you then switch to another character: and go in on the same loop. And this leads to some interesting outcomes. Like, the first character can perhaps make life easier for the second character. Perhaps patch up a hazard, or make progress towards an escape method, or clear out enemies. Perhaps the most clear take on this comes from how the volunteer needs to escape via a portal to unlock his story mission - but the machine needs to be repaired and hacked: and he can do neither.

So you’ll need to repair it as the engineer. Then, in the same run, hack the computer as the custodian. And then, in the same run still, enter the portal as the volunteer. It’s clever - and has the feeling of playing a co-op game with yourself. But, you also get the feeling of playing against yourself. Take an escape pod, and now no other character can use it. Die mid-run, and you might come back as a powerful phantom enemy in the next character’s game. And any items you’ve scavenged as one character… will be gone for the next character. So you have to think ahead and leave stuff behind for future heroes.

Unfortunately, that idea is quickly undercut by the way you can just buy all the items you need. And the system is also spoiled by the corruption meter I spoke about a minute ago - it’s often better to just reset the simulation when switching characters, unless you specifically need to use multiple heroes for something. But, again, it’s a clever idea that just needed a little more time in the oven. Deathloop, of course, doesn’t have this by virtue of only having a single character.

But it does have something along these lines. You see, each day is split into four time periods: morning, noon, afternoon, and evening. And so you might visit Updaam in the afternoon, when Charlie Montague’s real-life video game is accessible… only to come back later on in the evening when Alexis Dorsey’s party is in full swing. And so making changes early on in the day can have a knock on effect later. Turn off the power in Otto’s workshop in the morning and it will be accessible later on - rather than a sizzling heap of ash. It’s along the same lines as that portal-fixing relay from earlier.

But, unfortunately, it’s pretty limited to some specific story beats and puzzles. So that feeling of playing with or against yourself is not quite the same as Mooncrash. Like, loot all the Fiz-Pops in the morning at Karl’s Bay, and they’ll be back in the afternoon. Kill every single baddie at noon, and there’ll be a fresh army to kill in the evening. And so on. I mean, it makes sense. The system for tracking all this stuff would be maddeningly complicated.

But, still, it’s a little disappointing when you consider the absurd cleverness of Mooncrash’s multiple characters.

Part 6 - Ending It Finally, there’s the “ultimate challenge”. Both games have largely the same structure - kill the seven visionaries or find the five escape methods. And to actually complete either game, you need to do the lot in a single loop. The ultimate challenge. Now in Mooncrash, how you do this is - almost - entirely up to you. For the most part you can send whoever you like, to whichever escape route you want. And so you really have to plan it out for yourself.

Maybe you want to send the weakest character first, so your strongest heroes are there when the corruption meter will be highest. Maybe you want to use the easiest escape method with a character you don’t really like using, and brave the hardest route with a hero you’re more comfortable with. It takes planning, forethought, and cleverness. But with Deathloop, it turns out there’s actually only one way to do it. Outside of how you choose to unearth Alexis at his party, there is a set-in-stone route, order, and method. And it’s all laid out for you in a glitzy animated cutscene and point-to-point quest log.

And that’s just… a lot less exciting. This has been a completely non-linear game thus far - but now its rigidly formulaic. And while most Arkane games trust players to figure stuff out for themselves, Deathloop tells you exactly what to do. It’s a shame. The entire time I played Deathloop I was excitedly planning this final murder spree - and so was pretty disappointed when it was not only laughably easy, but also strictly controlled by the designers.

Part 7 - Deja Vu Now, there are some ways that Deathloop does indeed learn from Mooncrash. For example, both games are - for the most part - very non-linear in how you approach them. Which is fantastic - but it can make storytelling a challenge. How do you make sure the player gets the narrative in a compelling order, and at a satisfying frequency? Well, Mooncrash stuffs some of its plot into the simulation, through narrative missions and environmental storytelling. But the main story is told outside of the loop. Basically, when you do a certain amount of the Kasma orders, it boots you back out to your spaceship for the next chunk of the overarching narrative. So, you’re always getting a bit more of the plot.

And Deathloop has something similar. There’s the story of the visionaries, and you’ll discover that through tracking them down, reading their computers, finding notes, and so on. But the main story of the game is with Juliana. And so every time you enter a level, Juliana and Colt will have a quick chat on the phone - usually in a way that extends their story and relationship. JULIANA: "Colt." COLT:"Julie." JULIANA: "I'll take it. Better than some of the other names you've called me".

COLT: "Jules?" JULIANA: "Yuck." COLT:"Yeah, not a huge fan of that one either." JULIANA: "Good." So you get little snippets of narrative all the time - in a way that’s ordered and frequent - even though the rest of the story is wildly non-linear. There are also ways that Deathloop exceeds Mooncrash, largely by virtue of being a complete game rather than a low-budget DLC. So while Mooncrash’s tiny layout can make it quite repetitive, Deathloop is a far bigger game. And there’s an awful lot to do - with seven mainline missions, and lots of secrets and sidequests all zig-zagging through each other.

There’s always something new to do in Deathloop, which certainly helps relieve the boredom of repeating the exact same locations. And so, ultimately, I did really enjoy Deathloop. But I also found it repetitive, unchallenging, and restrictively hand-holding. It didn’t do anything to get me out of my turret-hacking comfort zone, and I don’t think it really explored the full extent of its underlying concept. These are all things that Mooncrash fixed. Or, at least, attempted to fix. As I’ve shown in the video, Mooncrash is far from perfect. But Deathloop would have been the time to expand and iterate on those ideas - not drop them entirely.

And, look, there are probably some very good reasons why Deathloop skipped the design decisions from Mooncrash. I mean, the games do have different vibes: Mooncrash is more of a score-chasing, highly replayable roguelike - whereas Deathloop is far more singular and story focused. And, admittedly, the biggest reason for their design departure is that while both games are developed by Arkane - Mooncrash was made at their studio in Austin, Texas - and Deathloop was built in Lyon, France. There’s actually hardly any overlap in the people who worked on the two games.

Plus, it’s entirely possible that development on Deathloop began before Mooncrash was released. But I can’t shake this feeling of deja vu - that Deathloop is just Prey: Mooncrash - but not as good. There was amazing potential to take this kernel of an idea and expand it into something bigger - which Deathloop totally tried to do. But by missing the finer details, the game failed to reach that potential. But there’s one final twist to this story. The next game from Arkane, Austin is called Redfall. And this one isn’t on a time loop - but it is split up into multiple characters.

Kinda like Prey: Mooncrash. So, it will be very interesting to see how that game takes, expands, and iterates on the concepts of Prey’s criminally under-appreciated gem of an expansion pack. Thanks for watching.