Revealed at E3 2019, Arkane’s next ambitious first-person adventure is the time-twisty Deathloop, which is now set to be released on PC and PS5 as a console exclusive this holiday.
With a release so close, and the impressive first couple of showcases Arkane and publisher Bethesda have offered for it so far, we spoke to Deathloop Game Director Dinga Bakaba and Art Director Sebastien Mitton about the unique art style and its inspirations, how Deathloop’s time loop design works, and what it means to bring the game to the PS5.
Deathloop will have players living a day over and over as the uncover the mysteries of the adventure’s setting, the island of Black Reef.
And while the loop of starting a run, dying, and restarting from the beginning makes Deathloop sound like a rougelike, Bakaba made clear that a few key choices differentiate it from the popular genre.
“You are piecing together what happened on the island, who you are, and what you are doing here and how you can escape,” he said. “The way it’s a bit different from a roguelike is, imagine that I find an important clue, and I die just after that. Progress is still made. You might lose the gun that you found, but the story has moved forward. [The Protagonist] Colt now knows something and the player both knows something important and they need to act on this thing.”
Sounding reminiscent of last year’s acclaimed The Outer Wilds in that way, Deathloop also distances itself, according to Bakaba, though the team wants to preserve some of the mystery as to why.
“Not trying to say too much, but there is a turning point in the game where the progression becomes even more different than a roguelike,” he teased. “You play that same day over and over, but you don’t necessarily do the same things, you are not necessarily in the same places, you don’t have the same goals.”
The Arkane team wanted to make sure that players didn’t feel restricted by the time loop itself, and Bakaba cautions that players don’t need to worry about feeling limited by Deathloop’s timeline.
“The one thing we wanted to make sure is that it doesn’t mean that the player is literally on the clock in their moment-to-moment gameplay,” he noted. “If you want to play very deliberately, very slowly, and take your time, read every note, look at every painting, the game will not punish you for that.”
Deathloop on PS5
Deathloop marks Arkane’s first PS5 release, coming at the start of the next-generation console’s life. Both Bakaba and Mitton spoke to what it means to take advantage of the new console technology while also developing for PC.
“The first thing that it means for games is just comfort, like higher resolution, higher frame rate, things like HDR, some use of ray tracing, etc.,” Bakaba noted of the next-gen capabilities.
“Just having higher fidelity on screen to make Seb’s team’s work shine in a way that it never did before is really exciting. Of course, I mentioned the frame rate. I think that’s something really important. Until now our games and consoles have always been 30fps. Being able to target 60 for an action game, it’s very exciting.”
Bakaba also noted how the DualSense is allowing for a new level of immersion, which is so important to Arkane’s design philosophy.
“It’s got a lot of nice features with the haptics feedback, the active triggers. We are a first person game. We really value immersion a lot in our games,” he said. “Really feel the weapons in your hand, its reaction, how it reloads, how it reacts to reloading, etc… I think that players will enjoy those functionalities.
“This is something that we are…extremely proud to be part of, it’s something so big. A new generation of console and the launch of them. It’s not every time in a career that you have this opportunity. So, we are really thrilled,” Bakaba noted.
The Saul Bass Inspiration
One of the most striking things about the little we’ve seen of Deathloop so far is its stark, eye-catching art style. Mitton explained how the work of famed artists Saul Bass, responsible for famous posters and title sequences for films like Vertigo, The Shining, and more, played into the design of Deathloop.
“At the beginning [of production], we were not sure [it would be] taking place during the ‘60s. When we were discussing the core ideas, the main pillars of the game, the time period was not there. And at some point I was like, imagine you have an isolated island. And if you want to create a huge contrast and a clash with something, it could be the time period instead of just sci-fi elements,” Mitton explained, noting the various inspirations for the world. “We call it the Saul Bass vibe. He did all the posters for The Shining, Vertigo. And you mix it together to get something that is really Arkane.”
Mitton drilled down into even how designing Deathloop’s power set, which looks reminiscent of Arkane’s past work on Dishonored but still true to the world of this new game.
“One approach was to make the visual effects more badass but still legible. It’s really hard to create a Blink [power] in fact. It looks easy when you see it, but when you work with your team it’s back and forth between game designers, visuals, sound, etc,” Mitton noted. “And the idea was to make something half realistic and half.. a bit comic [book-like] in the way you create the particles.”
Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans will star in The Gray Man, a new thriller movie directed by Joe and Anthony Russo that will carry Netflix’s biggest budget yet.
