Deathloop will follow Colt, a man stuck in a time loop who must assassinate eight targets before a reset. These targets are the NPC "Visionaries" behind the loop itself, but they aren't the only forces Colt will have to go up against as he tries to escape from his temporal limbo and make his way home.
Julianna "Jules" Blake will be the second potential player character in Deathloop. Tasked with hunting down Colt, she stands to be one of the most mysterious and interesting elements of both the game's storytelling and its mechanics as revealed so far.
Blackreef
Deathloop will be set on the island of Blackreef at some point in the 1960s. Once an army base that hosted strange scientific experiments, the island has since been taken over by a group known as the Visionaries, who have managed to establish a fully operational time loop on Blackreef. From what has been revealed so far this appears to have given them a form of immortality until the loop is broken.
However, based on the fact that players will be able to manipulate events using their knowledge from previous loops, it seems that most of the Visionaries have left themselves unable to remember information from their past lives. The "Two Birds One Stone" Deathloop trailer, for example, shows Colt manipulating a target based on the knowledge that a scientist Visionary will make the same breakthrough every day.
The game's main player character, Colt, is somehow able to carry knowledge across each loop. One of the main aims of Deathloop will be to manipulate events such that some of the Visionaries are in the same places at the same times, allowing them to be assassinated together. Colt is not the only Deathloop character, however, who appears to be able to retain knowledge from past loops.
Juliana Blake
Jules "Julianna" Blake will be hunting down Deathloop's Colt as he tries to take down the Visionaries. It appears that her only goal is to maintain the time loop itself. The gameplay trailer reveals that Colt will be able to use many sci-fi abilities like teleportation among others which fans of the Dishonored games will recognize. So far the extent of Jules' powers have yet to be revealed.
Jules is one of the eight Visionaries in Deathloop, but the fact that she also appears able to remember her previous lives makes her one of the most mysterious and interesting characters revealed for the upcoming game so far. Julianna Blake isn't just interesting because of her potential role in the story, however.
Players will have the option to have Jules played by a second player character, who will be tasked with disrupting their plans and resetting the loop. In this sense, the second player's knowledge of the game may stand in for Jules' knowledge of past loops, while the unique ability of human enemies to form new tactics could make the in-universe rivalry between Colt and Jules feel all the more real.
Jules has found herself in a very interesting position. She wants to maintain the time loop, but in doing so effectively dooms herself to spend every day hunting down Colt. Her only real hope is that Colt will eventually give up trying to stop the time loop, which could add another interesting dynamic to their relationship.
Depending on the players the hunter could quickly become the hunted. The unique relationship between Colt and Jules in both the story and the games' mechanics could be one of the most interesting and ambitious aspects of Deathloop. Making sure Jules remains a compelling antagonist and not a constant annoyance, however, will be a key challenge for Arkane Studios to overcome.
Deathloop is set for release on PC and PlayStation 5 on May 21, 2021.