A Narrative Designer Explains How Deathloop Made Julianna Fun, Scary and Motivational At Once

Deathloop was one of the best games of 202`1. A pastiche of ’60s fashion, spy thrillers and time loop mysteries, it was both the most stylish game of the year and one of the most compelling: you play as Colt, who wakes up with a hangover on a beach and quickly realises he’s stuck in a time loop. There’s also a woman named Julianna who’s trying to kill him. Colt and Julianna are the only people on the island of Blackreef who remember what happens in each loop, and the game turns into a cat and mouse hunt as Colt tries to break the loop and Julianna tries to protect it.

The relationship between Colt and Julianna is the beating heart of Deathloop. Julianna speaks to you over the radio, giving you hints that you have no choice but to cautiously investigate, just waiting for the trap that may or may not spring at any moment. She doesn’t want you to break the loop, but she wants you to be good enough at the game that stopping you is a real challenge.

That’s what makes Julianna such an intriguing character — she’s extremely good at her job and she wants you to be on her level so that beating you is satisfying, and she wants to do it again and again every time the loop resets. We spoke to Lena Dobric, the narrative designer at Arkane Studios, about how the team wrote such a unique gaming character, what went into designing her incredible ’60s-inspired outfits and what it’s like being a narrative designer at a game studio.

POPSUGAR Australia: Hello! Can you please tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Arkane?

Lena Dobric: My name is Lena and I’ve been working at Arkane as a narrative designer for a little bit more than six months. I arrived in October, right after Deathloop was released.

I make sure all the narrative elements of a game are portrayed and conveyed to the players, and all the systems that will convey some story to the players are well designed and well incorporated into the game.

PS: Could you walk us through a typical day in your job?

LD: Yes, it’s an awesome job! It’s been my dream job for my entire lifetime so I’m really happy to be able to do it. A typical day would be just working on the project that I’m in right now — so it’s mostly writing story documents, doing research about the project that I’m on and making sure I’m in contact with all the other departments I’m working with.

Being a narrative designer is a lot of communicating with other teams; making sure that everybody is on the same page and knows what the story is, what the intention for the game is and making sure the experience is just as we had in mind.

PS: What makes someone good at your job? Are there any skills people should learn if they want to pursue this career?

LD: Most importantly, curiosity is very important. If you want to be a writer or a narrative designer, it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of culture — being very informed on what other games are like, what movies are like, what TV shows are like and stuff like that. Just explore a lot of things outside of video games, mostly because it’s important to keep your interests diverse and to have a large range of references and inspiration.

Another very important skill to have as a narrative designer is communication — being able to listen to other people’s input and make sure that your team’s intention is conveyed clearly to the other teams making the game.

PS: Deathloop was one of the best games of last year and part of that is because of Julianna. She taunts Colt throughout the game but it’s almost like she’s taunting you and motivating you to keep playing. How did you create her really outgoing personality?

LD: What makes her a very compelling antagonist is how much fun she’s having. It’s infectious, because she works as your guide, but she’s also pretty much your enemy and she’s trying to kill you. She’s never too mean, too serious or too light-hearted. She has a very interesting balance of chaos, pettiness, fun and skill. 

That was the goal of the creative team: to make sure that she’s this very interesting and intriguing character that’s here to help you but also to kill you. And I think that’s kind of a breadth of features and traits that we don’t really see a lot with female characters — and especially black female characters. In my experience, I haven’t seen a lot of characters who have the range to be as silly, petty, skilled and confident as they should be.

I’m happy that they were confident enough to write a flawed diverse character, because sometimes I think there’s kind of a pressure to write diverse characters who are perfect and exemplary. 

PS: The banter between Colt and Julianna made me laugh out loud more than once. What was it like writing these little bits of dialogue?

LD: They had a lot of fun because the relationship between Colt and Julianna is really explored through radio calls that play when you restart a loop or when you arrive at a certain part of the map.

It was a lot of fun to write because it’s like a tennis match. They are always giving each other shit for what they’ve been doing. The actors who played Colt and Julianna also had a lot of range to kind of improvise and laugh with each other in the recording sessions. A lot of that has been kept in the game and it really comes through in the dialogue.

PS: Why is protecting the loop so important to Julianna? What motivates her to hunt down Colt?

LD: The most interesting thing about Julianna is she just wants to have fun, and part of that is having Colt getting better at trying to destroy the loop and becoming a more skilled enemy for her. Unlike everyone else on Blackreef, Julianna keeps her memory from loop to loop, and part of that must be getting very boring for her because she’s been doing the same thing for days and days. Her goal is to just have more fun, so when Colt starts remembering the loops as well, she finally has a worthy enemy. As he gets better and the days get more challenging, she’s just having more fun. That’s why she’s trying to get everyone to kill Colt and she’s trying to stir as much chaos as possible— because it’s just fun for her.

PS: I’d like to talk about the fashion in Deathloop, which is like a throwback to ‘60s spy thrillers. How did you come up with Julianna’s main look and her alternate costumes?

LD: That was the art department’s decision! The main inspiration for the game was this kind of ‘60s pop, with a mix of modern influences, which drove the art direction. They wanted to make Julianna look like a skilled fighter and archivist, and also have this kind of pop influence that was really very fun and glamorous. That’s something that I really appreciate about Deathloop — everybody is so damn glamorous! Everybody looks so good in this game and it’s such a joy to see.

There was a lot of iteration because it’s always tricky to get the details right — especially for a black female character, you want to get the details right and make sure the hair and the skin tone is right. It’s a testament to the talent of the team that they nailed this iconic look for her.

PS: Were there many black designers and artists working on the teams who created Colt and Juliana?

LD: It’s important to have black people on the team when you’re creating black characters. The game director, Dinga Bakaba, is a black man, and his input was very valuable to kind of guide and create the characters of Colt and Julianna.

Dinga is one of the reasons I wanted to join Arkane, too. I thought it was an interesting opportunity to finally work with someone who you don’t see often, especially in management positions like that.

PS: Julianna is the most recent in a long line of realistic female characters in Arkane games. Is there anything you’ve learned from designing and writing Juliana that you’re using in the next game?

LD: I think the most important lesson that we learned working on Deathloop is that it’s important to give your characters agency — to make them full-fledged characters and focus on what makes them human and what their goals are. And kind of fine-tuning exactly who your character is and how human they are and what their goals are. Especially with someone like Juliana, defining how chaotic, petty, fun and confident she can be is really important.

The main lesson that we could learn from Julianna is that we need to make sure that she’s just as fun for us to write as she is for the players to experience, and that’s something that we need to strive for with every diverse character. It’s not just checking a box or making sure we have enough black or female characters — we need to love these characters.