f13.net

Something new from Bethseda (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1HlYTukh9A)

Looks like a cross between Assassins Creed and the Thief series, so yeah.

Fuck Yeah

Actually, it's from Arkane Studios (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic), Bethesda is just the publisher.

Lead Designers are Harvey Smith and Raf Colantonio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishonored_(video_game)

My favorite part is when he didn't sit through a monologue by the guy he was killing.

I've been watching this from the sidelines for six months or so, looks amazing.  I love the setting.  Hope the game is as interesting.

So it's like a steampunk Assassin's Creed sorta thing? Maybe mixed with some Max Payne?

The setting definitely got me interested.

I'm cautiously optimistic, since I enjoyed both Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah. Harvey Smith's name being attached makes me extremely wary, though, especially as a lead designer. Yeah, he was a senior designer on the first Deus Ex, but he was the director for Invisible War and directly responsible (by his own admission!) for a lot of the stuff people disliked about it, like the unified ammo system. I'm also not completely sold on what we can infer of the gameplay, though, since it seemingly combines Assassin's Creed with a bit of Bioshock (both games I disliked) and some Thief (which I do like).

That's not even getting into the little problem of Bethsoft/Zenimax-published games that aren't TES or Fallout tending to not (http://www.mobygames.com/game/rage_) have (http://www.mobygames.com/game/wet) the (http://www.mobygames.com/game/hunted-the-demons-forge) best (http://www.mobygames.com/game/rogue-warrior) track (http://www.mobygames.com/game/pirates-of-the-caribbean) records (http://www.mobygames.com/game/brink).

Looks interesting, but I'm also in the cautiously interested camp. And I wish it were more thief, less assassin.

Part of the magic of Thief was trying to ghost levels.

Oh, the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic people did this? Can I kill 99% of the enemies by kicking them off ledges and throwing barrels at them?

if the game was %100 kicking people off ledges it would be a day one purchase for me.  Needless to say....Sparta.

I wish they would only announce cool games when they have a static release date.

Gameplay footage would be nice, too. I'm not sure how anyone can get frothy over a cinematic trailer.

I've looked around online, gameplay seems to be almost identical to bioshock, even the different weapon/magic per hand.

What, like Skyrim?  Cause, you know, Skyrim is good.

There are a lot of things I'd praise about Skyrim, the combat is not among them.  And comparing the combat in Skyrim to Bioshock is kind of a stretch, given that one is a FPS and the other is a (mostly) melee RPG.

Ranged combat in Skyrim isn't awful; mechanically it works very well. The only problem is that it has been overly-distilled and wound up a bit bland.

Nobody praised the combat in Skyrim.  That's something you're inserting.

He said, the gameplay looks similar to bioshock with the different weapon/magic per hand.  Which is exactly what Skyrim does.  My point being, "One weapon/magic per hand" doesn't mean a game sucks, it's not sufficient.

Yes but bioshock is a fairly linear FPS where as skyrim is a first person sandbox and combat in skyrim tends to be a bit slower than the run and gun bioshock style. 

Gameplay Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITq0hXCCB0&feature=youtu.be)

DO WANT. :drill: :drill: :drill:

Very nice.

Getting a Vampire: The Masquerade vibe for some reason. Could just be the visual style though.

Seems like they were more interested in the stabbing than the incredible city they've built. I hope it's not representative of actual gameplay focus.

From what I've seen in other information it looks like they'll give you a level and a target (or some objectives) and then it is up to you to complete the objectives how you want. It's not a sandbox; we'll have to wait to see how on rails it is.

http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6380963/

It is possible to take out targets in a non-lethal manner.

Giant gaming boner from that video.  :drill:

I saw this in an interview and lost all interest.

Interesting article about the creators.
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/6/27/3115822/arkane-dishonored-bethesda-origin-crossing-deus-ex-arx-fatalis

LOL

Sounds exactly like Thief 1/2 to me, which ranks it in the "potentially awesome" category.

I read that exceptionally long Verge article the other day and it will be interesting to pull that out and look at it again once Dishonored launches. It struck me a bit as myth-building.

Looking forward to this one, especially if it keeps the current launch date a full month before AC3 :)

I preordered this for my PS3. I'm getting a strong console vibe from this, and I really dont want to be burned by another crap port.

IF you don't mind playing with a controller what's wrong with crap console ports?

Sooo... this is out and is getting pretty stellar reviews. Anyone decide to try it instead of XCOM?

I did. I will get Xcom later but for now I am loving this game. UI doesnt feel console-like in the slightest to me.

What's the gameplay like?   RPGish?  Oblivion-like?  More like Half-Life?

