If you want to know who the Visionaries are in Deathloop, look no further.

Arkane's Deathloop is a mile-a-minute action adventure that sees hero Colt Vahn racing against the clock against a particular group of enemies called The Visionaries, and he must eliminate nine targets in 24 hours - including himself - or do the whole day over again.

Related: Deathloop: Best Side Characters, Ranked

The Visionaries are not easy to pin down. Some of them are equipped with Slabs, allowing them to channel the Blackreef anomaly into various special abilities. From ingenious Wenjie to arrogant showman Aleksis Dorsey, the Visionaries are an intriguing bunch with intriguing backstories. Let's have a look at what makes them tick, including how they came to join the AEON Programme.

Charlie and Fia are a romantically entangled, eternally unhinged pair whose turbulent emotions are mirrored in their equally unbalanced love life.

The daughter of a multi-million dollar shipping mogul, Fia developed a taste for art at a very young age. The live art installations she creates veer from dramatic to totally deranged, including her magnum opus on Fristaad Rock: Fractured ImAge, built atop an actual explosive reactor.

As AEON's chief provisioner, she controls all the materials on Blackreef. Her harsh rationing has put her on something of a power trip, controlling the flow of goods across the island and revelling in the ultimate power it gives her. Hot-headed in nature and prone to vicious flights of fancy, her rash temperament is reflected by her Havoc Slab, a device that grants her total immunity and increased damage during battle.

If Fia seems a little bit not quite there, that's probably because she is constantly riding a drug-induced high. She has long lost her ability to dream, something she feels has stifled her artistic vision. By building her Blackreef studio in the abandoned military headquarters beneath Fristaad Rock, she hopes that the barren, stark landscape will inspire a mental oasis of calm that she can translate into something beautiful.

But beauty is very much in the eye of the holder, as we can tell from Charlie Montague's feelings for Fia. He even co-wrote a song with Frank Spicer called Ode To Somewhere, the lyrics detailing that his love is "so high, I wanna be there". This perhaps links back to Fia's heavy drug use and how Charlie wishes he could get to and stay on her level rather than feeling left behind.

Charlie is the self-proclaimed Master of Entertainment at AEON, as well as the Chief Systems Administrator. His love for gaming and the digital world came to a head when he had an operation to surgically implant part of his brain into 2-BIT, an AI robot version of himself that controls his base in Updaam.

Although Charlie seems just as arrogant, snide, and borderline sociopathic as his fellow Visionaries, he has a special soft spot for Fia. She is the only person on Blackreef who Charlie cares about (aside from himself), and that is why Colt takes extra pleasure in eliminating them both amid a secret tryst at the Pumping Station.

Soulful crooner Ramblin' Frank Spicer rules the roost at his swanky pad overlooking the shores of Fristad Rock. Blackreef's answer to Johnny Cash, Frank spends his days in a booze-soaked stupor when he isn't writing morose ditties that would make the Devil's toes curl. His morning radio show, Ramblin' Frank's Matinee, can be heard blaring from the speakers across the Rock in the morning of the loop, and it's during this distraction that Colt has an opportunity to break into the Club and take him out.

Unlike most other Visionaries, Frank doesn't use a Slab. In fact, he actively disbelieves in them and has implemented Charlie's ClassPass system to deactivate all Slabs upon entry to the Ramblin' Rock Club.

Laced with equal measures of spite and lust, Frank's songs are gritty recounts of his many exploits in love and crime. A couple of songs heavily hint at his and Colt's romantic or sexual involvement in the years before the events of Deathloop. Polaroids and notes found strewn about Colt's apartment point to Frank's presence in his life as a close friend and perhaps something more, with very visceral allusions to a combination of sex and violence littering the spaces where Frank is concerned.

His song You've Got No Class speaks of Frank sitting in a bar and getting propositioned by two women. They hold no interest to him, viewing them both as decidedly classless and dull. His attention turns to the "clean-cut Navy boy" sipping his whiskey calmly in the back, and he decides that this is the person he's going to take home with him.

The Navy boy in question is, according to many theories, Captain Colt Vahn himself.

This is further supported by Frank's dedication of a song to Colt directly: a song about "a broken friendship, a man I admired, looked up to - and every now and again, I loved".

It would explain Frank's investment in the loop if he and Colt did have more to their story than a simple friendship; he has no vested interest in harnessing the Blackreef anomaly by using a Slab, so why does he protect the AEON project?

To keep Colt on Blackreef.

By breaking the loop, Colt would leave the island forever to be reunited with his girlfriend Lila Blake. This would leave Frank exactly where he's always been: alone, drunk, and yearning.

Harriet Morse is a tricky girl to pin down. Between her duties as Human Resource Manager for AEON and leading her cult-like troupe that prowls Karl's Bay at all hours, she has her gloved hands rather full.

The only child of wealthy arms dealers who died tragically when she was just a child, Harriet lived most of her life under the wing of her guardian Elanor. Unfortunately, this was to end badly for Harriet, and she was met with the harsh truth that Elanor had been slowly stealing Harriet's inheritance. This devastating blow hardened Harriet's heart, driving her to the stark conclusion that she really could only rely on herself.

