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.