Well I'm playing it like a Deus Ex/Thief sneaker. So, RPGish if you like. WSG.com gave it a negative review for not being COD. Which is what I like about it. While it has levels you can pretty well plan your own mission picking your route and who to attack or not. Mission summaries tell you what all you missed and give you the opportunity to try again if you feel you blew the level that badly.

Yeah, it feels a whole lot like Human Revolution, scene changed to be all steampunk with more dismal atmosphere.  That's a compliment.  Thus far I'm pretty pleased with it.

I got to play all of 15 minutes of it, and it basically feels like a more melee oriented steampunk Deus Ex which is I think what people expected. More first-person VIEW oriented however, no 3rd person pullouts and sticky cover.

I'm a few hours in and its great so far.  Teleporting around murdering people is delightful, the kill animations are decisive, quick, and non-repetative.  I'm playing kill everything that moves (and scouting out the stealth paths for next play through).

The character have a semi-cartoonish feel, not as extreme as TF2, but Rodin like large hands and feet. 

The game's visuals are definitely unique.  Environment textures are done with a very watercolory feel, wisps of colors on greys that simultaneously cover for the low resolution of them and still manage to look nice regardless.  Character models are strange with the aforementioned big hands and long arms, but it isn't bad, just weird.  If their goal was to work up an art style that made a world feel a bit unreal and strange without getting cartoony or into the uncanny valley, they accomplished it.

The level design is exquisite for exploration addicts who like to ferret their way over and under things.  It's very nicely easy to get onto rooftops or down into tunnels if you're looking for better ways around opposition.

My only gripe thus far is that my non-lethal lifestyle is much more limited in options than the crazed murderer lifestyle.  The game offers lots of ways to kill, but only a couple of ways to render unconscious.  It offers a fair number of ways to avoid combat entirely, but I would like a non-lethal melee weapon to use, as I've accidentally murdered on occasion thanks to always having a shiv in one hand.

Oh, and I should probably mention, the game's story is fairly hardcore, at least up to the point where I am now.  People have said that the ending is weak, but playing it so far I've only found nice crunchyness.  (And even if it is bad, it'll be hard-pressed to be worse than Human Revolution's cheap ending, so I feel prepared for it.)  There's a lot of people who really do deserve to die horribly, hundreds of people dying horribly from a plague who really don't deserve it, the chance to profit greatly from morally dark choices in quests, creepy people with creepy secrets, and a fair bit of what the fuck is going on with the supernatural things.  Dirty and terrible things are going on in the world.  And (spoilered for spoilers, but also for rough subject matter that the squeamish will want to avoid)
The grimness of things isn't being done in a hamfisted way, like some teenage writer who has characters performing atrocities all over the place to make it 'mature'; I have yet to encounter anyone inhumanly evil.  But things going on in the game do mesh with the sort of stories you hear from war-torn parts of the world where order is breaking down and people are able to be brutal without consequences.  It's not shying away from just how badly people treat each other when times get tough.

Great game. Only complaints so far:

-You get like a ton of skills/weapons to kill people but if you're going for a "lighter" ending you can't really kill people so like 70% of the goodies/skills you get are pointless.
-Enemy perceptiveness is random and annoying even with dark vision.
-Stealth is pretty much shot the instant you get spotted for real because practically everyone for 20 miles comes to kill you and it's hard to disengage to the point they give up.

If a lone guy spots you and you're quick at tagging him in the face with a sleep dart, he'll drop before he can call for help.  But if he starts shouting and shooting, yeah, they're all coming.

I know this is a forum that's mostly people who're hitting or past middle age but if you can pull yourself away from your X-COM induced nostalgia-boner (well, I'm assuming it's this. I have no plans to buy X-COM ever) for like 5 minutes this is a pretty good game.

It is unfortunately $60 and it's looking to be pretty short considering I haven't been playing THAT long and I'm kinda sure I'm at least half-way done. If it gets a green-man gaming or other shady-ass steamkey sale, jump on that shit.

I just finished this today, it seemed pretty short to me as well.  The game was fun though.

It's going on my Christmas list.  Occasionally my in-laws like buying me games. 

And hey, X-COM is good even without the nostalgia.   Helps to be a fan of the genre.  Usually a long drought between decent squad based tactical RPGs.

I was hoping it would be a bit more like Thief than Deus Ex. We just had another Deus Ex, and the last good Thief game was 13 years ago, ffs. Murder sims are a cop-out, imo.

Loving XCOM, but this sounds like plenty of fun and is in the queue.

