I wanted that game to have good stealth mechanics, but it honestly didn’t. Start up the game, stealth into some shadows. Find a trash can, throw it 50’+ away from you and watch as every enemy within earshot runs directly at you.
Considering that they don’t notice until the trashcans land, that’s not a valid question. And obviously they’re not all looking in your direction when you yeet the trashcan, so again, invalid question.
All instances of combat in Dishonored are completely optional in Dishonored. It’s actually one of the built in challenges of the game that you are rewarded for. Beating the game with out ever being seen is called Ghost and beating it with zero kills is called Pacifist.
If you like dishonored you should try prey by same studio. Level design is amazing and character interaction/plot changes based on how you play and where you are when certain events happen.
I do recall they all lacked depth and combat programing. I think the game direction focused on the environment and story more than combat. Which is how I also remember dishonored.
I’ve started playing it and it hooked me for a bit but once it really opens up I’ve been struggling to stick with it. Very interesting premise and characters so far though, I have no idea who can actually be trusted and that feels intentional.
Yeah I can see that. 1st play through I stuck to objectives so I knew what was going on. Next round, I intentionally did stuff out of order which changes a few things. Easy to get lost 1st time around. Especially as environment changes.
I adored dishonored, I played through them a couple times so I could see both endings, and I felt like it provided a really different experience.
I especially liked how you could do ng+ in dishonored 2, meant I could replay it as the other character with a bunch of free upgrades and unlocks to get things started.
I bailed on Dishonoured for one very specific reason; the morality system.
Dishonoured is, in my opinion a spectacular example of game design, and an equally spectacular example of how to break your game design by not understanding the way players interact with the tools you give them.
Dishonoured is a stealth game. It’s also a game with a superb combat system, and a really fun and exciting set of powers for the player to enjoy using. These things can, sort of co-exist, if somewhat uneasily. But then you add the morality system.
The morality system, in effect, punishes you for playing the game in a non-stealthy way. Or, more specifically, for playing with the wrong kind of stealth. The morality system wants you to ghost the whole game, slipping past every opponent without the slightest evidence you were ever there. But doing that means not engaging with most of the powers and any of the combat.
Having the option to follow a ghost playstyle is great. But when the game sets up a bunch of really fun mechanics, then punishes you for engaging with those mechanics in exactly the way they were designed to be engaged with, that just sucks.
Can you explain why you think the game punishes the player for engaging in combat and killing enemies? I get that the events in the game may change but I’m not getting how that’s a punishment to the player.
You get a bad ending if you kill too many people, and the non-lethal option is just the chokehold for the most part. I bailed for the same reason the first few times I tried to play through the game. The morality system is really the games only critical flaw (or they need more non-lethal options)
Non-lethal also means avoidance rather than conflict. But ultimately, “bad ending” is subjective. You still save the princess, it’s just a more murdery vibe.
Also you get to kill the baddies yourself, it’s the good ending where most are killed for you right?
I guess it’s personal preference. I prefer for choices I make in the story to affect the outcome. If my gameplay has an affect, I feel like I’m being forced into a playstyle. I know it’s stupid, but I have trouble getting out of that thought process. For me it’s similar to why I can never get into bayonetta or devil may cry, the scoring system for each encounter stresses me out. I just want to have fun
There’s also a lot of stuff throughout the game about how the city gets more corrupted, more rats everywhere, that sort of thing. Some of this makes some stuff harder, some of it is just vibes. But all of it is the designers very noticeably wagging their finger under your nose for engaging with the mechanics they made and actively encouraged you to engage with.
To me it feels more about consistency. The world aligns with your expressed ideology.
If you’re using the sneaking and non-lethal tools the world becomes a place that believes in the value of life, if you murder indiscriminately the world becomes a place of punishment, where nobody is innocent and the only way forward is to let a plague descend on the land.
Plus, arguably, the parts that get harder when you go lethal are balanced by the inherently more difficult nature of the non-lethal approach.
