Why Deathloop Players Should Read The 7½ Kills of Evelyn Hardcastle

As my stream ended Deathloop During playback, I was vividly reminded of a book I had just finished: Stuart Turton’s best-seller, The 2018 Murder Mystery. The 7½ deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. If you liked one, you may like the other.

Although I am not the first to make this comparisonI found that the two echoed each other because they combine genres in an eerily similar way. Deathloop and The 7½ deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle both combine time cycles with murder mysteries, genres that are equally dense in detail and encourage the search for clues. Also, each category is very popular on its own. Time loops are a sci-fi trope that is scattered throughout the movie, with Groundhog Day as the de facto icon of the genre, and many other examples since then. The Agatha Christie murder mysteries remain popular as well. Deathloop and The 7½ deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle both draw the best of these genres, creating something unique yet familiar.

Joining time loops and murder mysteries may not seem like the easiest marriage, but in Deathloop and Evelyn Hardcastle, they fit extremely well. A murder mystery focuses more explicitly on the detective novel, and could insist on both characterization and clue-setting and tight plotting. A time-cycle story also requires meticulous plotting, but is often already a mystery, where the story can hinge on figuring out what got the characters in the first place. The meeting of the two is a maddening combination of “who” and “why”, and figuring it out feels like seeing several Starts nested within each other. It becomes what I jokingly call “notebook carry” entertainment, since both Deathloop and Evelyn hardcastle they require audiences to search carefully for the facts to solve the puzzle.

Image: Arkane Studios / Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

[Ed. note: The rest of this article contains minor spoilers for Deathloop.]

Deathloop and Evelyn hardcastle they also have a similar configuration. They both open up by dropping the main character in an unfamiliar place, and then force him to slowly learn the rules of the cycle in which they are trapped. From there, the granular comparisons between the two stories only increase. They both skip hours of the day and locations, they both feature a Bioshock-as interlocutor, and both force the protagonist to interact with his past and future self.

More than that, despite its different tonal notes, Deathloop and Evelyn hardcastle they have a lot of shared DNA in their narrative forms, although the former is a bit more dystopian western sci-fi, while the latter is a bit more of an English mansion thriller. Both also share a high level of complexity, sometimes maddening. DeathloopInterwoven narratives hold the key to breaking the circle. And what is more, Deathloop it doesn’t allow players to save the middle loop, which really brings out the formal aspect of being forced to start over after death. At the same time, the mystery of who Colt and Julianna are, and what they have been up to in previous cycles, hangs over the entire company.

The 7½ deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle he finds his narrative propulsion from similar sources, but allows him to be the passenger. Far from feeling like a more passive experience, the book offers an impressive number of characters to follow. Nest the stories within the stories, since the protagonist also wakes up in various places and times of the day; there are other wrinkles, which I won’t spoil here: finding clues and overhearing conversations by chance. At best, it also feels like a symphony of plot elements, where every detail somehow comes together at the end.

If it ends Deathloop has sent you into a spiral, and not the kind where you repeat the same day over and over again, The 7½ deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle it could be a good story to move on to the next one. Although I am not sure I recommend consuming both together as I did. It would be nice if you gave your brain a little break first.