I started this yesterday after finishing XCOM. It's decently fun, but I think I've been doing this too long. I can see the designed hamster tubes running all over the levels. Combat tube, stealth tube, another combat tube, another stealth tube. I've played through three missions so far, so maybe it opens up a bit later.

I do wish it didn't push the "The Choice is YOURS!" crap in your face every time you enter the crux of a level. It mostly seems to be a choice of whether I sneak in the front door, the back door, or through the (rooftops | sewers).

I suppose there might be more choices if I were killing everyone, as then I could do all kinds of funky traps, mind control, etc. As is, I'm just looking for the designer-authored tube between AI patrols.

It gets a bit better about that later. The first part of the game really pushes that tube stuff because I imagine they realize people are idiots and are going to not know they can do half the shit they can do. The guards should be more perceptive of people going missing IMO; they're only now starting to note when other guards aren't around but they don't seem to do anything about it. Their visual perception however is kinda random. Not hard to avoid but sometimes you can practically stand on top of them before they start to notice you, and other times they seem to see out the back of their heads.

I'm having a lot of fun. It would be nice if there were some sections I could get away with killing people without raising my chaos though. I literally use nothing but sleep bolts.

I hope so. So far, every street or room has had a convenient air-duct or ledge running above or nearby it, running exactly where I want to go and nowhere else - or with one branch that runs directly into a secondary objective.

I've mostly been using the chokehold and creating a giant nap-orgy with the sleeping guards. Sleep darts are for when I fuck up, or have absolutely no other options. Do guys you knock-out ever get up? I had it happen once during the first big mission, where I saw some guy patrolling in an area that I was sure I'd cleared. I just avoided him, closed doors behind me, and all was well.

I apparently have killed one dude; I think it was a guard that I laid down with the "throw" button while standing next to a wall. There was a crack and some blood. Oops.

This was something that annoyed me a bit about DX:HR -- sometimes there were better about it than others, but it was often pretty immersion-breaking.  Part of it I chalked up to the difficulty of giving the player some flexibility without creating a completely insane open-ended sandbox.

I dunno, I think guards can wake up other knocked out guards but I'm not sure since I'm never around for it and sometimes when I've come back to other parts of the map they're still all passed out.

I always stash guards in places off their patrols but whenever I get to the end of a mission I always have a high "body discovered" count for some fucking reason.

I'm hoping it gets more and more crowded later, because with stop time, improved blink, and agility you can do some crazy shit. Taking running leaps off of buildings and blinking at the apex of your jump to barely make a ledge, or stopping/slowing time and using blink to sneak straight through guards and light barriers.

I went straight chaos.   :awesome_for_real:

This guy is pretty badass. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eqOMI8_txw)

My brain just doesn't work that fast in games anymore. It would take me reloading and practising for a couple of hours to get that whole sequence down.

It was a tossup between this and XCOM which I would buy now or buy during the Steam Christmas sale and due to peer pressure, XCOM won - but I will definitely pick this up at some point.

Both of these. I really want Dishonored, but my X-Com nostalgia (and the extra $10 and free copy of Civ V) won out. X-Com really is the bee's knees but I plan on doing Dishonored the minute I see it on Steam sale. Though I did consider getting it for the XBox. Is it more conducive to mouse control or anything like Assassin's Creed (which I did on the XBox)?

Nah, it'd work fine with a controller really. It's not really a shooter; the pistol isn't very accurate, and the crossbow is more for sniping. Melee works fine with a controller. It might be easier to zap around crazily fast with a mouse.

I really want this game but the talk of length concerns me, how long is it exactly in one playthrough?

Guard AI can be hilariously stupid. I hacked a wall of light (tesla-coil doors that fry unauthorized people), didn't realize it hacked ALL of them in the immediate area. Someone got vaporized by one, which put everything on full alert. Guards start pouring in and running everywhere...

...through the hacked gates. They have a limited tank of fuel, but that was apparently good enough to fry like a dozen+ of them as they filed neatly into the doors of death.

From what I've seen, it depends how much you explore and run side missions.

If you go straight at the game, I've seen people say they've completed it in 4 - 8 hours.

If you explore and sneak and take your time, 20 hours+.

It appears designed for at least 2 play throughs - a violent "high Chaos" run and a less-murder-filled "low Chaos" run.

Finally beat it, UnSub's assessment is pretty much right. If you play sneaky and like reading/listening to everything you'll clock over 20 hours; I clocked 24 or so.

If you went in full on violent "high-chaos" just fucking slaughtering everything and grabbing only the runes/charms/money you need you could probably blast this game out in a few hours.

