Turns out Deathloop has always been a Dishonored Game - and now it's official

Deathloop developer Arkane Studios has finally confirmed that yes, Deathloop is a Dishonored game.

Whilst Dishonored 2's similarities to its predecessors were unmistakable, Deathloop's connection to Arkane's delightful play-your-way stealth adventure series are much more subtle - so subtle, in fact, that it took the official word from creative director Dinga Bakaba to confirm it.

"It was nice to see the community pick up on the little clues that we did sprinkle everywhere that… yes, indeed, we envisioned Deathloop to be happening in the future after Death of the Outsider," Bakaba confirmed in an interview with Xbox Podcast.

"We didn't want to make something too big about it because [Deathloop] would be its own story, its own character, its own time period that we wanted to flesh out, its fashion and its music.

"But at the same time, there were a lot of things that we wanted to say after Death of the Outsider, and we always wondered about what would happen after that."

"And there are a lot of clues in the game, actually," he adds. "There are some that are abused. One of them is really spoilery, so: voila! But there are a lot of small things, and some that were under people's noses all the time but people are just figuring out."

The biggest clue Bakaba thinks we may have missed?

"My favorite about that: we have a shotgun that's called the Heritage rifle that can switch to different modes between scattershot and slugs, etc.

"On the side there is a little logo that you can barely see, but now that we've added idle breaks where the character plays with his gun, you can actually see that the logo is Dunwall Tower. So it's pretty clear!"

Other similarities can be seen in its magic and technology, even though those too is quite subtle.

"When you take a step back and look at the world, the magic and the technology, there are some things about classes and inequalities. Even though that's something that those characters flee, you can see that those differences are still there.

"We tried to see everything as an evolution, but each time we mentioned the past, either we were vague enough or we disguised [it] in natural ways. It was nice for us to be imagining one of the futures of the Dishonored world and to have that make sense."

Don't forget, Deathloop getting an extended ending on top of new weapons and enemies in a new update.

Announced last month, the 'Golden Loop Update' was released at the end of September, just in time for its debut on Xbox consoles and Xbox Game Pass. Not only does the new patch give players new Deathloop guns to experiment with and new enemies to mess around with, but there's also an extended ending now available in Arkane's shooter.

Vikki Blake is GamesRadar+'s Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.