Deathloop is going to offer players a chance to undertake a massive assassination hunt, 8 targets across an island that seemingly stepped out of the 60’s, but the island of Blackreef isn’t just a base, it is a town, full of folks who like to party.

As an island, Blackreef is made up four distinct locales, The Complex, Updaam, Fristad Rock and Karl’s Bay and each location has targets that like to call it home, the catch is though that at different times of the day, those locations can differ quite a lot. For example, in the demo that I got to see, Colt went to the location of Updaam at night, in order to take out his target, the location looks like a 60’s take on a castle, but as it is host to a party, there are stages, lighting and sound equipment and folks just hanging around for a good time.

What makes the location interesting, is that Colt discovered a note, that someone had left information in an office, but it was collected by the time he got there at night, so revisiting the location during an earlier part of the day, was on the cards. Now as the island is a ‘real’ place, times of day have an impact on the things you might see happening, for example, checking out Updaam in the middle of the day, shows that the party is being set up, so there are more trucks with supplies in them, which were not present when Colt was there at night. Time of day also impacts the people on the island, some folks may be in one location early on, but then move to another as the sunsets, so if your target likes to hang around in Karl’s Bay in the morning, visiting there are the afternoon, may have you discover that there is no target in sight.

Deathloop_Map of Blackreef-863726099713bed9a51.13118819.jpg

Back to Updaam though, visiting the office location during the day, Colt was able to find information, that made it easier to identify his target at night and while this was not a mandatory objective, as you can easily just hunt around or kill everyone at night, it made things easier for Colt. This of course plays back into the multiple ways that you can undertake any mission you choose, for example there are countless powers, but if you are trying to be sneaky, going in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining, might make things more difficult for you, because you know, that is why Ninjas stick to the shadows.

There are four distinct times of day on the island, Morning, Noon, Afternoon and Evening and each time has an impact on each location, so with four times of day and four locales, that means that 16 version of the island to explore. Exploring them is something you will want to do, not because a target is in a particular location, but purely from a design standpoint, as again, the 60s design choice is something that shines through in each area. The islands real world inspiration, came from the Faroe Islands, which is an archipelago located between Scotland, Iceland and Denmark, it is known for its black sand, jagged rocks and cliffs. That was the starting point, but the 60s came later as Sebastien Mitton, the games art director explained, that once they had established the games main story, it led to the setting making sense.

As the 60’s is such a broad spectrum of inspiration, the team looked several specific things, like the movie Point Blank, not the recent Netflix movie, or the French film that inspired it, but the original 1967 piece starring Lee Marvin. The team also investigated the history of the Apollo 11 missions, the ones here on Earth, where the team went to attempt to find locations would provide a sense of what they could expect on the moon. Those inspirations, combined with 60’s sci-fi for tools and machines, all came together, to create the Blackreef that you will experience in the game and there was even more beyond that, but that should put some perspective on it for you.

With four unique locations and multiple times in which to visit them, I can’t wait to explore each, to discover what secrets I can, along with any information in my quest to take down all eight targets.