Appreciate the response. I feel that I’m in the minority when it comes to caring much about good or bad endings. Usually if a game has several endings I’ll replay it to get the other endings. I’ve never really felt that a “bad ending” was a punishment though. Even if I get immersed in the character I’m playing, I never felt as though I experienced the negative outcomes. I was playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with a friend and he was getting mad at me because I wasn’t playing lawfully good lol. That game was designed to keep progressing no matter what choices you make. You can kill the most important characters but the game keeps going. Yet he felt as though we would have to reload a previous save if I did something too “wrong”. Anyway, I just find the difference of opinion on the topic interesting lol sorry for the wall of text.
IMO the combat mechanics shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but the developers were terrified of making a player-character that wasn’t a demigod that can slaughter an entire army.
I still think Dishonored 1 & 2 are both really good games, but its like they made Portal but just let you break the walls of the test chambers and walk right through if you felt like it.
I’d be happy with either option. If you’re going to punish the player for not doing perfect (eg, no kill) stealth, don’t tease them with a bunch of really exciting combat mechanics. If you’re going to include all the exciting combat mechanics, don’t punish people for using them.
Dishonored is a descendant of the looking glass studio, 0451 immersive sim games, such as Deus Ex. These are games have flexibility, they let you choose how you approach. You can fight, or you can sneak, or you can do both. The game succeeds on this goal, as you can have a very satisfying time with the combat or the stealth, and you can do both. You can fight your way out of failing to sneak.
The morality system gives the game reactions to your actions, gives your choices an effect outside of the level you’re currently on. It does encourage a specific play style but that is deliberate. The outsider is a malevolent force, who doesn’t care for this world. He gives you these powers that come with a cost. Getting the good ending requires to resist the temptation. That’s the point.
Do not cite the deep magics to me, I was there when they were written. I grew up on System Shock and Deus Ex, and that’s exactly why I found Dishonoured so hard to get into. Those other games gave the player a complete free choice in how to approach them, but Dishonoured doesn’t do that. It presents an apparently wide open field, but the moment you pick a particular path and set off down it, the game wags its finger and says “Oh no, not like that. That’s not how you’re supposed to play.”
Dishonored is one of the few games that I’ve turned right around and played through again after I beat it. The gameplay is just so free. It’s not really the biggest map ever, but it is so dense and easy to navigate. I also haven’t experienced a lot of titles that just ooze atmosphere the way that Dishonored does. The art direction is off the charts, and I think it’s aged pretty impeccably. It’s always a good idea to do stylized over realistic, at least if you want your game to stand the test of time.
I played the first game way, way back. At the very least, I remember completing it, and liking it. So fast forward several years, the game goes on sale plenty, and I’ve forgotten nearly all of it, but remembered I liked it. So why not play it again, right? Picked it up for cheap, and just could not get into it. I tried a couple times even, but I just can’t for some reason.
Did you enable all the DLC? Maybe you didn’t the first time. I made the mistake of playing it for the first time with everything, and some of the DLC gives you all your powers/etc right away I believe. It has been years but I remember this really bummed me out rather than unlocking things as I went.
I could be remembering wrong, but I think it just hands you a lot of unlockables almost right away. I recall feeling like it killed some of the excitement that would have been there.
Someone with more recent memory can help me out. I just remember being powerful super quick.
Dishonored nailed a neat trick: If every game dev stops innovating immediately after you release an innovative game, your game will always be considered highly innovative.
Look at what Valve has said in response to similar questions.
Its basically a polite way of saying ‘yeah there really isn’t a better possible first person shooter, single player experience.’
So they made a reality breaking first person puzzle game, became the de facto overlords of PC gaming platforms, invented VR tech, oh and made linux be able to run every game, oh and we make console-esque PCs now too, I guess.
Hell, I don’t even know of other games that solve the ‘multiplayer fps maps are predictable and boring’ the way L4D did, where the map itself csn basically mutate, have a bunch of semi-procedural preset variants.
Nope, instead, we still have the most popular multiplayer FPS games have basically static, memorizable maps.
Turns out gamers broadly don’t actually seem to want innovation, they seem to want gacha games, as gacha games are now basically more than half of the gaming market.
Example of that: That friend you know who’s still really trying to convince you that Fallout 76 is better now.
