Dishonored

[Venkman]

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

[Samprimary]

Sounds like more Good Stuff™ — this comes next.

[Quinton]

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)?

[Fabricated]

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?

[Venkman]

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

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

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.

*

[Fabricated]

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.

[jakonovski]

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

I liked my ending,

[Quinton]

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...

[K9]

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.

[Fabricated]

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:

[Quinton]

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

[Venkman]

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.

[Quinton]

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 ^^

[Fabricated]

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.

[DraconianOne]

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. 

[DraconianOne]

DLC has been released: Dunwall City Trials

[lamaros]

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.

[Kail]

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?

[brellium]

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.

[lamaros]

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?

[Malakili]

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.

[Fabricated]

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.

[Malakili]

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.

[Kail]

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?

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.

[DraconianOne]

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.  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

sign the guest book in the party with your real name and for it to be commented on later if you did or choose one of two ways to reveal who you really are to Hiram Burrows - both of which are optional anyway no matter how you choose to "dispose" of him

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.

[Malakili]

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.

[Miasma]

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.

[DraconianOne]

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. 

 

[Malakili]

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.

[Sky]

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

[Miasma]

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.

[lamaros]

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

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.

[DraconianOne]

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.

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.

[Rasix]

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

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.

[Malakili]

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

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

I'm not sure we played the same game.  Your whole plotline doesn't involve the empress, that's just what starts it.

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.

You are trying to rescue the girl

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

you are trying to prove your innocence

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

you are trying to kill the evil people who took over.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.