Deathloop - New Arkane Lyon's game

Quote from Buddy

On 9/21/2020 at 11:33 AM, Buddy said: I think this will Bomb hard commercialy. It's one of those games that have not been explained well enough to the casual player.

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Deathloop peaked at 20,000 concurrent players, which on any given day probably puts it outside the top 50 titles. As I write this, the game has closer to 12,000 players a few days after launch, which puts it around the top 75 and about even with Cyberpunk 2077.

When it's not clear what the game is, it doesn't sell.

Looks like they didn't learn from Beyond Good & Evil or, hmm, Prey lol.

I didn't pick it up for that reason actually, even with all the extra videos I seen I still had no idea if this game is for me.

Quote from Buddy

5 minutes ago, Buddy said: When it's not clear what the game is, it doesn't sell.

Looks like they didn't learn from Beyond Good & Evil or, hmm, Prey lol.

I didn't pick it up for that reason actually, even with all the extra videos I seen I still had no idea if this game is for me.

Looking at the number of reviews and steam spy stats, the game sold almost 500k units on Steam alone. No idea about PS4, but if it's like every other triple A release, most likely from identical to double the numbers on PC. So the game has probably sold a little over 1m copies already.

I got it a couple weeks back on ps5 and I've been having a blast! Really cool game!

I bought it on a day when I was bored and I remember someone telling me it was a good game. It was pretty great because I went in knowing nothing about this game. It took a good 4 hours before I even realized I was playing a hybrid roguelike. I love that feeling of being overwhelmed in a world initially.

Anyways it's been about 2-3 weeks since I got it and now I think I'm getting close to the end and I know my way around the 4 levels pretty good now but it's been super fun getting there.

This game does something I love. They reduce the overall breadth of the game to have a more nuanced and detailed small area. I remember Mr Warren DeusEx (forget his last name) saying something to the effect that he would love to take the effort of a massive game and compress it down to a city block. I feel like this game does that to some degree and I love it. I'm a huge fan of smaller, more detailed, ever-changing worlds.

Also I never thought I'd see the day I play an FPS with a console controller but it's a single player game and I'm a lazy old man who likes sitting on the couch and playing a game on the big TV without a lot of fiddling.

Doorframes in this games are the best.

One thing I will say about this game. I've never seen so many UI bugs in a console game before. Whenever I hit pause there's a chance I can get the game in a non-progression state and have to shut it down then relaunch (losing my progress along the way).

I've got about 10 videos/screenshots of wackiness saved up now.

I know UI bugs are the worst, especially if your foundation no longer represents the final design spec but still... this is pretty rough.

In case someone's interested in it, i wrote a page on my portfolio about my work on Deathloop :

https://sylvainmenguy.com/en/project/deathloop

Quote from leplubodeslapin

10 hours ago, leplubodeslapin said: In case someone's interested in it, i wrote a page on my portfolio about my work on Deathloop :

https://sylvainmenguy.com/en/project/deathloop

Félicitations

Do you still do engineering work on the side or is it now a long distant memory?

Quote from will2k

49 minutes ago, will2k said: Félicitations

Do you still do engineering work on the side or is it now a long distant memory?

Thank you :))

I still do a little bit, as a hobby this time around, i've put a couple of projects in the "Product Design" tab of the website. I also designed and built my kitchen in the past year which was quite a challenge.

But yes, to be honest working as an engineer feels like a distant memory now, i'm more engaged and passionnate about my work now as a Level Designer.

I did not expect the job to be like that though, making layouts and placing NPC / patrols was maybe only a third of the work I did on Deathloop. I've been able to bring more ideas to the game than I anticipated, it's a collective effort. I think this part is much more appealing to me, compared to when I was designing stuff as a mechanical engineer.

its interesting the terminal areas feel a little like counterstrike bombsites ever thought about?

Quote from Vaya

1 hour ago, Vaya said: its interesting the terminal areas feel a little like counterstrike bombsites ever thought about?

Hehe I suppose it's mostly due to the single point of interest for both players, and also yes I needed the spaces to suit with 1V1 fight. But there were other factors such as the hacking range, I wanted to make it not too easy to start the hack unnoticed. Also I had to deal with existing geometry, and the location of that terminal in the global map matters too, you don't want it to be too close from the tunnels otherwise Colt could just hack it and run away without letting the opportunity for Julianna to chase him. You don't want it either to be too far away from the "main path" between tunnels and the map target, otherwise it feels like you're wasting even more time reaching the terminal. It was a matter of finding the best spot for each map and tweak stuff around it, to prevent frustrating encounters. I'm glad you noticed it ❤️

Nice, also amazing work. Deathloop's levels are so good.

On Deathloop, there is a easter egg of "The Crossing'' on a video I've saw some weekend ago.

They only talk about Deathloop in the second half/last third of the episode (the rest being about how they got into the industry and Dishonored), but might be an interesting complement listen. Apparently Dana is also going to speak at GDC.