Half Life 2 was about 5 years too early to be considered “basically beyond imptovement”. The graphics are a little dated now, and maybe the gameplay is a little simpler than a modern FPS, but ultimately it’s pretty close to the mark. I haven’t been surprised by FPS mechanics or graphics in 10 years, so there’s basically no way for Half Life 3 to surprise us. Dishonored 1 and 2 were basically identical. If you told me the second one came out immediately after, I’d believe you.
Yeah, thats fair, I’m not trying to personally say HL2 is literally perfect, and I don’t think Valve are either…
But they’re saying that, by the time people really really wanted Half Life 3… they knew they would have to do something so revolutionary, so much better, to top it… that it actually wasn’t possible.
So, think outside the box, innovate elsewhere, all the other shit they’ve done?
Conceptually and practically easier than making a sequel that would live up to HL3 expectations.
Although, there are apparently reports/rumors that they are now actually trying to do HL3.
But that has been the case for almost two decades.
Fallout 76 is better now. The monetizing is little ew, but there are lots of content and they fixed a lot of the big caveats i had with the game.
Id put that game just under a Noman sky and Cyperpunk 2077 as a game that turned around.
Also valve did not origaninally make portal. Its roots came from Kim Swifts senior project. Valve gave resurces to add the shine, but the concept did not originate from Valves offices.
They did not invent vr stuff either. First vr stuff crude as it was comes allthe way from the 60’s in the 90’s Sega had their Sega vr in some arcade racings games and oculus rift from Carmack + team was first modern style vr set on the markets.
Lots of games use similar mechanics than left for dead to make the maps and spawns feel different.
Here few from the top of my head: Vermintide 2 (maybe 1, havent played that) Pay day 2 Back 4 blood Ane could argue Alien isolation is similar because it has same kind of game director controlling the game. Remnant 1 & 2 Gunfire reborn.
games like Helldives 1 & 2 and deep rock galactica where the whole map is generated.
One could argue even most extraction shootters do that because the exctraction zones change place.
Yeah all wants just catcha games. Thats why games like Clair Obscur, Death Stranding and now Dispatch have done so poorly/s
Ok uh, what can you do, in terms of actual gameplay mechanics, in Fallout76, that you can’t do in… basically every multiplayer, survival/craft/open world/fps game?
There are so many of those… and… FO76 basically came out around the tail end of the kind of craze for those kinds of games, they were trend chasing.
Uh lets see, Valve did make Portal, what happened was they saw a demo of a game (Narbacular Drop) being concepted at a nearby gaming college expo, and they basically hired all of them, taught them Source, gave them more team breadth and depth to work with.
Valve has… or had… a track record of doing this, in the 90s / 00s. Oh, thats a neat mod for our game: Hire them.
So yes, Valve did originally make Portal. By seeing a neat concept demo, hiring the people behind it, and then making Portal.
I mean, you can say that after 5 more years of development, F076 became a basically functional open world survival craft fps, sure, but like…
No Mans Sky basically revolutionized the concept of what you can do with procedural generation, oh and, they just kept adding more and more stuff, just to the base game, not as DLC, not as MTX.
CP77? Yeah very rough start, but uh, entirely different scope of production value, being an actually competent RPG that’s practically an ImSim in many ways, all with an absurd level of graphical fidelity.
Like, everyone just expected that game to be Grand Theft Auto 5, Cyberpunk Edition, started their standards there, and then got mad that it wasn’t at parity.
CD Projekt Red was a AA studio when they were making this.
They were not Rockstar. They were not Bethesda.
Ok, I’ll give you that PayDay2 does actually have similar map mutating dynamics, I also have not played Vermintide, we do not speak of Back 4 Blood, what an embarassment, I am also unfamiliar with Remnant.
What I was trying to get at is … map mutations is how you solve the age old FPS team v team problem of… if you just have better map knowledge, you tend to win, so this causes a problem where you either have to keep pumping out new maps to keep things fresh, or you have to have a bunch of other balancing gameplay mechanics to have variety from there.
But the fundamental problem is that vets will clown noobs all the time, often by just simply having the maps memorized, angles and positions figured out, etc.