Finally played this through and while i enjoyed it, it does seem rather shortish, and a little on the easy side on normal  if you've played these types of games  Most times in the game i had basically full ammo, potions, gadget etc and never really had to use many of them.  Ended up leaving a ton of them around b/c i couldn't carry any more.  Most of the equipment upgrades weren't really useful, nor needed.
Couple of nice Thief nods in there, including one straight out hat tip to the training area in the original with one assassin telling the other "Stick to the Shadows, avoid the light".  :awesome_for_real:

I'd say its worth a play through for thief fans, but i would have liked it better at $30-40.

 

I'm kinda bummed that the DLC is what I expected: non-expansive (as in; doesn't really change a thing about what happens and is never mentioned again therefore meaningless) main-plot stuff shoehorned into the game. One you play as another character, another is basically VR Missions with time trials and challenges.

No idea what "lots of copies" means, but apparently this has sold very well. Which pleases me because I finally got around to playing it. The 50%-off Steam sale last weekend helped a great deal :-) Not done yet, but really enjoying it.

Ya'all have a wider and deeper array of gaming experiences than I do, so my references are fewer. At first this felt like a melee Half Life 2 with Assassins Creed mixed in the idea of escaping and stalking. Someone earlier said Deus Ex, but it's been so long since I played that, about all I remember is some crouching and sniper stuff.

Great game. Good to see another non-squishy sneaky assassin potential-franchise enter the fray.

I got this during the 50% sales, and I'm really chuffed to bits that it actually does not contain any console-y features like the sticky cover bullshit (at least not that I've seen). The fact the left mouse button controls the right weapon and vice versa, combined with the fact control is block, is a bit disorientating at first. I'm used to right mouse button being block/secondary attack.

Holy shit, that's annoying.  I keep banging on the wall with my knife when I mean to blink/shoot a bolt.

That's the first thing I changed, left click for left hand, right click for right hand and middle click for block  :grin:

Yea shit I should make that change too. Innumerable wasted crossbolts and reloads have I had because of that :)

Almost 20 hours in so far, and I just hit a big twist in the story. I really enjoy the heck out of this game. Mostly it's the creative approachs you can take to specific issues. Assassins Creed, especially the Ezio games, got very formulaec for me. Occasionally I could take out a key target in ways I'm not sure the developers intended. But here, there isn't as much of a guiding hand.

Some minor bugs and unintuitive guard behavior here or there, but I prefer to play this with a suspension of disbelief. So I assume the NPCs are super smart, which makes me play conservatively, which feels right. Sometimes in AC2, I could just jump on a group of guards and keep combo'ing through however many waves came after. That felt less assassin-y than it did ninja-y :-)

The only thing I'm currently having a problemw with are taking down the walking towers (Walkers?) They have a Whale Oil tank on the back I'm pretty sure should destroy them, but I can't figure out which is the best weapont to use nor how many hits it should take. They're easy to avoid, which I do. But there was one in a recent pinnacle event I had no choice but to take on. Based on a combo of incredible luck and some cleverness, I finished the event before taking him out, which gave me plenty of time to deplete the rest of my arsenal on the waves that followed. Too bad mind control level 2 doesn't let you do much more than walk.

But oh how I do love rewiring those stationary Towers and Walls of Lights   :drill:

Easiest way to kill the Tallboys is to either get up above them or trail behind them, then blink up to them, backstab them, and watch them get assassinated like everything else.  It can take some practice to figure out exactly where you have to be to hit them properly though, but they die just as easily as anything else once you get it down.

Huh. That's a lot quicker than how I've been doing it: a bolt for each of the three whale oil tanks they have on the back.

One thing I love is when guards walk around mumbling. Always the same thing: me in the garage cursing over something I'm building :-)

Just finished. Very satisfied with the ending. Glad they sold well. I'd buy more in this world.

Sounds like more Good Stuff™ — this comes next.

I'm a couple hours in, just finished mission 2 (the first full mission with all the goodies to grab), and am having a lot of fun.  I'm going for "best effort" stealth, killing when I slip up. Managed to keep mayhem "low".

Will I regret not being completionist about stuff like runes (grabbed 6/7 in mission 2)?

Low Chaos is basically killing less than 20% of the people available to kill during a mission. I think weepers might be included which is horseshit but they're pretty avoidable. You are allowed a respectable amount of 1on1 fuckup self-defense kills, weeper kills later on, and killing your intended target while staying low chaos. A "well fuck it" killing spree when you call the whole joint down on you in places like the Overseer's monastery will likely get you high chaos if you don't start running after some point.

Pro-Tip: Rewiring walls of light is a very bad idea if you are doing a low chaos run. I learned this the hard way. You remember the "light grenade" scene from Mom and Dad Save the World?

