DEATHLOOP ● Bethesda is stuck in a time loop.

A year ago, Bethesda showed the world its new project Deathloop from the French studio Arkane, which is best known to the world for games such as Dishonored and Prey and which took part in the creation of the last Wolfenstein: Youngblood, it was they who had a hand in setting the levels, as in society there was a strong opinion that in this aspect this studio is especially good. And at the presentation of Sony Playstation we were shown a gameplay trailer for their new game, which tells the story of a man named Colt who woke up from a badoon on some island and after the first death realizes that he fell into a time loop, since he always wakes up in the same place. And in order to break this time loop, he needs to unravel some mystery of the island and put an end to the main woman who runs everything here. In addition, you need to eliminate eight more targets, because if you do not kill at least one of them, the time loop will start anew. And for this you will need to find out all the details about these goals, how they live, what they breathe, where they live, what is their routine. day. All this will have to be learned, dying over and over again. All would be fine, but there is another killer on the island, a woman with a sniper rifle, which is also enclosed in a time loop, but she categorically does not want to leave it, as she likes to arrange this eternal hunt for our main character. the fact that no one touches her on the island, all the inhabitants are for her, plus everything she can take the form of any NPC. She will oppose the player in every possible way and prevent him from breaking the time loop. The main feature of Juliana, that is the name of the second killer, is that other players can play for her, invading your game session, which, according to the developers' idea, will be able to give rise to many non-standard and interesting situations. This function can be disabled. And if no one plays for Juliana, then she is put under the control of artificial intelligence. Such a small PvP element. The most important thing is that no matter what cheaters spoil the game, since wherever multiplayer is present, there are also problems with this phenomenon. According to the developers, Colt and Julianne have access to a huge arsenal of customizable weapons and abilities, and players will be able to choose the ones that suit their play style. It all sounds pretty good, and even intriguing. The gameplay is apparently not boring, you can go in the open, you can use stealth. There will be many paths and options for passing the same section of the map, as well as different options for solving certain problems, all in the spirit and style of Arcane. Yes, and for most people, the trailer has come in very much and there are many who are now waiting for this game, and some even call this project the best at the Sony presentation, and in some ways I even agree with these people. But I also want to talk about what I personally did not like. If they had not positioned and presented the game as a "new generation shooter", then there would have been no questions at all, just another Dishonored, but only with guns. And this is even wonderful, since I myself love this game. But if you declare that this is a "new generation shooter", then show graphics, animation and some kind of breakthrough solutions inherent in the games of the new generation. All I saw is outdated graphics, with low-poly models and primitive textures, the simplest lighting and shadows, plus all this is diluted with a cartoonish visual style, as in the same We Happy Few, a game that was released in 2016 and which will launch today even on washing machines. Moreover, the new generation here is generally not clear.

Crysis 3, which came out in 2013, is more of a new generation shooter than Deathloop. This angularity in models is straightforward to the eye. Even the masks on the faces of opponents are not casual. Why sculpt some kind of complex facial animation when you can just put on all the NPCs unemotional, angular masks and it's in the bag. I personally see in this a kind of hack and slipshod work. The technology and power of the consoles allow it to do so, perhaps the main reason is the lack of funding for the project. After all, the game really looks quite budgetary, even for the current generation consoles, not to mention Next Gen. By and large, and the gameplay is also absolutely nothing new - everything that was demonstrated in the trailer I met in a hundred other games, and fast movements generally straight from Dishonored. It feels like Arkane just took all the ready-made assets and developments from their previous games and hastily concocted it. In some places the game looks even worse than their Prey, which came out in 2017 and was a great game. I don’t see any step forward, the trailer shows a step backward. Perhaps the gameplay will be captivating, and indeed the idea itself does not sound very bad, but I don’t see a "new generation shooter" at close range. From graphics to gameplay, we've seen it all a hundred times already. Even in fact, chips with time loops were used in the same way and before that in many other games, if I list them now, it will take a lot of time, which, alas, we will not be able to rewind, and therefore we will not do this. As a result, the usual pass-through game from Arkane is being prepared, no more, no less, this is certainly not a "new generation shooter", but certainly not a bad game, since this studio really knows how to make games. I most likely won't play it, because the visual style directly repulses me. But drawing is such a thing, rather arbitrary, like music, how many people have so many tastes. For some, on the contrary, this visual style will be very close and to the liking. The idea is also not to say that I was really intrigued by it: to retrace the same section of the map a hundred times is a kind of entertainment, albeit in different ways. For this, in other games there is a usual save and load, here it is displayed in the gameplay element. Like it if you would like the videos to come out more often ..