Also Alien Isolation has pretty good monster AI that works with the rest of the game design, but no, thats not mutating maps.
Open world maps that move objective markers around are not mutating maps.
HellDivers 2 is a good example of doing proc gen maps… but again, thats an extraction shooter, co-op shooter type thing.
Nobody, that I am aware of, has pulled this off for mass PvP battles, like, 16-32+ vs 16-32+ players.
As for Valve not literally, technically, totally inventing VR… sure yeah ok, what I meant was they poured tons of their own resources into doing VR in their own way, they’re one of the only teams that’s made an actual AAA VR game that fully embraces the concept of ‘you are a person in another world, a world that has high graphical realism.’
Virtual reality.
The point there was they turned toward innovating in other areas, that they did more or less start from scratch and invent their own concept of VR.
Your final quip about gacha games is funny.
Just look at the numbers dude, the vast majority of money to be made in gaming is by selling MTX addiction simulators.
That’s not to say there are not still people who really do actually want well crafted, truly innovative or very well put together, fully fledged games… but the way the math of capitalism works on that is uh, those kinds of endeavors are way riskier, and have way worse ROI, than selling waifus to dorks.
I hope that actual games defeat waifu simulators, we are seeing a lot of AAAs crash and burn recently, but uh, I don’t think gacha games are going anywhere… and most of the outfits with the money to be able to undertake a truly groundbreaking project?
Theyre all incompotent morons at the management level, who, after failing hard at their attempts in the last 5 ish years, are now just gonna try and hand that all over to AI, to attempt to further increase ROI.
But, normies love ‘recognizable brand franchise’, normies consistently auto-hypetrain and nostalgia-bate themselves, normies prove that having more than half a game’s budget be marketing does brainwash them very well.
Here, I’ll end with another hot take:
If, after everything that happened with Bethesda, up to the point of Starfield releasing…
You still bought Starfield on day one, or pre-ordered it?
You’re the problem, you’re the normie, you’re the person marketing and nostalgia work on, you didn’t realize your in an abusive, parasocial relationship with Bethesda.
Uh. Mutation card system? Crafting system while not unique but extracting legendary mods is differend to many games where you just farm drops untill you get the perfect roll. Power armor is also something i havent really seen done that well outside of bethesda. Also they enviromental story telling in map big as FO76 is top notch. I understand if you have trendy hate for Bethesda. I dont especially like they releasing skyrim every few years or how they made the planets in Starfield, but i get the feeling you are not sharing your own opinions. Just yelling stuff you have hears in the internet.
About portal. Valve saw an idea, bought it out and gave it a new shine. They did a good job recocnizing talent but it was as much innovation from Valve as Adobe shows when they buy new shiny software.
I had fun with back 4 blood. It was shame they stopped the support for the game so early. Also most people i see bitching about it played it at the release time when it was very unbalanced or tried to jump on the higher dificulties too early without ever learning how to really play the game.
Also about the map mutations in general. Its not a problem to be solved. Reason why some maps are so popular for example in CS or CoD is because people have learned the maps and enjoy playing the game in a way where they can antipiciate the opponents movements and know how to play the game on “high level”. Some people enjoy more random maps more for the opposite reason. Its not a problem, its a preference. You are right that it makes it harder for the noobs to jump in to the games, but that is something many companies are trying to fix with match making.
I used alien as a example because it has similiar director behind the scenes as left for dead has. You know. The another big reason why the levels feel fresh. Id argue even that the director does more for the game feeling different than the small mutations in the level layout.
About valve vr… you were talking about innovation. They did not create the vr. They arguable made a great game and pushed it to the limit what can be done right now, but in its self there is nothing inherently innovative in the mechanics, except they are very well executed.
I found it pretty obnoxius that you raise yourself above the “normies”. Especialy when im feeling like most of your opinions come from other people and from gaming echochambers instead of you thinking things yourself. Personaly i have started gaming before windows was a thing and it has been one thing i can always get passionate about.
