Death of the Outsider’s events are followed by Deathloop.
Deathloop is set in the future of the world introduced in the Dishonored video games, according to Arkane Studios.
Director of Deathloop and Arkane Lyon studio Dinga Bakaba, who also appeared on The Official Xbox Podcast with Arkane Austin studio director Harvey Smith, provided this confirmation.
Bakaba was questioned by Xbox’s Jeff Rubenstein about the speculations and suggestions that Deathloop is a part of this broader universe. Rubenstein claimed he didn’t need to confirm anything, but Bakaba went above and beyond by not only confirming that this was accurate but also outlining the reasoning for doing so.
Bakaba remarked about Deathloop, “Not everyone has witnessed the same thing.” “The song you may have heard in secret has not been heard by everyone. Every room hasn’t been seen by everyone, etc. The community’s interest in the tiny hints we left scattered throughout revealed that, yes, indeed, we thought Deathloop would take place after [Dishonored 2’s standalone expansion] Death of the Outsider.”
Bakaba said the team didn’t want to make this connection too obvious and front-facing as it wanted Deathloop to have a story and identity that stood on its own, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t use the game to explore what would happen after the events of Death of the Outsider.
“We thought, Hey, [this scenario] may be one of the things that could happen after [Death of the Outsider] as we were creating Deathloop. Therefore, we have a specific period to connect that, and there are actually many hints throughout the game “explained Bakaba. There are some that are abused, one of which is really spoiler-y, so voilà, but there are also a lot of little things and some that have been around for a while but are only now coming to light.
One of these allusions can be seen on the Heritage Rifle shotgun. Before the most recent Goldenloop update, which featured “idle breaks where the guy toys with his pistol,” it was impossible to read the logo on the side of this weapon properly. Now, Dunwall Tower from Dishonored can be recognised in the logo.
These threads, in Bakaba’s words, are like “this little scavenger hunt inside the scavenger hunt” that is Deathloop, and if players look closely enough, they can be found.
Every time they brought up the past, Bakaba stated, “We tried to perceive everything as a progression, but either we were vague enough or we masked the names in, I would say, natural ways.” “Like, they discuss the Motherland rather than Tyvia, but once you know, you can surely unravel everything. It makes sense, that much is true. So, having it make sense as we imagined one possible future for the Dishonored world was fantastic.”
We nevertheless gave Deathloop a rare 10/10 even though we were unaware of all of these allusions to a greater cosmos. In our review of Deathloop, we stated: “Its systems are straightforward to traverse, learn from, and ultimately master thanks to the elegant implementation of its high-concept, original ideas regarding time loops and non-linear research work. Deathloop is a game unlike any other, setting a new bar for Arkane and creators of related games to aim towards.”