The movie is based on the Gray Man and Court Gentry book series from author Mark Greaney. The globe-trotting movie focuses on two killers, Gentry (Gosling) and his former companion Lloyd (Evans), as they hunt each other down.
The movie is meant to kickstart a franchise with this first installment written by Joe Russo. Captain America and Avengers writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, also helped out with the script.
Anthony Russo compared the movie to Captain America: The Winter Soldier in an interview with Deadline.
“The movie is a real mano a mano between those two great actors, who represent two different versions of the CIA, in what it can be, and what it can do,” Anthony Russo said. “For those who were fans of Captain America: Winter Soldier, this is us moving into that territory in more of a real world setting. That’s what this movie really means for us.”
Joe Russo said their intention is to go on for multiple installments and to keep the stakes, and probably the budget, very high. This movie is expected to have Netflix’s highest budget yet at around $200 million. For comparison, a movie like The Irishman reportedly cost around $175 million and Extraction was under $100 million.
“The intention is for it to be competitive with any theatrical and the ability to do with with [sic] Gosling and Evans is a dream for us,” Joe Russo said. “The idea is to create a franchise and build out a whole universe, with Ryan at the center of it. We have all committed to the first movie and that’s got to be great to get us to the second movie. These are master assassins and Gosling’s characters gets burned by the CIA and Evans’ character has to hunt him down.
“We think Netflix is the perfect place for this film.”
Joe Russo also said that the movie will hopefully begin production by late 2020 or early 2021, but that’s “COVID dependent.”
As expected, the PS5 controller does look a tad heftier than the DualShock, but not hugely so. Keighley mentioned during the stream that the controller felt slightly heavier, but only slightly.
After a reveal in April, we’ve learned a lot about the new controller’s haptic feedback, adaptive triggers (and a little less about its still-mysterious Create button).
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Earlier this week, rumors began to swirl that the PlayStation 5 would go up for preorder, much to the surprise of, well, everyone, including Sony. In the wake of those rumors, PlayStation has promised that PS5 preorders won’t catch players by surprise.
Speaking to Geoff Keighley after a brief showcase of the PS5’s DualSense controller, Worldwide Head of Marketing Eric Lempel said “I think it’s safe to say…we’ll let you know when preorder will happen. It’s not going to happen with a minute’s notice. We’re going to at some point let you know when you can preorder PlayStation 5. So, please, don’t feel like you have to go run out and line up anywhere until you receive official notice on how that will work.”
Rumors kicked into overdrive on Monday, with many speculating that the PS5 would go up for preorder, in part because the PS5 Amazon page of information was added. And while website updates like that only fanned the flames of speculation, the system never ended up being available for preorder. And that fervent expectation even surprised Sony.
“We don’t know what happened there, we had nothing to do with it. I got a message from someone saying ‘People are lining up at stores’ and we had no idea why,” Lempel said.
So while players can’t still buy a PS5, it’s safe to say Sony is aware of the demand and will give players some warning ahead of when it is available to preorder.
For more on the PS5 and everything PlayStation, be sure to tune in to our weekly PlayStation show, Podcast Beyond!, for the latest news, impressions, and more from the world of PlayStation.
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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor and host of Podcast Beyond! Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.
Nintendo Switch consoles (and basically every officially licensed accessory) have been in and out of stock everywhere for months, but if you’ve been trying to get your hands on some Joy-Con, I have good news!
While Nintendo products are always available for those willing to pay a hefty premium, right now, Amazon and Walmart have quite a few Joy-Con bundles available at the regular $79 price, so get them while the getting is good.
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Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).
“Four months before he was arrested on murder-for-hire charges, Animal Planet cameras were given special access to Joe Exotic’s tiger empire,” the teaser reveals before showing an interview with Exotic (real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage), which was originally filmed for Animal Planet’s Wolves and Warriors program in 2018.
Paired with never-before-seen footage, the documentary shares some insight into Exotic’s day-to-day running of the animal park, while the crew conducts interviews with some of its former employees, including Gaylynn Eastwood and Saff Saffery, who lost an arm to one of the tigers, and others with firsthand knowledge of the animal trafficking and breeding, such as rescue leaders and exotic animal experts.
Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness documented the vicious rivalry between big cat enthusiasts Exotic and Baskin, with the former making it his personal crusade to destroy Baskin, which ultimately resulted in his conviction in a plot to try to murder her. Exotic repeatedly resurfaced rumours that Baskin murdered her husband Don Lewis, whose disappearance has never been solved.
