It’s going to be a while before you see Arkane’s stylish sandbox of cat and mouse assassins. Deathloop won’t be arriving this year, as the chaos of Covid-19 and the challenges of working from home has resulted in a delay of nearly half a year. In a message that was released on Twitter, developer Arkane Lyon detailed the delay of the time-looping shooter that was originally scheduled to be one of Sony’s big PS5 launch games:
We’ve made the decision to move Deathloop to Q2 2021. Our ambition for Deathloop is to deliver a signature Arkane game that takes you to never-before-seen places in a stylish new world. At the same time, the health and safety of everyone at Arkane Lyon remains our top priority. As we’ve adjusted to work-from-home, we found that delivering this new and exciting , at the polish and quality level that defines both an Arkane game and a true next-gen experience, is taking longer than normal.
This extra time will allow our team to bring Deathloop’s world to life with as much character and fun as you’ve come to expect from our team. While we know this is the right decision for Deathloop, we share your disappointment, and apologize for making you wait even longer.
Deathloop has a neat angle, in that players find themselves on an island where time resets every day. To break the loop, you need to take out several targets using your own skills as an assassin for hire. The catch here though, is that there’s another assassin on the island who’s actively hunting you. That role can be filled by another player in the game’s unique multiplayer setup, resulting in a constant chase where you never know when you’re going to be in danger.
Sort of like Tom and Jerry then, but without the cartoonish resistance to blunt force trauma and bullets. Deathloop’s delay means that the launch of the PlayStation 5 will be short a game, although its likely that it’ll still be exclusive to that console for a while when it does eventually arrive.
Last Updated: August 19, 2020
