Deathloop will release on Xbox Game Pass, Xbox consoles, and PC Game Pass on September 20th, after one year of console exclusivity on the PS5.
Deathloop was also released on PC in addition to PS5 last September. However, Deathloop’s console exclusivity on PS5 was slightly weird, given the game was published by Bethesda, a company Microsoft acquired last year.
The first-person shooter conceived by Arkane Lyon was nominated for several games of the year awards after its release in September last year, thanks to its captivating mix of action and stealth gameplay, retro sci-fi art style, and exciting time looping structure.
After the acquisition was announced, Xbox head Phil Spencer said the company would honor the game’s preexisting PS5 exclusivity deal despite being for Sony’s rival console. But Spencer has suggested that future Bethesda titles will likely be available exclusively on Microsoft’s platforms.
Deathloop was a timed console exclusive on PS5; hints of its forthcoming announcement for Xbox started cropping up early on Wednesday when ads for the game began emerging on the Xbox console dashboard. These ads appear to have been posted prematurely, but establishing them didn’t lead to a store page.
Deathloop takes place over a single day on the subarctic island of Blackreef. Blackreef was originally a place for a small fishing settlement and a military base where investigations were conducted on local temporal faults. It is now possessed by the AEON Program, established by scientist Egor Serling to influence the island’s unique features to attain immortality by living in an endless time loop.
Serling attracted eight other eccentric and talented individuals to his cause, the Visionaries, and scores of young, passionate followers called Eternalists dedicated to aiding them. Thanks to the time loop, the associates of the AEON Program can maintain a never-ending party where they can do everything they feel like without fear of outcomes. The loop resets at midnight and fixes everyone to their initial state with no recollections of the previous day.
Two of the Visionaries are disrupting the natural flow of the loop: Colt Vahn and Julianna Blake. Julianna is unsusceptible to the time loop’s remembrance erasure. Every day, she cautions all of Blackreef’s inhabitants that Colt has backstabbed the AEON Program and wants to break the circle, forcing everyone to hunt him.
Colt also conceives the power to retain his memories from earlier days and is thus able to understand the behaviors and customs of the Visionaries and Eternalists. To smash the loop, Colt must assassinate all eight other Visionaries, including Julianna, in a single day because the loop requires only one of them to still be active at midnight to reset again.