Warning: We’ve ensured that our walkthrough contains minimal spoilers so you can still enjoy the game even if you need help completing all the story missions. However, if you want to know nothing about the game before playing, stop reading now and consult this walkthrough later.
In reaching Tsushima’s northern region, you’re quickly closing in on the end of Ghost of Tsushima. All that remains is seriously undermining the Mongol invasion by killing Khotun Khan himself–before he can get to the Japanese mainland. You’ll need to gather your allies and more intelligence about the Mongols’ plans across the last few missions of the game.
Near the fort is a Mongol outpost in White Falls Village, and if you haven’t liberated it yet, you might want to stop and do so now to give yourself some breathing room in the area. It’s not an especially tough outpost–you only need to eliminate all the Mongols–so clearing it while you’re passing through it anyway isn’t a bad idea. You’ll find the Mahakala Mask Mongol Artifact in a round, open tent in the outpost if you do choose to liberate it.
As you approach the fort, stick to the left side of the road, where you’ll see tree stumps and the remains of an old logging camp. Your goal is to get onto the cliffs near the camp to get alongside the fort; use the collapsed roof of one of the buildings and your iron hook to make your way up to Takeshi. Survey the fort to allocate your forces, then head down and start taking people out. You’re best off dropping the two archers on the ridge on the left to start with, as they’re most likely to see you if you’re trying to sneak around.
Once that’s done, you’re free to deal with the Mongols as you see fit–a straight fight isn’t too tough a proposition thanks to the support of Takeshi’s archers, but you can also pretty easily sow chaos with poison darts, arrows, and careful assassinations. Most of the enemies tend to stay together, so use the rooftops and tall grass to kill a few with poison and force everyone to start separating.
Clear this batch of Mongols and a patrol will return to the fort, giving you a chance to ambush them. After that, continue to the gate and you’ll catch sight of Yuna’s forces attacking the fort from the other side. You need to meet them and finish off the Mongols in the fort, but to do that, you need to cross a bridge between the fort’s two main sections. That bridge is guarded by a hwacha, which makes a frontal assault tough. You can sneak under the bridge to deal with the hwacha if you prefer, but you’ll be alone and greatly outnumbered.
Charging the bridge head-on, or sneaking over carefully, are both viable options. The sneaky option is probably the easier one to execute effectively. Use the iron hook to swing over to the cliffs on the other side of the bridge, and you can sneak around through the tall grass and get to the hwacha, while also finding an opportunity to slaughter a Mongol Leader. If you can get to the hwacha, you can start blasting the Mongols with it, making clearing the area for Takeshi’s men pretty easy–especially because the Mongols are not very smart and seemingly won’t immediately figure out that you’re shooting them with their own weapon. Once you trigger fighting in this section of the fort, you can use the hwacha to eliminate Mongol reinforcements as Takeshi’s men meet back up with you.
Fight down to the main gate and meet back up with Yuna. You’ve got plenty of allies at this point, so just finish off the Mongols to complete the tale.
A Gathering Storm
Talk to Yuna at Jogaku Temple again to initiate the tale. You’ll then be transported to Port Izumi, where your goal is to reach the lighthouse without being spotted. The path is pretty easy to handle–head through the purple flowers and bear right when you near the camp in front of the lighthouse. Sneak along the cliff, where you should find a series of enemies with their backs turned to you, who can be easily assassinated.
Things get a little dicier when you start to move through the camp, but not much. Use the slackline to get above the enemies and bypass the ones you can. Look for stands of tall grass to move through. You can assassinate enemies if you want, but make sure you’re not going to get spotted when you do. Keep moving toward the back of the lighthouse–there are a good eight or 10 Mongols scattered through this area, but all of them should be facing and walking away from you, and if you happen to find more than one in a group, wait for a second out of sight and they’ll separate. You can probably get all the way through here without killing anyone if you want to, but your assassinations should be almost entirely out of sight anyway. Just keep an eye out for a few guards in weird places, like the one that strolls around near the tent, or the one inside the wooden stable at the end of the ridge.
As you approach the small bonfire near the back of the lighthouse, note that you can grab the Milk Pot Mongol Artifact as you go. From here, you’re pretty clear to slip in through the back of the lighthouse; eliminate the patrolling soldiers if you feel like. Once there, investigate the stuff on the ground floor, then climb to the top to survey the port and finish the tale.
