I have a love-hate relationship with MOBAs, but Deadlock—after its new Old Gods, New Blood update—has dragged me back to the genre kicking and screaming. I've got over 2,400 hours in Dota 2 from my misspent uni years, and I'm currently sitting on 183 hours with Valve's latest and counting.
I'm having a good time, and by "good time", I mean I am magnetically attracted to this dopamine machine and cannot pull away, even while I learn about all the fun new slurs I can be called by strangers online. But that comes with the territory. I'm deep in the paint enough that I've been viciously consuming voicelines, lore, and worldbuilding when I'm not playing.
And yet, I can't shake off this sense of malaise—a feeling of "what if", and I think it's that worldbuilding to blame. Not because it's bad, but because it's very, very good.
Deadlock might be one of my favourite videogame settings in a while. It's placed within a fantastical 1950s America where magic is not only real, but it's become a heck of a lot more real within the past few decades.
An event, called the Maelstrom, opened a bunch of Astral Gates across the world—including one right above New York, dubbed the Cursed Apple. The reason it's a MOBA is because there are two patrons trying to manifest fully in this magic-flooded planet, and you've gotta stop them.
Valve's character artists and writers have taken this concept and run with it. In no particular order, here are some of my favourite facts about this setting:
- There's a governmental agency that invades people's dreams called the Sandmen.
- The Vatican has supersoldier exterminators.
- 'Hell', actually another realm called Ixia, has been permanently connected to the Earth, and also South Ixia is a member of the United States.
- Ixians have been a part of human society for so long that the game's newest character has a conversation about identity and diaspora with the New York-born Ixian Infernus.
- There's an entire Vampire: The Masquerade-style society of vampires with their own baronies.
- There's a thieves guild of time-jumpers called Paradox whose literal goal is to just put priceless items on display at pop-up museums.
- The souls of the dead power machines of war.
- New York has a Municipal Coven of witches.
- There's a Lovecraftian entity who got so bored he decided to join the service industry.
- The Djinn want part of Wyoming. This is an actual plot point.
- Jacob Lash is an asshole.
This is a game, need I remind you, which has an incomplete roster—some of whose models are also deeply unfinished (my poor Vyper), but when Valve's polish does apply, it's been cooking up some of its best designs ever, and the map is getting downright pretty, too. I whisper a quiet "hell yeah" to myself whenever I romp through The Hidden King's subwoofer-drowned base.
Which is why I'm a little sad, because, well—it's a MOBA. As we all know, introducing your friend to a MOBA (and worse, getting them into one) is a sin that will mean your soul will never see the light of heaven. But it's also, by its very nature, a pretty constraining setting.
It's three lanes and a single map—we might get a little more from Valve in the form of animated shorts and comics a la TF2 (indeed, there's already a visual novel in the works) but that's it. Deadlock's setting is worthy of its own singleplayer game—be that an RPG or a first-person shooter.
Heck, there's enough juice here where I'd subscribe to a Deadlock MMO, or merrily run my own Deadlock TTRPG campaign (maybe I still could, with Blades in the Dark's new sci-fi supplement? Oh man, don't give me ideas).
I wanna meet other agents of the OSIC. I wanna run errands for the Municipal Coven. I wanna see what Ixia and the rest of the Baroness look like. I want to chase a time thief through a Paradox exhibit. I wanna get caught in a turf war between the vampire baronies. I want a terrifying boss fight with a Venator that has express permission from the Pope to stake me.
… Ah, crap. This is what League of Legends players feel like waiting on that Riot MMO, huh.
These are, to be clear, pie-in-the-sky dreams: But they're the kind of games I think about through the tiny windows of the game that Deadlock actually is—Deadlock has an ocean-deep skill ceiling and incredible complexity, true. But it's also an infinitesimal slice of a much more interesting world I wish we could see more of.
Which, hey—it's a good problem for Valve to have, right? I salute you, artists and writers under Gabe Newell's employ: You have cooked hard enough to leave me hungry for more.
Yeah this is exactly why we get one-trick players in most games. I think most people play one or two characters that they relate to and enjoy the feeling of being as their form of escapism.
The problem that Deadlock has is it has no Mercy, no Kiriko, no Juno, no Ahri, femme characters that are particularly likeable. No Jinx, no Jenna, no Vi, no Zoe. Anything I can remotely relate to? Nothing. Every single character in the game feels designed for edgy boys. Which is fine if that's the only audience they want? That feels very Valve. One of my criticisms of TF2 was always that the game is clearly designed only with teen boys in mind and I feel the same way about Deadlock.
I don't know anything about the lore but I've played a bit of it and Paige seems like a pretty normal feminine character.
Yeah I've never seen her before so she's been added after my time. But it's still one character in a cast that feels 95% masculine or unappealing to me.
Like, I get that they want this edgy "cursed apple" noir setting but it really feels like Valve make shit that's very old-school gaming. And I mean that in the sense that it's designed to appeal to teen boys. That makes Valve very very popular with a particular audience but it's not really for me. The exception I suppose is Portal which feels like it strikes a pretty good middle ground as an all-audiences game.
And don't get me wrong I'm not saying it shouldn't exist it's just annoying that I don't like it.
With that said I didn't like other things about it too, for example I absolutely hated the exp denying mechanic where you get a negative feeling every second or 2 in lane from exp denials the other player manages, it always felt like the negative feeling of enemy getting steals outweighed the positive of getting your own steals. I can't deal with a negative dopamine hit every couple seconds it succcccckkks.
paige came out in the exact same update as mina?
Yeah but I heard of Mina, I didn't hear of Paige. I've played neither.
Girl I'm the exact same way, if a character doesn't appeal to me specifically I can't get into it no matter how good the mechanics feel.
Needless to say I'm a Paige one trick and only really got into the game after Paige was added LOL. They also recently added Celeste, Holiday, Silver, and Graves. As well as Rem, who is not a femme human but a cute bird creature thing.
A lot of my friends who are women have been getting more interested in Deadlock lately and I think a lot of it has to do with them adding more characters that appeal to women.
100% sounds like it, Overwatch has a very large number of women playing it compared to other shooters and it comes down to characters. If I recall correctly it's like 20%-25% whereas other shooters are like 4%-7%. That comes entirely from character designs.
This I think comes from Overwatch's dna as an attempt at making an mmo originally which is also a genre that typically has a very high number of women playing, that comes from character creators usually though but world design really requires good women in story and lore too because it can't all be WAR which I think is the problem with Valve's boy-ish world building, it's all war all the time.