It turns out that fans were correct; Deathloop and Dishonored do share the same universe. According to a recent interview with two of Arkane Studios’ developers, the events of Deathloop take place in the far-flung future of the world of Dishonored.
Bethesda has also taken to Twitter to confirm the link, showcasing some rather cool artwork that merges the Deathloop characters with the Dishonored environment.
The most recent episode of the Xbox Podcast shed some light on the theory, which has been doing the rounds amongst fans of both Deathloop and Dishonored since the release of Deathloop last year. In the discussion, Dinga Bakaba of Arkane Lyon, and Harvey Smith of Arkane Austin discussed the numerous Dishonored-based clues and secrets within Deathloop. In addition to this, they definitively confirmed that the two games are inextricably linked through the same, shared universe.
Deathloop‘s Creative Director Dinga Bakaba explained that “it was nice to see the community peek on the little clues that we did sprinkle everywhere that yes, indeed, we envisioned Deathloop to be happening in the future, after Death of the Outsider.” While this may be an exciting admission, it’s clear that the team at Arkane wanted to keep Deathloop‘s identity its own and not tie it in too overtly to the same world space as the Dishonored universe. “We didn’t want to make something too big about it, because this would be its own story, its own character, its own time period that we wanted to flesh out,” he explains.
Bakaba continues to discuss the setting of the game within the Dishonored universe, explaining that the team “always wondered about what would happen after” the death of the Outsider in the third Dishonored game. “As we were making Deathloop, we said hey, that could be one of the things that happen after that,” he elaborates, confirming that “we have a certain timeline to link that, and there are a lot of clues, actually, in the game.” One of these that Bakaba mentions is the game’s Heritage Rifle, which apparently has a small, barely visible logo etched onto the side which is actually the logo of Dunwall Tower, the legendary location from the Dishonored franchise.
Deathloop was most recently launched on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox Game Pass for both console and PC. This comes after a year of exclusivity on PlayStation, so now entire new audiences are being introduced to the stealth game’s innovative storytelling and timeloop-based mechanics. It definitely sounds like fans of the Dishonored games should jump into Deathloop and check out the numerous easter eggs and secrets that Arkane have evidently littered around the world of Blackreef, some of which have apparently “been under people’s noses all the time,” according to the developers.
Deathloop is available now on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass for PC and console, PS5 and PS4.
