Arkane Studio’s Deathloop is one of the biggest and most anticipated AAA titles to be released in 2021. It’s an ambitious cycle of trapping players in a completely open inevitable death loop, to say the least. The fact that it’s replayable and hardly a boring adventure says much more about its overall quality. However, Deathloop is far from the first title to truly explore time looping in video games.
1. Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy VIII
In the original Final Fantasy, the first boss you fight is a man named Garland who has kidnapped Princess Sarah. At first glance he appears as a mere footnote in your quest to challenge the Four Fiends to bring peace to the land. He becomes Garland himself when you defeat him and go back in time to fight Chaos, the source of evil! This idea of creating and destroying your own mortal enemy in a time loop is replayed in Final Fantasy VIII as you battle the sorceress Ultimasia.
When you kill her, she runs past the sorceress Edia, but not before you’re able to relay the message making SEED to eliminate her, which establishes why Squall’s trip Hui.
2. The Stanley Parable
Another game that plays with a time loop, The Stanley Parable takes a decidedly meta approach. The actual gameplay is fairly simple, and the developers instead mess with the player through the use of an omniscient narrator. This narrator provides fun commentary, but also gives important clues as to how to change the course of the game.
Ignoring his words can lead to new scenarios, hidden Easter eggs, and even death. Players will want to start the loop over and over again to see everything this experience has to offer. Not many games successfully handle heavy philosophical themes, but it does with flying colors.
3. Minit
For gamers wanting a smaller-scale experience, Minute succeeds in exactly what it attempts to accomplish. Emulating classic 2D games like the original Legend of Zelda, Minute’s world is doomed to reset every sixty seconds. Players must explore the small world they live in over and over, finding new paths and secret areas until they finally “complete” the loop within the allotted minute. With a minimalist pixel aesthetic and simple yet satisfying puzzle mechanics, Minute is a game that stays small and is better for it.
4. Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
There is no greater symbolic claim that the Gregorian calendar is an arbitrary attempt to ignore the chaos of existence than when I stab you with the knife of my time. This prince of Persia popularized wall-running and the “undo death” button at the same time. This is the peak for those who don’t like to wank.
It is also designed as an Arabian Nights-style story, told by a princely hero to a princess who does not know him. So when you toss the boy to his death multiple times in a level, his narrator voiceover “game over” pops up on the screen. “Wait,” he protests, “it didn’t happen.”
It’s a fun touch, but it also means Ejith is going to the princess’ chamber there: “And then I jumped over the 279th Pit of Spikes, or was it the 280th? But anyway I fell and died.” Gaya, wait no I’m not dead, ha ha, obviously I’m not dead, where was I?” Imagine that a swindled intruder in your own house keeps telling you about his dreams. This is what this girl is experiencing. For 10 hours.
5. modification of Skyrim,
This is especially interesting given the game’s development history. It was originally conceived as a modification of the massive open-world game Skyrim back in 2016, and became a cult hit before a team of indie developers turned it into a standalone. I’ve honestly never been to Skyrim, it seemed too big and heavy for my often outlandish sensibilities, but The Forgotten City is so compelling that I want to dust off my copy and use the mod in its first iteration.
I want to experience Something else I’ve gotten into quarantine is fanfiction (I guess, at 31, that I’m probably the oldest living first-time reader) and the question of how do you take on someone else’s characters and the world. Make and turn them into something fresh is extremely appealing to me. Familiarity is comfortable; The new context is exciting.
