Deathloop and the Nature of Video Games

 The first time I ever played Super Mario World, I was at an old defunct Girl Scouts' camp in Maine that my dad's colleague owned as a vacation spot. His son had a Super Nintendo, and my sister and I had really not played any video game consoles before.

Super Mario World is, to me, the quintessential, platonic idea of what a "video game" even means to me.

But my sister and I were both unused to the challenge and difficulties of video games, so rather than trying to progress through the game, we just ran the level Yoshi's Island 2 over and over and over again. We learned its patterns and were able to often get to the end, earning a bunch of lives and letting the older kids play the later levels.

The thing is, this kind of repetition and learning in games is a big part of how video games are structured. Speedrunners know every little corner and beat of each level in games like Super Mario World, but this kind of learning through repetition is also how, for example, a World of Warcraft raid works. You stumble through the fights the first time through, and while the gear you get lets you have an easier time through it, a big part is just learning the patterns and strategies of the fight.

Deathloop, interestingly, makes this idea canonical. Every time you re-play a level, it's not just a video game conceit, but is instead what is actually happening. The fact that NPCs have the same conversations and movement patterns each time you could back to, say, Updaam at Noon, is justified by the game's time loop premise, even thought it's exactly how every video game works.

In fact, I think this is almost an evolution of the concept in FromSoft's Souls games, which has an in-universe justification for why you come back when you die - rather than just having you sort of pretend like any time you fail in a level or area is not canonical, these games embrace it.

But Deathloop even covers the reason why NPCs act the same way each time.

Anyway, I'm nearing the end of the game. I've managed to take down each of the Visionaries at least once, and I've completed enough of their "leads" to set up the final break-the-loop mission.

I still think there are a lot of things I could figure out to make things a bit smoother. This is a game that has tons of optional secrets and methods to unlock.