Heart of the Jito
Once again, return to Jogaku Temple and talk to Yuna again. Ride for Castle Shimura and approach it from the north, near the waterfalls, to activate a cutscene. Cross the river and climb up the cliff to get in behind the castle. Note that you can’t kill any of the guards inside the castle, so you’ll have to be very careful about not being seen.
Take the path left of where you enter through the gate and watch for patrolling guards. If you stay behind stuff, you can make it pretty easily to the water’s edge and swim unseen under the bridge (you can use the crouch button to swim beneath the surface if you get spotted). From here, climb up on a crashed log and use the grapple hook to take the same path you did when infiltrating the castle last time.
Climb up the cliff and get to the building you find there, being careful not to alert the guard inside. You can climb up to the roof using the rock nearby, which lets you bypass the building and get to the garden path behind it. From here on, the key to this mission is patience. The guards will tend to move out of your way if you wait long enough, and further on, you’ll have to wait for conversations to end before your path becomes clear.
Use the tall grass in the garden on the right side to hide yourself. As you move into the path area, the guard with the torch should move on from the bonfire where he stops, allowing you to sneak along behind the crates on the right side of the path until you can cross to another hole in the wall.
Carefully follow along the side of the keep until you can get inside. You’ll want to follow Lord Shimura while staying out of sight. As he moves through the keep, guards will clear their posts to make way for him, allowing you to slip in along behind him up ladders. Keep moving with Shimura until you hit the room where he will meditate. From here, you won’t be able to get to the ladder that leads to his quarters, so slip through the door at the end of the hall and climb out the window there.
You’ll find two ladders that will take you up to the top of the keep–be careful of the guard running around at the very top of the building. Slip past him take the ladder inside the guard tower to get down into Lord Shimura’s quarters. Drop off the note at the marked spot and you’re done with the tale.
Eternal Blue Sky
One last time, you’ll need to talk Yuna at Jogaku Temple. This is it–the big attack on Khotun Khan. Make sure you’re ready for an extended story sequence before you commit to the tale.
After some cutscenes and checking in with your allies, you’ll head to Port Izumi to kick off your attack against the Khan. Your first goal is to fight your way into the port and ambush the Khan’s reinforcements. It’s a standard battle with your allies, so use your tools to fight through and eliminate all the soldiers before regrouping with Norio and heading into the port.
Your path into the town itself is pretty straight and you’ll need to be careful not to stray from where the game wants you to go, or archers will bombard you with arrows and kill you almost instantly. Follow the path down to the right into a frozen creek bed so you can sneak in without the Mongol soldiers noticing you. There’s tall grass at the far end where you can hide yourself and get your bearings. In a general sense, you want to avoid the soldiers and get onto the rooftops of the buildings around you, while making your way to a watchtower at the end of this path. If you’re careful, you should be able to largely avoid conflict, at least until you get to the base of the tower where a couple of guards are standing.
After the cutscene at the tower, make your way onto the roof of the building across from you, either by going inside and to the second floor, or by climbing up from the outside. You can use the rooftops here to bypass most of the enemies in the area, but you’re going to have to fight to cross the bridge ahead. Upgraded chain assassinations are extremely useful for avoiding fights here as well. At the bridge, fight through the soldiers and continue to the right to find the gate to the manor house, and beyond it, Khotun Khan.
Duel With Khotun Khan
You’ve come a long way since your fight with the Khan on the bridge, but he’s still not easy to deal with. He has several unblockable attacks with weird timing that can trip you up if you’re not careful, and he hits hard. He’s also very fast with his spear, which can make parries tough.
First, note the Khan’s unblockable attacks, specifically the wide, low sweep move he likes to throw at you. This one you can jump, but he’ll often follow it up with a combo of two more sweeping unblockable blows that you’ll have to dodge. If you can, it might be better to just roll clear altogether, but if you can manage to dodge all three, you can get in some hits when the Khan is vulnerable afterward.
Khotun Khan also likes to come at you with a flourishing, spinning attack that ends in a vertical unblockable blow. The trouble with this one is that if you dodge early, he can adjust and hit you with it. When he starts to spin, wait until the last possible moment to side-step and you’ll have a free chance to wail on him. Go too early, though, and you’ll take the hit, not him.
