Deathloop, for me, was one of the most stylish games of 2021. Though firmly set as a shooter on a little dystopian island, there was something very Met Gala about a man in hot pink trying to kill you as you run away screaming. The fashion of the characters and NPCs is something special, as is the highly stylised world they inhabit, so it's only natural that Arkane has finally introduced a photo mode along with other accessibility options in a recent update.
Bethesda has released a little YouTube video celebrating the photo mode by showing us its versatility. As with most photo modes you can pose Colt in a number of positions to make him fit in with the world effortlessly. But you can also swap him out for the assassin Julianna and live out your murderous fantasies that way. Pretty neat to be able to dip into the game, although quite a bit after its initial release, and look at the attention to detail Arkane had with the project.
But what's even neater, and will make all the difference to some players, is the new accessibility options. A word from lead UI/UX designer Yoann Bazoge in the blog post about the update says: "We are truly grateful to the players and the ally community who gave us so much feedback when Deathloop was released. We took the time to read all of the accessibility reviews and watch the videos of players explaining why they couldn’t play Deathloop. We then worked on a document listing all of the feedback and drew up a roadmap of what the additions would be for Game Update 3.”
The result is 30 new improvements to the options from menu navigation to gameplay options. You can change combat difficulty, adjust the number of reprises (lives) Colt has, and even slow game speed. There is a full list of the changes here. Bazoge also notes that the team estimates that there are a total of 400 million people who need at least a little assistance when playing games. "That’s a lot of people that can feel left out without some of these options. When we began discussing it with our teams, people were very motivated about the idea of developing all of this."
Hopefully this means even more people can check the game out. But while you're at it, one of Arkane's other games Prey is currently free on the Epic Games Store.