Good point on Wall of Light. I assume the same for those stationary Towers? I loved rewiring those things  :drill:

Nah. You don't need all the abilities to be level 2 nor the attribute slots to be level 2. I ended with only about half the rune slots filled to level 2, some not filled at all, and for almost the whole game, the only problems I had were trying to puzzle out the level, and ammo :-)

Mind you, my first playthrough ended in High Chaos. On a second playthrough for Low Chaos, I'd probably level 2'd mind control much earlier*, gotten that rats-attack/eat-everything, and level 2'd that skill which disintegrated corpses on kill.

*

Yeah, the Walls of Light and Tesla Coils are wonderful tools for making like half an area's worth of guards vaporize themselves like morons until the whale oil runs out (which it actually does! neat touch).

The first time someone gets vaped, the alarm will get sounded because usually someone sees it...then every guard that comes running from opposite whichever side if the wall you're on (even if they never saw you) will run through it and die since the AI sort of "knows" you're in that specific area and wants to cross into it to look for you.

Played through this pretty obsessively, on hard because normal is way too easy.

I liked my ending,

I am loving this game.  About fifteen hours in, maybe a bit more, in the middle of the mission after the return to the tower...

I finished this randomly on low chaos and it was a really satisfying experience. The only design decision I didn't really like was the fact that bone charms are randomised. Given that some bone charms are great (faster choke, mana from drinking water, increase max mana/health, faster movement with drawn weapons) and others are useless (meet more white rats, enemy grenades take longer to explode, take less damage from weepers) whether RNG gives you one and not another at any given point could really affect your gameplay. Faster choke in particular is an awesome bonecharm, but it is borderline necessary for low-chaos on the higher difficulty levels.

Otherwise I loved the setting, the fact that stealth is not necessarily the optimal choice (unlike Deus Ex:HR), the powers and just the general gameplay.

My only major gripe with the story:


edit: A couple of other small design gripes I had: the small issue of disappearing corpses and respawning guards. DX:HR had much better fidelity with items and guards. Clearing out an area only to go up a floor and then come back down to find that the corpses had vanished and a guard or two had respawned was a little annoying. Also, the Dark Vision noise and colour palette got annoying after a while, especially since it is pretty vital for low-chaos playthroughs where you have it on a lot of the time.

Agreed on all accounts.

The one plot thing that bugged the fuck out of me on low-chaos is:

I never really care how much time I put in for how many dollars, but I did kinda feel the game was short. I was by no means a completionist, but neither did I speed run it. I could have gotten every bone charm and rune, but by about mid-point I already felt pretty invincible. I suppose if I focused on all non-lethal or 100%ing every level it would taken longer. But playing my normal way, it felt pretty quick.

25 hours is still a lot for a $30 game (on Steam sale) though. So I'm no disappointed. Just kinda noticed it when I finished.

I paid full price ($60) and will probably clock in 20-25 hours by the time I'm done (I like exploring!) and feel it's money well spent.

$3/hr for quality entertainment works for me -- I kinda benchmark this against movies which are $10/2hr or books at $10/5-10hr typically.

I find that I just don't have as much patience for 40-80 hour gaming experiences these days -- it takes some pretty amazing story or world to keep things fresh for that long and I've found that 10-20 hour experiences that just really deliver and don't waste too much of the budget on filler work best for me.  Might be the side-effect of getting older, I dunno.

Minor gripe: love the levels and world, but the character modeling especially for npcs standing around and talking can be way wonky -- I'm pretty certain the human shoulder just does not articulate the way that the game engine believes it does ^^

I enjoyed how fleshed out the world felt; you got the impression at least that everything was there for a reason and even the grunts you slaughter/avoid/choke out have motivations. The Heart is a cool item and I hope it makes a comeback whenever they make a sequel.

It's been bugging me that the game city looks so much like London in some ways but everyone has American accents. Then I learned that the accents were John Slattery, Brad Dourif, Susan Sarandon, Chloe Moretz and Lena Headey amongst others and I'm liking the accents a lot more.  :grin:

DLC has been released: Dunwall City Trials (http://store.steampowered.com/app/208570/)

Zzz googling a way to turn of the expansion 'you get everything' stuff in this game without spoil wrong myself massively seems impossible. Anyone know what you're meant to start with if you just played the base game?

Edit: I think I've figured it out. This is now the 'how is this thread only three pages long? This game is great' post.

Not really much to talk about, at least from my playthrough.  Went low chaos, and the whole game was just choking dudes and dragging bodies.  Mechanically the only interesting aspect was the blink power.  The whole RPG aspect, collecting bone charms, upgrading powers, getting Piero to augment your weapons, all of it's kind of pointless if you can't use any of it, and if you don't need any of that stuff, you can skip most of the side missions (I still did them, but they felt pretty pointless after a while), and then the game gets kind of bleh.