Another thing i find obnoxius is how people always think “big game companies bosses are incompetent” i bet most of the people in those position know much more about the markets than you and i. Their sole job is to try and generate money. Maybe its easier to think they are some cartoon level evil morons, but they are hitting their marks more times than not and we really only hear about the royal fuck ups.
And your quip about the star field. Bought it pretty late after the release on pc and on purpose tried to avoid any reviews before i finished the game. And im glad i didint. The game was not awsome, but it was not as bad as internets opinion was. Reading review can screw your perspective and make you focus on the minor inconviniences that you would ignore or not think about if somebody would not have brought those on the top if your mind.
Try sometime to test completely unknown game to you from either a demo or use the steam return policy and after you have your own opinion see if you agree with the reviews.
A bit of a tangent, but tbh I feel like Half-Life Alyx was a perfect example of where they can take the franchise, but being a PC VR title (and one that really leans heavily into the tech and loses a ton if played with non-VR mods), it didn’t have nearly the same impact as the rest of the franchise. It was definitely innovative but not in a way to appeal to the mass market. Not to mention it sets the stage for HL3 even more than Ep 2 did.
Its an outstanding achievement… but it just ain’t affordable, ain’t accessible, not unless they can somehow get a Steam Frame to be more like half the cost of an Index, as opposed to about the same price.
On the other hand…
It would maybe be neat if more just games in general were made with the idea of a/many VR player(s) vs a/many kb+m or controller players.
Make asymetrical gameplay that plays to the strenghts of each set up.
Remember Splinter Cell’s old vs mode?
Two FPS heavies vs two TPS sneakybois?
Something like that, but specialized to different control set ups.
Actually balance around different control schemes, but where each control scheme basically is a base player class, something like that.
There are a few games and modes for games that do something like this, but nothing I am aware of thats like… a whole ass game, not just basically a minigame.
Okay one thing I have definately noticed in L4d is that I am never stationary or still long enough to feel bored. Almost every other fps pve game is just “stand on top of hill and gun down hordes of zombies”.
Modern games feel like we are going backwards in gameplay. Atleast the graphics are nice I guess?
They really did go very in depth to the ‘game controller’, basically its a simulated DM for a TTRPG.
The … constantly on edge thing?
Systems of spawning and nudging AI states of groups of enemies, specifically designed to make you feel that near constant tension.
That, combined with the entire group alerting/hording npc mechanic. Make a little noise? You might be ok. Make too much noise? Prepare to get fucked. Oh also, the threshold between ‘probably safe’ and ‘totally fucked’ is always moving around a bit, so… you don’t really ever know where it is, with certainty.
Its basically an optimal way to induce a stress/panic disorder in a person, its not you watching a horror movie, its… you’re essentially actually in one.
The other element of that is that they’re much better at traditional map design, making choke points mixed with more open spaces, giving you some options to explore/use as cover/retreat to, but also, some of those options are actually traps that will punish you.
Ooops, that’s not safety, its effectively a monster closet!
(Sometimes its an actual monster closet, sometimes its that the closet is actually fairly far away, but there’s a prebaked navmesh path from the actual spawn point that leads directly to thst area you thought was gonna be safe.)
Also uh L4D doesn’t have a 2D minimap.
It uses things like way points and object/objective stencils/borders, and, a lot of the maps are complex vertically, in addition to horizontally, so… just naively moving toward the waypoint?
Probably not gonna work so well in L4D, whereas in most games, that basically will work.
There is also a kind of problem in that a growing number of people cannot navigate their own hometowns without a real life minimap… players generally are getting worse at complex environment navigation overtime, and that’s true in both real and virtual spaces.
I think I’m the only person who played through the entire game and didn’t like it. Yes, yes, I should probably have quit but I’m a bit of an optimist and hoped it would get better.
It felt to me like the game really didn’t want me to kill anyone. However it had any number of fun ways to kill people and then scolded me when I was naughty enough to (gasp) use them!
Also the rats were bizarrely low poly compared to everything else. Odd gripe, perhaps, but given how crucial they are to the setting it felt strangely shit.
It was unfortunately a product of its time where moral systems ultimately amounted to binary good guy/bad guy outcomes which was the style at the time. The system was designed to make you want to play it twice. If you’re used to the more modern moral ambiguity in today’s RPGs I don’t think anyone can blame you for disliking it.
