Deathloop takes place in the same world as Dishonored, creative director confirms

Time-bending sci-fi shooter Deathloop is one of the possible futures of the Dishonored universe, Arkane’s Dinga Bakaba revealed during a recent episode of the Xbox podcast. Bakaba was the creative director on Deathloop, and lead designer for Dishonored 2 and Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider. He’s finally spilled the tea, confirming players’ suspicions that the two Arkane series beginning with a D and featuring magical abilities are linked.

"It was nice to see the community pick up on the little clues that we did sprinkle everywhere that… yes, indeed, we envisioned Deathloop to be happening in the future after Death Of The Outsider," Bakaba told podcast host Jeff Rubinstein. Bakaba insisted there were a lot of clues in Deathloop for sharp-eyed players to spot, but his favourite was plastered on the side of the Heritage shotgun. “You can actually see that the logo is Dunwall Tower. So it's pretty clear!” Bakaba said.

Deathloop and Dishonored are similar in their attitudes to society too, Bakaba posited. “When you take a step back and look at the world, the magic and the technology, there are some things about classes and inequalities,” he said. “Even though that's something that those characters flee, you can see that those differences are still there.” The creative director explained that, although Arkane saw Deathloop as an evolution of Dishonored’s world, they took care to be vague about the world’s past, or disguise it.

“It was nice for us to be imagining one of the futures of the Dishonored world and to have that make sense, “ Bakaba said. Players have been theorising about possible connections to Dishonored since Deathloop was released, some of which you can read here on the game’s subreddit.

Brendy (RPS in peace) thought that the game was a substantially less stealthy affair than its stablemate Dishonored in his Deathloop review. “Just know that those who prefer the quiet quicksaveyness of the Dishonoreds will grumble at the inability to use all their powers, the shift to shootybang, the disappearance of non-lethality and corpse hiding - all the signposts of a true immersive sim,” he said.

Deathloop is available on Steam and the Epic Games Store for £50/$60/€60. It also arrived on PC Game Pass and the Microsoft Store last month. You can listen to the full podcast episode Bakaba appeared on here.