In a Noclip video interview around the 12:50 mark, Deathloop creative director Dinga Bakaba revealed that Deathloop originally had a combat parry system similar to Dishonored.
Deathloop originally had a more robust melee combat system, but it was scrapped during development and replaced with the kick move.
This idea was scrapped in favor of Deathloop’s simple and very powerful kick.
“So then we removed the timed parry and it was only [blocking] and that was boring as hell,” Bakaba said.