Seemed like a game that really hit mediocrity hard.  The game can't decide of it wants to be open world or linear, so it kinda half asses both.  Can't decide if it wants to be an exciting game about murdering tons of guards, or a stealthy game about sneaking past them, so it kinda half asses both.  Can't decide if the plot is a supernatural thriller or a political drama, so it kind of half asses both.

I mean, it's not horrible, I definitely had fun with it for a while, but eventually I got the feeling that the game was more fun on paper than in practice.  Things like walls of light (and the world's tech in general), the magic powers, the traps and gadgets, the swordplay, this stuff sounds like it would be a lot of fun to play with, but like 99% of my game time was just choking guards in the shadows and dragging bodies into the corner.  I don't want to exaggerate the negatives, it's not like the game was a steaming pile of crap (it's certainly better than Thief 4 from what I've played of that), it just kind of... I dunno, functional but boring?

That's pretty much the same problem with Deus Ex. The hardest fight for me in that game was when Hightower decided to kill the entire capsule hotel, it was hard because I was playing no fatality and I so wanted to slaughter all of those cock munches.

I guess the main thing missing, then, is what thief got right the best. Giving you a strict mission and making completing that mission a very hard puzzle, making it harder if you play on higher difficulties that don't allow you to do certain things.

I take it there aren't any later Dishonored missions that force you to time patrols and quickly move hiding bodies and jumping behind people at exactly the right point, etc? A great shame if so as I though there was potential for that.

I guess I can sort of fake it by making myself redo any mission where I am seen and don't get 90% of the gold, though?

Played through it after getting it for 5 bucks on steam sale.  I got 5 bucks worth I suppose, but it really was nothing special.  The story was laughably bad.  The gameplay was ok.  It felt like Assassin's Creed meets Bioshock.

I agree with the consensus that it was fine but totally unremarkable. In the end I coasted through the whole game in under 6 hours, not doing much of the side stuff.  I was able to do the missions basically with the blink ability and a sword.  The RPG mechanics felt forced.  I didn't care that there was a crafter NPC, I didn't care that I was supposed to collect runes or charms or whatever, although I did pick up a few here and there.  I was never really invested in anything.  I just played through it because it was basically fun enough to do the missions in isolation, but as a whole package it was just sort of whatever.

I thought it was a pretty damn good game but shackled itself with the stupid "chaos" system. I hope they fucking dump that for the sequel and have just a set ending or a different method for determining good/bad/whatever.

I honestly didn't even notice that it was a thing for the most part.  I mean sure, it gives you the rating at the end of the mission.  I think I got low on everything except the first mission without going out of my way to try. 

Like I said, the individual missions weren't bad. I liked the mission at the Party, as that had me doing some actual sleuthing to figure things out rather than just move to point A, kill a dude, and then move back to the boat.  I also thought the mission where you break into the hideout of the other assassin was neat in principle.  The other assassins felt like a far better match for Corvo than another batch of bumbling guards.

IMO the main thing that Thief has and Dishonored lacks is deeper stealth mechanics.  In Thief, the stealth mechanics are all based around the visibility gem and the noise you're making, and you've got a bunch of different factors which influence that (what you're carrying, how fast you're moving, lighting, floor material, etc.) and a belt full of tools which you can use to bypass obstacles.  In Dishonored, the stealth mechanics are mostly based around line of sight, and you have very few tools or mechanics that really interact with that.  You're either behind a wall or you're not.  The main thing you have which is really useful for this is the blink power, which I admit is really helpful and fun to use, but it's not complex enough to hang a 10+ hour game on, for me.

As for timing patrols and moving bodies, I didn't have much issue with it.  Blink makes timing your movements really easy, and you can blink while carrying bodies I think, so if you're willing to spend mana for it it's all pretty straightforward.  If you're looking for a hardcore challenge, you might try a no-blink run, I believe there's only one part beyond the outsider's dimensions that outright requires it (there's a jump at the beginning of the Dunwall Tower level that requires either blink or the agility upgrade, I think).  But, then you'd be playing the game without what is arguably it's most fun mechanic, so I dunno if I'd recommend it.

Dishonored doesn't have stealth mechanics as deep as Thief because it's not Thief and because stealth is just one option in how to play the game. There are other tools available for low chaos runs (possessing rats to go through grates, bending time to incapacitate everyone in a room in under 10 seconds) and like DX you can take the direct high-chaos route and just kill 'em all in a variety of interesting ways (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eqOMI8_txw).  But unlike DX, you can't game the ending so how you play through the game changes not just the ending or the colour of the sky on the final level but how people react to you, who lives and dies and how many guards, rats and weepers appear in the final few levels.

