Deathloop, the latest game from acclaimed immersive sim developers Arkane Studios, has been very well-received by critics, earning praise for its setting, gameplay, and intuitive but experimental use of the game's titular time loop. It has also been well-received by fans, albeit with some caveats.
It is hard to avoid comparisons, and Arkane are best known for their Dishonored series, considered a breath of fresh air and groundbreaking for both immersive sims and the stealth genre, as well as being beloved for its characters, setting, and worldbuilding. Both games have their strengths, and there are clear areas in which they outdo the other.
Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for both Deathloop and the Dishonored series.
10 Deathloop Is BETTER Than Dishonored: Progression Is Less Linear, More Open
Within Dishonored, each individual level the player progresses through is open within itself, usually containing several approaches to complete the ultimate objective, as well as batches of hidden rewards, side missions, and quirks of the world to see. Nonetheless, the progression from level to level is fixed and linear.
In Deathloop, as well as each area being open in itself, the player is given their free choice of which areas they travel to at which times. A major part of the game's progression is figuring out viable "routes" through the areas of the game to kill all of the targets before the day ends.
9 Deathloop Is WORSE Than Dishonored: The Protagonist Is Less Likeable
Dishonored is beloved for its characters, including its protagonists. Corvo, despite being a silent character in the first game, won fans for his impressive design and loyalty to his lover and daughter. Daud's arc of redemption or damnation appealed to many. In the second game, this is only increased, with Corvo becoming voiced and telling a tale of having one last righteous rampage as he ages, whilst Emily endears herself with a brutal coming-of-age story.
By contrast, Colt from Deathloop has fewer fans. While not unpopular, he has a more generic personality than Corvo, Daud, Emily, or Billie Lurk and isn't as intelligent as any of them, and in the backstory spent decades hunting their daughter down and killing her every day, even for sympathetic reasons. As such, many have found Colt less engaging than any of Dishonored's four protagonists.
8 Deathloop Is BETTER Than Dishonored: The Gunplay Is More Varied
Deathloop takes place in a much more modern setting than Dishonored, with the level of technology— super-science aside— resembling the 1970s or 1980s, and this stretches as far as the weapons technology.
In Dishonored, most combat is done with powers or a sword, and Corvo's only ranged weapons are a simple single-shot pistol, or a crossbow. By contrast, Deathloop has a wide variety of guns for Colt to make use of, including the standard guns players have come to expect from first-person shooters, as well as unique hybrids between types.
7 Deathloop Is WORSE Than Dishonored: The Setting Is Less Distinctive
Deathloop's setting would be a daring and avant-garde one by the standards of many developers, being set on a 1980s-themed island stuck in an endless time loop, where the inhabitants have devolved into endless hedonism and strange rituals with weird science dotting nearly every part of it.
However, it has to stand against Dishonored's Empire of the Isles, a rare industrial revolution-era fantasy setting with a spectacularly grim and dark world. Despite a keen aesthetic and an interesting world, Deathloop fails to stand out as more distinctive than Dishonored's "whalepunk."
6 Deathloop Is BETTER Than Dishonored: The Dark Ending Makes More Sense
Both mainline Dishonored games contain a truly Dark ending, in addition to their happier Low Chaos endings, and more grim High Chaos endings, that require High Chaos, and then something else. In the first game, Corvo has to fail to save Emily at the game's climax, whilst in the second, either Emily or Corvo have to refuse to have the other unfrozen from Delilah's magic. In the first game, Dunwall is simply destroyed by the plauge, and in the second, Corvo or Emily become one of the most evil Emperors in history.
These endings all come a bit out of nowhere, and fans in particular take issue with the second game's dark endings for seeming out of character. In Deathloop, the darker ending has Colt ultimately choose to remain in the loop, treating it as a game with Julianna. Dark, but it fits with Colt's goals of trying to make peace with his daughter.
5 Deathloop Is WORSE Than Dishonored: No Chaos System Analogue
One of Dishonored's most-acclaimed mechanics is the Chaos system, wherein the player can influence the overall stability of the Empire of the Isles through their actions. If they kill people and disrupt everyday life, people become more paranoid, plagues worsen, and people become crueler to match the more callous world in which they're forced to live. If fewer people are killed, the plagues recede, characters become kinder, and the endings are happier.
Deathloop has no similar system, with there being no morality applied to Colt's rampage through Blackreef. While this has its strengths, it reduces the feeling of a coherent and immersive world, and loses part of what makes Dishonored interesting and replayable. Fans are split on how significance the absence is.
4 Deathloop Is BETTER Than Dishonored: It Has Integrated Multiplayer
With Arkane's signature complex-yet-learnable level design, the variety of methods of killing available, and the breadth of interesting powers, many fans have been hoping for a multiplayer outing for some time, despite the sheer quality of Dishonored and Prey as single-player experiences.
Until Deathloop, the closest was Prey's Typhon Hunter mode, which acts as more of a "hide and seek" mode than multiplayer. Deathloop not only includes multiplayer, it integrates it into the single-player, with the other player taking the role of Colt's daughter Julianna, his major hindrance during his quest to end the loop.
3 Deathloop Is WORSE Than Dishonored: The NPC AI Is Flawed
One of the flaws of Deathloop that fans picked up on more than critics is the game's low difficulty relative to Dishonored. A large part of this is due to the AI of NPC enemies, even significant ones like the Visionaries. Some have found them to pose little threat to stealth, and be relatively easy to overcome in combat.
By contrast, Dishonored is known for a robust level of difficulty, with varied enemy types with different AI, each of whom are capable of posing a threat to the player in certain circumstances. Deathloop's first patch addresses AI issues, but it remains to be seen if this will satisfy fans.
2 Deathloop Is BETTER Than Dishonored: Gameplay Is More Open To Experimentation
Being immersive sims, Arkane's games are full of opportunities for experimentation. There are different ways to play individual levels, specific set pieces, and even entire playthroughs, based off of powers, choices, and routes taken through obstacles.
Dishonored games tend to be short for this exact reason, allowing the player to replay them quickly and see how different opportunities play out. Rather than take this approach, Deathloop instead harnesses its unique premise, allowing the player to try a different route through the entire game simply by dying and resetting the loop, as well as making powers and weapons easily changeable.
1 Deathloop Is WORSE Than Dishonored: The Villains Aren't As Impressive
Part of why Dishonored's stories are so beloved are for the vile villains the heroes are sent up against. From egotistical inventors, to corrupt leaders of a church militant, to fearsome witches, Dishonored's villains manage to make big impacts on both the stories, and the player themselves, despite their often-short screentime.
By contrast, Deathloop's Visionaries simply don't quite have the same luster, in part due to the game's openness preventing major villain twists like the betrayal of the Loyalists in Dishonored. Only Julianna has anything like as much impact as a Dishonored villain, and even this only becomes apparent towards the end of the game (or in multiplayer). In particular, the game lacks anything equivalent to the Outsider, one of Dishonored's most iconic characters.