I grew up playing Fallout 1/2, Deus Ex, stuff like that. Dishonored framed its morality system as “chaos” rather than good vs. bad but ultimately I had characters complaining about my methods. You brought in someone to specifically be an assassin and then you’re outraged that he kills people? I shot the damn traiterous boatman in the head at the end of the game.
IIRC you still get the low-chaos ending if you only kill the targets. It’s just by going wild and killing everyone that you get high-chaos, and I think this fits in the moral framing of the game.
I do agree with your gripe that D1 gives you a lot of fun ways to kill people and challenges you not to use them, while at the same time giving you very little nonlethal tools. They addressed this well in the sequel IMO, but I did also love the challenge and the temptation knowing that these enemies would be so easy to defeat with a rat swarm but I just shouldn’t. Like I said, keeps with the moral framing about the slippery slope of mindless revenge IMO
I’m reminded of a show I was watching and lampshading. One of the characters is exhausting to watch and the other characters comment on how much the character sucks. That’s great an’ all but I’m still stuck watching this character suck. Commenting on it doesn’t make it go away.
Similarly I could not use the tools the game gives me but they’re there for me to use. If I’m not supposed to use them then I might as well instead play something that wants me to play it!
I understand what you’re saying (I think) but you know that… you can kill everyone, right? The worst the game does is throw a few more enemies at you (to kill) and some moral characters say mean things to you. Pretty standard RPG mechanics, IMO. It’s just a choice and like I said, the narrative framing sets you up to be a highly-trained stealthy assassin, not some mass-murdering juggernaut. But you can do that if you want
Similarly I could not use the tools the game gives me
Offers* you. There’s even an achievement for completing the game with just a sword and pistol, no upgrades or powers ;) Choices!!
Much like in Spec Ops: The Line the player can just stop playing. I mean, you’re not wrong, but it seems silly to me.
Some games handle this by making it the ultra-violent approach essentially non-viable but that’s not how Dishonored decided to roll.
the narrative framing sets you up to be a highly-trained stealthy assassin
I quietly took out guards rather than avoiding them. No alarms were raised, etc.. Seems pretty stealthy to me.
Ultimately I just didn’t appreciate the mixed messaging of “here are tools for extreme violence” and “why did you commit extreme violence?”. If non-lethal means were such a priority why was I given tools that heavily favour lethality?
What you’re not understanding is its not “don’t use these tools” its, “if you’re a murder hobo you’re going to get a darker ending narratively” there’s not a real consequence otherwise, you can play however you want still.
Let me put it another way then:
They made the creative choice to build the game that way. I think it was a bad choice and hurt the narrative experience significantly and can think of multiple better options that would have made it a better game. Evidently I am very much in the minority on this but my experience playing the game is just as valid as anyone else’s.
I’m not some strange creature that has emerged from an undersea cave with no understanding of narrative conventions or game structures. I’ve been playing games since the early ‘90s, including plenty from the ‘80s, and have continued playing since, across many genres.
I think the way they chose to structure their game could have been better and I was actively annoyed by the way they went about handling “high chaos”. Other games before and since did it better.
You are more than welcome to disagree with my opinion! Most people seem to!
…but it is not me being some idiot who doesn’t understand gaming and I’m frankly rather tired of being told I’m the problem here.
Because your qualm of “they gave me the tools but don’t want me to use them” is plain wrong.
It’s like playing FO3 or NV and getting upset that killing random people in a city results in everyone getting angry with you and losing karma. “They let me kill them so why should there be any consequences?”
Lol fair enough, idk like you called the boatman traitorous, view it from his angle, you would have to have gone around murdering a LOT of people for him to turn his back on you. The whole plot is about the govt being suoplanted and you’re supposed to be part of the “good guys” yet it doesn’t feel that you’re (a player with high chaos) is being a “good guy” I can totally get why he’d be like… Dude in done with helping you, this isn’t right what you’re doing
I’m sorry that I don’t remember many story specifics from thirteen years ago. I remember the group I was working on behalf of seemed utterly awful so I very much didn’t feel like I was on the side of “the good guys”. The whole system seemed rotten on all sides and I didn’t feel like I was doing anything positive regardless. I recall the boatman just being an arse towards me throughout and having the opportunity to off him at the end was at least satisfying. He does straight up betray the player in high chaos, so traitorous is an apt description.