If you're powergaming Dishonored purely to finish it and for the mechanics then yes, I can absolutely see why you'd find it boring and mediocre. For me it was a game about the story and the world and having options to to play it as I wanted. Why else would be able to


This is a game where you get given a heart which tells you about the backstory of people in the game (and proves to have an interesting backstory itself), that is filled with audio logs and books to read. It's a game where completing side quests in some missions will have some sort of effect on later missions (albeit mostly inconsequential so you can't cockblock yourself by not having done something when you should) but for me they added depth to the world and made it feel like my actions did have consequences.

Not a game for everyone but I loved it.

If your game world is so inconsequential that you have to read in game books to have any inkling of what's going on besides "we're killing the bad guys who took over" then your game world/story isn't that good.  Compare to something like Half Life that has almost no exposition or "lore" but has 100x more interesting setting.

You know what I liked about Dishonored's plotline?  It had a fucking ending.  They didn't string you along with games and dlc and then just decide 'Ah fuck it, I know this is our iconic series but I just don't feel like finishing it despite having all the resources, talent and money in the world'.  "We're killing the bad guys who took over" is also the plot for most of half-life.  My anger is directed at valve not you.

There is a dlc module where you get flipped around and play as the Assassin that murdered the Queen, that was better setting and story wise.  IIRC some of the more overpowered abilities were also taken away.

 :facepalm:

There is nothing about anything that happens in Dishonored that makes me care AT ALL about the game world.  A game like Half Life made me really interested in piecing together information about the game world.  A game like New Vegas made me care about learning about the game world.  In a game where my objectives are to get in, kill a guy, and sneak out stopping to read a fucking lore book is ridiculously out of place.  I've played enough Elder Scrolls to read lots of lore books, in a game with that kind of pacing, ok.  But Dishonored just isn't a game that should be communicating it's story to players that way.  

You could play the whole game and barely realize there was a plague going on save for a few people mentioning it and that is supposed to be a big centerpiece of the plot.  How about a level where the only way into such and such a place is through plague infested/zombie invested area of the city that is just CRAWLING with the guys.  Really drive home through gameplay - not exposition - what this thing is doing to the city.  Sure, there are some optional things you can do that take you through that, but they could have done a far better job of showing, not telling.  

Hell, why do I care that the empress has been killed in the first place?  Am I supposed to feel real teary eyed that a monarch was overthrown?  I guess so because the game tells me how great she was and how bad the new guys are.  Except I never see anyone living in this game world, so who knows?  I guess I can stop and read some journals and find out something in the middle of a high stakes assassination.  That seems like a good plan.

EDIT: Let me put it one more way.  If the story for Dishonored was the empress was just giving me targets and I was going out and offing them, same level design and same missions, I don't think the game would be particularly different.  The story was for me entirely incidental to the enjoyment of the thing.  They could have nuked the whole story from orbit and just said "Here's a series of missions, kill the target" and it would have been effectively the same game.

Half Life was a boring tepid shooter and I do not understand to this day why everyone loves it so much.

I'm not sure we played the same game.  Your whole plotline doesn't involve the empress, that's just what starts it.  You are trying to rescue the girl, you are trying to prove your innocence, you are trying to kill the evil people who took over.  There were always plague victims around, the weepers, there were many places where you had to either kill or avoid them.  If anything the plague was over done, it was constantly being beaten into you that there is a huge plague.  Like half the zones are infrastructure created to dispose of bodies.

I also don't understand how you can complain about there being no story or plot and also complain about having to pick up or listen to story/plot objects.  Whether or not you cared about the plot was left entirely up to the player so everyone should be happy.  If you just want to kill/sneak by people then don't pick up or listen to the plot items, if you enjoy story then go out of your way to dig up all that info.

It's not just me then? Whew!

Dishonored is fun. Not hard, though. Walking through the missions straight up shooting people is easy even on impossible. Still fun.

There was enough of the main story told through watching and listening that you didn't need to pick up a lot of books/audio to have it explained to you - that's why I don't get Malakili's criticism. But yeah, I also agree that I didn't find any lack of suggestion that there was a plague in town. Something to do with all the bodies being left on the street or dumped into the river, the signs on the walls, the big red crosses, the looters, the rats, the plague victims and all the dead bodies in the buildings (or the lovers who died in each others arms in the sewers in the first level). I think there was even an overseer with the plague begging his companions to kill him in one of the early missions.

