Arkane Studios have shown off 10 minutes of Deathloop, their upcoming Rogue-like shooter at today’s State of Play livestream. The game launches exclusively on PS5 on September 14th 2021.

Not much new was shown, since Deathloop’s premise came with a description of the broad strokes of the game’s gameplay. You’ll play as Colt, who comes to Blackreef Island to kill The Visionaries. Every time he dies, time resets to the start of the day.

While the premise whould be familiar to anyone who’s seen a trailer for the game, the developers talked more about the moment-to-moment gameplay, even showing some tricks they’d learned from developing the Dishonored series.

Rogue-Like Mechanics

The biggest reveal from the gameplay was just exactly how Deathloop would incorporate its Rogue-like elements. Deathloop will have a resource called Residuum that you can acquire, which can be spent to lock in your abilities so they persist between the game’s runs.

Similarly, the game’s bosses- the Visionaries- will all respawn as you reset, and Arkane recommends killing them multiple times since they drop upgrades to powers on kill.

Reprise is another skill Colt can use, acting as additional lives. With Reprise, you can die without resetting your run, since Colt will just rewind to a safe spot instead of starting the day altogether. With this ability, enemies won’t reset either, so you’ll be able to make progress without the heartbreak of starting a new run.

Arkane Charm

The gameplay preview also showed us Arkane’s signature playstyle, with many nods to the Dishonored series. Colt can teleport in a way very reminiscent of Corvo’s Blink from the Dishonored series, and you’ll be able to learn about secrets by eavesdropping on enemies as well as paying attention to environmental details.

Similarly the game encourages to stop and listen regularly, as things like the rules of Aleksis’ party are all only explained by watching the NPCs interact with each other.