After surviving a plane crash, Harriet's self-reliance turned to self-reverence. She saw herself not as a woman but as a god, a deity to be beheld by all. The AEON Programme grants her the stage to voice her sermons, preaching to a rapt throng of Eternalists each morning in Hangar Two.

She espouses her branch of theology: that of Two-Path Divinity. By looping the same day over and over, Harriet views this death as a welcome rebirth. The basic tenets of this are rooted in Hinduism and Buddhism, but things take a far darker turn when Harriet starts actively sacrificing her followers to the Great Beyond.

In the Golden Loop update of Deathloop, a new ending animation shows Harriet dancing with glee to see the loop having been broken and a new dawn rising over Blackreef. This is most likely due to her belief that by dying over and over again, what she is experiencing is the final and most supreme incarnation of her life.

Little does she know, this is the final incarnation; the loop is broken, and death is once again permanent.

Hidden in a heavily-guarded mansion in a distant corner of Updaam, Aleksis Dorsey is one of the hardest Visionaries to stick a bullet into - and he's done it on purpose.

As a thoroughly-minted millionaire who doubles as the Chief Financial Backer of the AEON Programme, it only makes sense that the eccentric character views himself as the Alpha Wolf amidst a sea of prey. He can be found barking orders and partying it up with paying ticket-holders each night at his very special wolf-themed gala evening, Devouring Of The Lambs.

With the party-goers decked out in matching wolf masks, Aleksis is let down by his petulance and penchant for dramatics when Colt steals into the building and tries to scope him out in the crowd.

Aleksis may be one of the most brilliant minds involved in the Programme, having been made a millionaire before ever reaching 22 years old as the head of a pharmaceutical company. The bulk of his fortunes are the result of his hiking up the prices of groundbreaking new anti-protozoan treatments, showing his longstanding commitment to profiting from the pain of others.

He and Frank Spicer also go way back, and it's Aleksis we can thank for Frank's taking part in the AEON Programme since they met at a topless pool party and Aleksis convinced him to be the musical heart and soul of Blackreef.

Aleksis's party is where Colt's day on the island comes to a grand finale, as this is the arena where you'll be killing off three of the nine visionaries in one fell swoop. Don't forget your Nexus Slab, okay?

Unlike other members of the Programme, Wenjie seems to have a vested scientific interest in the Blackreef anomaly itself. From her research facility at The Complex, Wenjie is the Chief Scientist and resident Residuum expert.

Alongside Harriet and Egor, Wenjie is one of the three founders of AEON after being (supposedly) the brains behind the Evans Law of Variation.

She is the reason that all of the Visionaries act as hosts or anchors for the loop since the Blackreef anomaly is channelled through them for the loop to persist uninterrupted. This is why Colt has to find a way to kill all of them within a single 24-hour period.

Defeating Wenjie is a hard task. Much like Aleksis, she hides amidst a sea of Wenjie clones from alternate realities, all working in tandem to order to confuse Colt and make it hard for him to suss out the cat among the pigeons. She brought the Wenjies in droves by harnessing a loophole in the spacetime continuum, something she has been progressively working on since the start of the loop.

For some reason, Wenjie can't figure out how come Colt and Julianna can retain their memories from loop to loop. This is a major point of irritation for her, spurring her on in her research to fully master the powerful potential of Blackreef.

The only way to get Wenjie to Dorsey Manor in the evening is for 2-BIT to play a voice clip from Aleksis himself, requesting her appearance at the mansion for old time's sake.

Across the frosty terrain of The Complex, Egor Serling has sequestered himself in a heavily-armed bunker. He, too, was born into a hyper-wealthy family - but unlike Harriet, whose wealth was stolen, or Aleksis, who manipulates his capital incessantly, Egor chose to forego material wealth in the pursuit of psychometry.

His goal in founding AEON was twofold: global recognition and total isolation. These diametrically opposing aims led him to both obsess over and loathe the loop since it has only ramped up his self-inflicted paranoia.

His Aether Slab is a testament to this, allowing him to turn invisible and partially invulnerable for some time so that he can get himself both into and out of sticky situations with ease.

To get Egor to Dorsey Manor for the final showdown, Colt needs to deactivate the invisible experiment he leaves running in the grounds of The Complex at noon, leaving him nothing better to do than skulk over to Updaam to join the festivities at the Devouring Of The Lambs party.

Finally, Colt and estranged daughter Julianna round off the nine Visionaries. Their feud is gradually revealed throughout the game, with Julianna slowly teasing out Colt's memory of his relationship with Lila and the lovechild that they had together.

The game's emotional core is hinged upon the decision that Colt needs to make: break the loop and risk a world without his girlfriend and daughter, or stay stuck in an endless cycle of cat and mouse where he can, at the very least, try to rebuild his relationship with one of them.

Next: Deathloop: Best Character Trinkets And What They Do

As well as being a Senior Writer at TheGamer, Jasmine is an avid lover of metalcore, paranormal horror, and pretending to be good at playing the bass guitar.