We planned for Deathloop to have a PvP element from the start. The dynamics of Colt and Julianna are central to Deathloop’s story, and we wanted to reflect that in the gameplay as well. And how often are you lucky enough to play both the hero and the villain in games? Obviously, Colt’s Journey is the main campaign, but giving players the chance to dive into his story and hunt him down as his rival Julianna was such an interesting idea for us. Too interesting to miss.
When you play as Colt, Invader Julianna can be controlled by another player or by the AI, but that wasn’t always the case. There was a point in development when the game was still live and there was no AI Julianna. Upon careful consideration, this seemed unfair. We wanted players to be able to experience the game in their own way, and if that means letting them turn off online invasions, then we had to make it happen.
This is just one of the many things we had to consider when developing PvP. We knew we had to create a fair, fun and empowering experience for Colt, and we had to keep the invasions from becoming a nuisance. Of course, we also wanted to create a fun experience for Julianna players and try to put the fun of the hunt ahead of the fun of winning the game.
Julianna’s masquerade ability in the dev test environment
For Colt players, this meant adding the Resume ability, allowing Colt to “rewind” time if he dies. Julianna doesn’t have a Resume, so that definitely gives our Colt players an advantage. We also had to include the ability to completely avoid Julianna by hacking the antenna and exiting the map. We didn’t want Colt’s players to feel pressured into a meeting, especially if they were worried about losing valuable gear. Julianna has a few tricks up her sleeve that make her a fierce opponent, but we’ve created a balance by making sure that if Colt is playing as stealthily as possible, he’s pretty hard to track down.
To balance things out for Julianna’s players and encourage her to choose to play as a hunter, we’ve given her some unique reward options. The feat system allows Julianna to rank up by performing specific actions during the mission, which means that she doesn’t need to win a match to progress and earn rewards like weapons, abilities, upgrades and even character skins for her and Colt. We wanted this mode to be a fun addition, not a competition, which is also why we made the conscious choice not to include leaderboards for Invasions. But with all of Colt’s perks, we had to get back to how to make things fair for both players. This is how the cross-alert system was born. Julianna can receive information about Colt’s location from NPCs and security devices, and she can also alert NPCs to Colt’s location.
We had two main goals for PvP. The first objective is to break the model of the game when players explore maps or complete missions. When Julianna arrives on the map – whether it’s another player or the AI - the pace of the game suddenly changes and you (as Colt) have to reassess your plan. Are you looking for it and fighting it head-on? Do you cautiously sneak around the map, avoiding detection? Or do you run away without having achieved your goal? There’s so much to consider as a Colt – from the number of Rework charges you have left to gear that you could lose if you fail to get out of your one-on-one with Julianna alive. Of course, there are also the great rewards you receive if you defeat Julianna – all of your Re-charge charges reloaded, a huge amount of residue, a high-level weapon, a new ability, or an ability upgrade … You will want to weigh all your options and decide on the best course of action.
The second goal is to make each encounter unpredictable and unique. We love having all of these systems in our games that make it so that even we as developers don’t know what the players are going to do. Adding PvP to Deathloop has been an amazing opportunity for us to see what our players are capable of. AI behaviors can be anticipated or deceived. Human behavior cannot be. This is probably the main reason why we decided to allow players to play as the archenemy of the protagonist. And to be honest, being able to play the role of the main villain in a story is really cool!
Haven’t had the chance to experience PvP for yourself yet? Enter Deathloop’s Protect the Loop mode to play as Julianna and earn outfits for both characters. Check out Deathloop now, available on PS5.