I don't know - I just enjoyed it for what it was and I liked the fact that so much was left up to player choice.

Yah, I don't get it either.  Part of the reason, however, is that both Half Life and Half Life 2 make me physically ill playing them.  I can get about halfway through and just have to stop playing. 

Dishonored had to be one of the favorite games I played last year.  I played it right after Bioshock: Infinite, and while Bioshock had better characterization and production values, I had more fun with Dishonored.  It seems like Dishonored pulled off what it wanted to do with the game mechanics a lot better.  I'm not really saying they're directly comparable games, but Dishonored surprised me with how much I enjoyed it.   I seem to have a soft spot for games that incorporate stealth mechanics halfway decently.

Good shooter mechanics, top notch level design and a compelling scenario.


The whole plotline involves putting her heir back on the throne.  So while it isn't about her per se, it is her line continuing to rule.  At no point do I ever feel invested in making that happen.

Which you do early on, and then she sits around most of the game, and then you rescue her again at the end.

To who?  Your innocence is entirely irrelevant.  The only thing that matters if the people who like you are in power or not.

Sure, I guess they are evil.  I mean, they are corrupt for sure.  But things were bad under the Empress, and then I guess for some magic reason (literally magic reason maybe, going by the ending cutscene) things get better when the line is restored.


I mean, sort of.  You rarely see people actually living in the city.  They beat it into that there is a plague, but never why it matters.  I guess plague = bad stuff is as far as they went there.  There are paths you can take with the weepers, sure.  But if you're going to make it a centerpiece of the story maybe actually give me as the player some reason to CARE about it.


Because if you have a story that is essentially entirely inconsequential and optional, then it's probably not really important to your game.  And if it's not important, then why should I care?



I guess if you enjoy it go ahead.  But my point is that in other games they make me WANT to go and find out all that information by virtue of the main narrative and/or the general game world that I'm inhabiting being interesting and compelling.  I never felt that at all in Dishonored.  It all just felt like a backdrop for assassination missions at best.  It could have been anything and barely changed the experience.  That's the issue.


The gameplay was more or less fine, as I said.  I enjoyed playing through it and felt like I got my steam sale's worth.  But this is not an example of a game with a great story.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/stopstop.gif)

Woah there, sparky.  We have a name for what you just did.

Sigh.  Whatever. I don't even care about this game.  It is just illustrative of exactly the worst way to do story in games as far as I am concerned.  I've talked about it elsewhere on these boards before. I said my piece.  I am done with this thread.

Too much tell, not enough show. Long and short of it.

Unless the later levels are worse than the first two I'd have to say you're just wrong. I'm not a reader of game books, I also think its crap storytelling (especially given the general quality of game writers), but its just not this game.

Whilst I enjoyed the game without loving it, I did really enjoy the worldbuilding.  I loved the whalepunk feeling, the general feel of a decadent upper class above a decaying city (and that was before the plague hit), the Stranger and the tenents of the faith (was it the faith?  the official religion - whatever that was called), and this whole freaky continent where weird shit lives.  I want to see more stuff in that world.

Yeah, I enjoyed the setting and I enjoyed the story-telling through levels/props/dialogues -- I spent plenty of time sneaking and exploring and overhearing conversations and while it was not a life-changing experience it was enjoyable immersive and worked well enough for me.

Sometimes I try very hard to forget that I've played video games for 30+ years and look at things without bringing the baggage of an industry.  I really enjoyed Dishonored when I did this.  When I accidentally my memories, I really miss Thief: The Dark Project... but this game is still alright in places.  In particular, the atmosphere and world.  I enjoyed the sounds of the game in a very Looking-Glass way.

It's a shame they made the game so easy. There is literally not one thing I did that I can say 'woah that was tough, I'm happy with having managed it.'

There are lots of fun things, but mostly in a sandboxy 'what's a creative way to kill this next bunch of people' regard.

You could probably casual speed run the game in about 15 mins too.

I would love to see a sequel with meaningful difficulty settings and or a hard mode.

They usually claim it's your fault for not cranking the difficulty level up if you realized you were too proficient. Is this not the case? Did you play at the hardest level? Are there difficulty levels to begin with?

Yeah I played at the hardest difficulty. It doesn't change enough. The basic mechanics are too powerful for any difficulty. You can beat the game with nothing more than your starting gear.

I played it at the highest difficulty and more or less smart blinking lets you do most of the missions with very little fear of dying. 

I'm playing the DLC for the first time. They're good, if you liked the game you'll like the two mission packs, Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches. Also, in-jokes.

"Sir?"
"What is it?"
"I just wanted to say... congratulations on getting your own squad."

:awesome_for_real: