More than just a knowing wink, this number (or some variation of it) is a direct reference to Looking Glass Studios, a developer that existed from 1990 to 2000 and paved the way for immersive first-person games. ( This is the most up-to-date list I could find.) It opens the first door in BioShock, unlocks a supply crate in Firewatch, and even grants access to a VIP’s office in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, among many other examples. Whether knowingly or not, there’s a good chance you’ve entered this same code before. Image: Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon A trophy pops up with the same idiom printed next to its colorful little icon. “Old habits die hard,” Colt utters aloud to himself. “Yeah,” I tell myself, “I’m pretty sure I do.” I enter the digits 0-4-5-1 with a smug grin. “You know the code,” an ethereal set of floating letters tells me. There’s a keypad next to it, with space for four numbers. Filling the shoes of this tabula rasa, I wake up on a beach, with an empty bottle of booze by my side, before venturing into the concrete tunnels of the island of Blackreef. Like the protagonist of (so) many video games, Deathloop’s Colt begins with a case of amnesia.
And an Easter egg in its opening moments pays homage to that lineage. And as with all of Arkane’s releases, Deathloop wouldn’t exist were it not for a defunct, and criminally overlooked, game studio from the ’90s.
As with all of developer Arkane’s games, it combines divergent inspirations to create a singular universe of its own. Deathloop mines a vast array of aesthetic sources, from the medieval architecture of Germany’s Northeim district, to Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, to the vibrant fashion of Pierre Cardin.
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