Finding Deathloop's best-preserved secrets
This retro-futuristic 2021 game from Arkane Lyon, the studio best known for the Dishonored series, takes place in a few locations across Blackrock, an island gripped by a time anomaly and crammed with dangerous characters. It's a chilling vision of a world ruled by tech billionaires, with a wry sense of humor about how administrative realities creep into even the wildest undertakings.
Eventually, the player gets to discover this, the Project AEON Archives, in the top floor of a beautifully distressed residential building. In the context of the story, it's a glimpse into the mind of the archivist, Juliana Colt, who is an antagonist throughout the game. (An antagonist with a point, mind you, but an antagonist.) But let's take a moment to just appreciate it as an environment.
I don't know who designed it, or what inspirations they drew from. But this, in all of video games, is the one records room that makes me feel like I'm stepping into an internship again. Reader, I can smell this room.
And it's not perfection I'm pointing to, here. Because there's plenty to criticize. Sometimes an archivist's job is to keep a well-organized collection running. And that's a noble calling. Sometimes, though, the job is to create order out of chaos. Guys who firmly believe themselves to be geniuses are brainstorming late into the night. They are moving fast and breaking stuff. They are too cool for *any* records-management regime. And to me, that's what Deathloop's designers capture so well, here.
Archivist? Keep doing your job. Collections will be sporadic and people will often forget you exist. Keep preserving records. Keep your finding aids up to date and your boxes labeled. Believe that someone, someday, will appreciate what you have saved.
Just look at these file boxes. The Hollinger-style half-cubic foot file box is the workhorse of modern archives, and these aren't exactly that (though they would have been period-appropriate.) But these are clearly in the same spirit. They're rigid enough to stand upright, and the way the lid closes over the top helps to keep contaminants out while keeping it a one-piece construction (no lost lids.) This size, where two boxes make up roughly a cubic foot of shelf space, is a nice balance; Any smaller and it wouldn't hold a useful volume of records, but go larger and documents have room to fall or curl over if it's empty, and weight becomes an issue if it's full.
They even gave the boxes little fabric pulls, to help slide them out from the shelf. That's attention to detail.
This space used to be an apartment, by the look of it. That happens. The fact that it's up a long flight of stairs is tough break—even with a great dolly, file boxes going up stairs are heavy. The radiator AND the window are in the file room, too, which isn't ideal—you really want to be able to adjust temperature and humidity in a gradual, even way. This archivist is definitely wearing a coat to work. (I'd put up a blackout curtain, too.) Sometimes, you just have to work with the space you're given.
When I was young, a temp agency set me up with a full-time job that I desperately needed. A gaming company that was facing a lawsuit, and had been ordered to hand over copies of all its files. So a small army of temps got to go into a windowless room for eight hours a day, five days a week, where we carefully dismantled binders, xeroxed all of the files in them, and boxed up the copies in roughly the right order. It is not a job I would return to. But I did catch up on rent, that month. And more importantly, it taught me to appreciate the sheer volume of records that corporate archivists have to think about. Everyone at the company is churning out files all day, and you, as the retention policy's judge, jury, and executioner, have to pass judgment on all of it.
This box has "unsolicited donation" written all over it, from the stack of books to the rolled map. The archivist is probably waiting for an opportune time to make this whole box disappear.
I see some water damage to these large boxes, which is concerning. I would have re-boxed these records before I moved them into the file room. Mold is a serious problem, not just for the condition of the records, but for the health of the archivists, too. And trying to kill mold without damaging records is a whole art unto itself.
And if boxes are routinely getting wet on the way to your collection? That's a process problem. In all, this isn't an ideal setup for the collection, but there are just so many evocative touches in the design, I can't help wanting to hang around.
With that praise out of the way, a couple of red flags:
NO. Leave your coffee and your cigarettes outside. You may have water, if your bottle doesn't leak. Maybe archivists don't shush, but we can scowl the flesh from your bones.
And an ashtray! No! Archives are non-smoking spaces. Feed your habits elsewhere. And lock the door behind you.
When you are in the archives, you will see pencils. Not pens. This is because graphite is way easier to clean off of paper than ink is, if accidents happen. So: this character left her ink pens outside so as not to risk damaging documents. But she brought a lighter? I don't buy it.
This plant looks innocent enough, but how do you water it without risking damage to the boxes below? Plants and documents don't mix.
The dry-erase board doesn't belong in this room, either. You don't want markers or ink smears anywhere near archival records. And it's plainly blocking your shelf space.
So, I'm of two minds about the AEON Project Archives. There are some serious knocks against Juliana Colt as a fictional archivist. Sure, she's attempting to murder the game's protagonist, too, but that's par for the course. Smoking in an archives room, though? Now I'm just being manipulated into hating this person. And yet I see what she's up against, and I just can't stay mad.
Well-played, Arkane. You gave me some feelings.