Bethesda finally confirms it: Deathloop is a Dishonored game
Almost immediately after the release of Deathloop in 2021, fans began theorizing that it might somehow be connected to Dishonored, Arkane's previous game series. The two games are very different in many ways, but there are quite a few shared elements too, some overt and others quite subtle. Today, Deathloop creative director Dinga Bakaba made it official during an Xbox podcast: Deathloop is "one of the futures of the Dishonored world."
Some of the similarities between Deathloop and Dishonored are impossible to miss, like the supernatural abilities and the architectural style of Updaam. But there are less obvious pieces of connective tissue, too: This Reddit post from September 2021 is a good example of some early analysis of the two games that puts them together along a fairly consistent and convincing timeline.
Speaking during a new Xbox podcast, Bakaba said there's enough going on in Deathloop that not everyone sees everything, and so he's enjoyed watching the community discover the clues and put the pieces together—and he confirmed that, "Yes indeed, we envisioned Deathloop to be happening in the future, after Death of the Outsider."
Arkane didn't position Deathloop as a Dishonored spinoff because it wanted the game to be its own thing, with its own unique story, characters, time period, and so forth. At the same time, there was interest among developers about what would happen to the Dishonored world after the Outsider was no longer a presence. "And as we were making Deathloop, we said hey, that could be one of the things that could happen after that," Bakaba said.
"There are a lot of clues in the game, actually. There are some that are abused. One of them is really spoiler-y, so voila. But there are a lot of small things, and some that were under people's noses all the time, but people are just figuring out."
Bakaba said his favorite gentle hint is found on the Heritage Gun, a shotgun that can switch between conventional shotgun shells and slugs. "On the side, there is a little logo that you can barely see," Bakaba said. "But now that we've added idle breaks where the character plays with his guns, you can actually see that the logo is Dunwall Tower."
Even though fans had pretty well figured it out, it's fun to finally have the connection between the two games made official. "Once you know, you can unravel everything," Bakaba said. "And yes, it does make sense."