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Arkane Studio’s ‘Deathloop’ Will Head to PS5 and PC For Holiday 2020
Deathloop, the hugely exciting new time-bending game from Arkane Studios, creators of the excellent Prey and Dishonored 2, has received a brand new gameplay trailer at the PS5 game reveal event, and the game is also now a PS5 console exclusive alongside a PC launch.
Arkane aims to blur the line between singleplayer and multiplayer with Deathloop, as while this is an immersive sim like previous Arkane titles, the antagonist here could well be controlled by another player, out to mess up your bid to escape the violent time loop you’re stuck in.
The press release lays out the wider story quite nicely.
Deathloop puts you in the role of Colt, a man with a unique problem. Every morning you wake up on the same beach with the same killer hangover, the subject of the same island-wide manhunt by the same entitled partyers. There’s only one way to free yourself from the loop, the island, and the cycle of slaughter: You’re gonna have to take out the eight people responsible for maintaining the loop. You’ve got to accomplish this nigh-impossible task before midnight, so you better get creative.
Each repeated day is an opportunity to learn, adapt, and solve the puzzle of Deathloop. It’s up to you how you go about this. You can tackle each loop at your own pace, and in any order you choose – selecting your missions, targets and explorations as you see fit. Arm yourself with a variety of devastating weapons and supernatural abilities to survive the AEON Program and break the loop. Take the knowledge you gain from each day to try different paths and playstyles as you navigate the treacherous backstreets and hidden lairs of Blackreef. Stay on your toes, rework your strategies and push forward, all the while compiling clues as to the inner workings of the island. And remember: If at first you don’t succeed… die, die again.
Deathloop will be coming to PS5 and PC this holiday season, so presumably, it’ll be a launch title for Sony’s system.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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