While skulking around the island of Blackreef in Arkane’s latest title Deathloop you have ample opportunity to drink in the art design as you try to stealth your way around enemies, and while doing so in our playthrough we took particular notice of the vehicles.
Arkane put a lot of thought into how Blackreef could function as a real place so, of course, the inhabitants need vehicles to get around, to clear snow and to have fun.
Explore enough of the island and you will see these vehicles coated in gold by some of the richer characters, used for races by others and even come across regular old car crashes which have been left out on the roads and sides of hills.
Some of these vehicles started to feel a bit familiar to us, and not just because we’ve played Dishonored and Prey and the style is distinct to Arkane.
Some of the vehicles in particular remind us of famous Hot Wheels toys.
One of the most popular cars in the game is a unique six-wheeled bakkie / pickup truck / whatever you call it in your country. You can see some fantastic concept art of the vehicle as it appears in the game in the header image at the top of this story.
This utility vehicles is seen hauling all manner of things throughout Blackreef, painted in several colours and even converted with canopies.
Some have pointed this out already but this car bares a striking resemblance to the Deora, a heavily customised Dodge made by two men in the 60s.
Most people aren’t familiar with the real car, however, but instead know about the Hot Wheels toy also called Deora. Part of the original “Sweet Sixteen” toys from 1968, the Deora is a Hot Wheels classic that many people will recognise at a glance even if they don’t know its name.
Another car that reminded of Hot Wheels is the above single seater creation. This particular image of the car above is a piece of concept art depicting it in a wind tunnel, released on the Deathloop website.
Microcars like this have existed for decades with famous examples including the Peel P50, BMW Isetta and Heinkel Kabine.
If you squint you can see influences of all those cars in the Deathloop fictional vehicle. To us it looks like a slimmed down and off road evolution of the bubble car single seaters.
The Hot Wheels toy that immediately came to mind was the Hyper Mite. As a wholly original design not directly based on a real car the Hyper Mite is also a Hot Wheels classic that has captured the imagination of fans over the years for its outrageous proportions.
Those of a certain age will also remember the Hyper Mite as a driveable car in the 2002 game Hot Wheels Velocity X.
The Hyper Mite and Deathloop single seater are obviously much further apart in terms of design and execution, but once we had the Deora in mind the Hyper Mite immediately jumped to the forefront while exploring Blackreef.
Feeling a bit like Charlie Kelly obsessing over Pepe Silva, we reached out to Arkane to ask if there’s any connection here.
Co-creative director and art director at Arkane Lyon, Sebastien Mitton, was kind enough to humour us.
“Vehicle design is always something our artists enjoy being part of. It was a great chance to immerse ourselves researching weird and wonderful car designs from the 60s, both real vehicles and concept models,” Mitton writes.
Hot Wheels was firmly in the public zeitgeist in the late 60s so we’re counting this one as a win.
While the Hyper Mite didn’t exist until 2001, Deathloop was only made over the past few years. On top of this, as with all art, everything inspires everything else.
To end off we’re going to leave you with a gallery of vehicles we saw during our time with Deathloop. The two vehicles discussed above appear throughout the game in various colours, conditions and configurations, so you really get to see how the residents of Blackreef use these cars.
We also captured images of many other vehicles. We’re sure someone out there will look over these and connect them to more real world vehicles… or other Hot Wheels.
[Images – Arkane Lyon | IGN | Hypertext | Hot Wheels Wiki]