Armor is also an important consideration in this fight. If you’ve been using the Ghost armor to sneak through the Mongol camp, you should switch over to something that’ll let you take more punishment, like the Samurai Clan Armor, Gosaku’s Armor, or the Sakai Clan Armor. The Samurai Clan Armor is probably best, as it’ll convert damage you take from the Khan into Resolve, so you’ll have more opportunities to heal yourself.
As you progress in the fight, Khan will add some blue-tinged spear strikes that are blockable if you’ve upgraded your Wind Stance. Parrying these provide more solid opportunities to do damage, so watch for them. When you get Khan down to the end of his health bar, he’ll make a run for it, changing up the battle significantly.
Khan’s Last Stand
The Kahn retreats to his ship and you’ll have to fight him again, but this time, you’ll face him as if he was a Mongol Leader enemy flanked by a bunch of guards, instead of as a duel–making the situation significantly tougher, as you’ll need to keep an eye on a lot of enemies at once. Fortunately, you also get access to all your Ghost tools and weapons, as well as opportunities to use the environment to your advantage. Use every trick in your arsenal to win the fight. Where Samurai Clan Armor was a good bet in the last fight, you might want to consider the Ghost Armor here. If you can rack up a few kills in a row, you can activate Ghost stance to kill even more of the soldiers flooding the fight, or to get some big hits in on the Khan without dealing with him blocking them. Defer to your preferred playstyle and make armor choices accordingly.
First, fight through the guards and chase the Khan up onto the ship. There, you’ll want to prioritize dealing with his soldiers quickly. You’ll have a batch of three or four tough enemies to fight to start with, including a Mongol Leader. Eventually, while you’re engaged with them, Khotun Khan will come after you to take advantage of the distraction. Look for explosive barrels and other opportunities to kill lots of enemies in a hurry; there are more barrels hanging over the battlefield that you can shoot down.
After you drop the first batch of enemies, you’ll fight the Khan while more enemies start to join the fray. He uses the same set of moves you saw during the duel, but now you’ll have lots of space to move well away from his big attacks and more opportunity to counter him. He’ll also attack more slowly, in general, giving you an opportunity to put space between you and him and hit him with your other weapons if you need to.
Keep hitting the Khan and you’ll trigger a cutscene, which also sends a bunch more enemies streaming in while the Khan takes a break. Prioritize archers, as usual, as they’ll be very annoying during this fight. They like to take positions higher up on the decks of the ship, but they also stand next to explosive barrels, making them easy to dispatch. You might also want to try to use arrows to snipe out the larger Brute enemies before they have a chance to irritate. Note that there are refills on all your consumables scattered around the ship’s deck, so don’t be afraid to make liberal use of explosives, arrows, and kunai. After you kill enough enemies, some flaming debris will fall and wreck one side of the ship’s deck, so keep your eyes open to avoid it.
Continually thin out the soldiers and then focus on the Khan with parries and counterattacks. He has a ton of health, but you’ll be able to whittle it down and sprint away if things get too hairy. When you hurt the Khan enough, you’ll see a prompt to hit the Triangle button, which will cut his spear down into a more sword-like blade. Khotun Khan will pull his shield at that point and starting lighting his blade on fire, so change your stance and tactics accordingly. At the same time, a bunch more archers will show up–try to run clear of the Khan and take them out quickly. Try to use the archers to get your Ghost stance up, which can help you finish off the Khan once and for all.
It’s cutscene time, before you wrap up some final loose ends.
The Tale Of Lord Shimura
As you might have guessed, the situation with Lord Shimura and the shogun is ongoing. Meet Lord Shimura at Omi Lake.
Most of what follows is story content, but you will have to fight one last duel. Lord Shimura utilizes all the techniques you saw from other samurai and ronin throughout the game. He moves very fast with unblockable attacks, so be wary of them–if he raises his katana above his head, he’s likely about to come at you with a very fast overhead strike that starts a three-hit combo; dodge the first two and parry the third. Likewise, placing his katana in its scabbard signals a likely three-hit unblockable combo that requires fast sidesteps (but you can interrupt it with a Heavenly Strike). Shimura also likes a thrust move with slightly delayed timing, but this one is blockable, and you can parry it if you get the hang of its speed.
Keep parrying and countering and you should win the duel before too long. At that point, you’ll wrap up Ghost of Tsushima’s main story campaign. After some cutscenes and credits, you’ll be returned to the game world to wrap up any other loose ends. Check out our Ghost of Tsushima guides to complete all the tales, find all the collectibles, and earn all the hidden Trophies in the game.
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