7 Things You Don’t Know About DEATHLOOP

Prowling stealthily across rooftops or tearing through the streets of Blackreef in a hail of bullets.

Finding a hidden entrance or busting in through the front door. There are many ways to reach your objectives in DEATHLOOP. Our target in this extended look at the game is the Visionary Aleksis “The Wolf” Dorsey. Watch Colt infiltrate his well-guarded nightly party and take him down in this first extended look at DEATHLOOP, with commentary from Dinga Bakaba, Game Director at Arkane Lyon.

DEATHLOOP is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Windows 10/11 PC, and is also available for PlayStation Plus (Extra and Premium) subscribers and with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and Cloud Gaming (Beta) for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members.

Blackreef is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma and shrouded in riddles, but the extended gameplay provides some insight into a few things that will help you on your journey. Things you might not have known before.

The timeloop causes amnesia for everyone on the island… except one person.

The human mind isn’t meant to withstand eternity, and after a certain amount of time stuck in the same never-ending cycle, the inhabitants of Blackreef started to experience some… side effects. Everyone on the island is suffering from amnesia caused by the timeloop, including our hero Colt. They have all seemingly forgotten how long they’ve been repeating the same day. The only person who doesn’t seem to be affected by the amnesia is Colt’s nemesis, Julianna. She remembers everything, and she’s more than willing to use this knowledge against you. How can you defend yourself against the one person on the island who knows everything? Well for reasons unknown at the start of the game, Colt has started retaining knowledge and memories between cycles, too. Julianna was ten steps ahead of you before, but now you’re closing the gap.

The writing is on the wall… and in the air… and everywhere.

All across Blackreef you’ll spot messages for Colt. Often, they seem like helpful pieces of advice or guidance, but sometimes the messages are disjointed or confusing. They’ll start making more sense when you uncover more of the island’s secrets, but you’ll learn to rely on them from the earliest moments of your adventure on Blackreef.

Colt takes his powers from downed Visionaries.

In the extended gameplay, you can see Colt pick something up after killing Aleksis. That’s an upgrade to his Karnesis ability, which lets him toss people around like dolls. Killing Visionaries will always net you a huge reward, whether it’s a new ability or a powerful upgrade to an ability you already have, so it never hurts to kill them more than once. You’ll be able to keep your favorite abilities and upgrades, thanks to our next tip.

You don’t have to start from nothing with each new cycle.

As you progress through DEATHLOOP, you’ll eventually discover something called Residuum as you take down Eternalists and Visionaries. Once unlocked, Residuum can be spent between attempts to preserve your favorite abilities and pieces of gear permanently. You drop any unspent Residuum when you die, but even that might not be the end if you’ve got a Reprise charge to burn…

Reprise is an assassin’s best friend.

Reprise will be one of your closest allies on Blackreef. Thanks to this ability, unlocked early in the game, death isn’t an automatic restart. If you’re killed, you’ll have two chances to do a little time rewinding without restarting. Die a third time, however, and the day will end. When you expend a Reprise, time only rewinds for Colt. As you saw in the extended gameplay, everything else on Blackreef is unaffected, meaning all enemies you killed before being taken down are still dead. One more important thing to note: Killing Julianna will refill your Reprise charges, so it pays to hunt the hunter.

There are dozens of reasons to explore areas multiple times.

Blackreef is a living island, with hundreds of stories to tell. Taking the time to explore and do some digging could net valuable rewards. Visiting the same spot at different times of day may reveal a new facet of DEATHLOOP’s story or give you a new clue to breaking the timeloop. You could even overhear a conversation that leads you to a new item and new opportunities.

You are the master of your own destiny.

Once you get through the prologue, the entire island (and the entire day) are open to you. You’ll be able to jump between times of day and districts of Blackreef whenever you choose. There’s no timer for you to keep an eye on. Time will only pass when you finish what you’ve set out to do in a district, but you can only visit one district per time period. It’s completely up to you how you explore. Say, for instance, that you start a new day, but you know there’s something you want for a future attempt that can only be found at the very end of the day. You can choose to skip past the first three time periods, and head straight to your objective for this cycle. If it was a specific weapon or ability you were after, you’ll be able to spend Residuum to keep it for the future. If it was intel, well… knowledge is power in DEATHLOOP.