As I said, my complaint was more with framing that the specific consequences.
When I played Dishonored it felt like I was given tools like that and then reprimanded for my lack of subtlety. If I’d been told “Use these only as a last resort as subtletly is the priority” and I’d used them then I’d have felt like I’d just barely scraped through a mission. Instead I did a thorough job, from my perspective, eliminating threats to the group I was working for, avoiding raising any alarms, and then being told I did a shitty job. You gave me a toolset geared towards extreme violence, why the shocked Pikachu face?
I think it’s really cool that the game is setup so that it can be traversed non-violently (I can’t recall whether there are any targets that absolutely must be killed, but I remember most, if not all, had non lethal options). Given the tools I had though, I didn’t feel like going that route, and I really didn’t appreciate the mission givers acting like I was doing a bad job when I used the tools I was given. It felt very much like “Well the proper way to play this is the sneaky sneaky way - but I suppose deep begrudging sigh we’ll allow you to do things this way” was the message the game communicated to me.
I wasn’t cheesing the systems presented, messing with pathfinding bugs, that kind of thing. I used the tools given in a canonically acceptable way. Don’t give me a loaded gun and then complain about a loud bang!
“This person is a problem. We’ve left some tools for you."
(events transpire)
“Oh my gods, what did you do?! They’re dead!”
Sorry, was I supposed to have a little chat with them, convince them to mend their ways? Was the collapsible sword for cutting cake? The gun for firing into the air in celebration of an understanding? Those exploding knife mine things for… uhhh.
These are my perceptions and recollections, over a decade later. They may not be entirely accurate, but it’s what I remember. The game left me with a lasting impression that it disapproved of my approach and I found its mixed messages deeply irritating. I didn’t feel I was being mechanically punished and I was aware that being more violent would increase “chaos”, but I felt that should be my choice for tackling the problems and the mission givers should treat it Corvo making decisions in the field that he felt were appropriate. He wasn’t there to just be a triggerman, as far as he was concerned, but to make decisions in his area of expertise.
If you disagree with my experiences I can’t stop you, but that was what I took away from the game. If it failed to communicate things to me it’s certainly not because I lack media savvy or gaming experience. I’m annoyed that I didn’t have more fun with it - I played to the end because throughout I hoped that I would enjoy the next bit more. Then it was the end of the game and a bunch of people were telling me that my opinion was wrong.
I’m really not interested in dragging this out further.
…because I knew that if you continued to engage I would feel compelled to do so, rather than going to bed or whatever. Dishonored annoys me to this day. I do not get the love for it. I’m glad the rest of you had such a good time with it and annoyed that I didn’t get that enjoyment. I put the effort in, where’s my fun?!
I’m sorry and appreciate your nuanced response, thank you for taking the time to explain.
For my part, I played generally low chaos just because I found it very fun to blink in, knock out a guard on their own, blink away and end up with all the guards in piles up in the rafters, on the chandelers, stuffed into corners of closets etc lmao. I haven’t replayed 1 in a couple years but I think all the main targets have non-lethal as an option and generally require some set up to achieve which gives more time for world exploring. There are also a lot of powers that work very well with non-lethal and more stealth oriented play throughs.
Like the other commentor pointed out, the guard and good amount of the general folk are not really enemies because they are “bad”, they’re simply manipulated by propaganda and think Corvo is the one who murdered the empress in cold blood. So from a bystanders prospective, the boatman in this case, he’s seeing a high chaos player murder a bunch of at least morally neutral guards and is understandably disgusted. For high chaos you’d definitely have to kill a good percentage of the guards as, from my understanding, you can still kill every target and achieve a low chaos ending. Corvo is given the choice to do what’s needed, but at a point it’s more like a slaughter and the characters are effected by it. Not to mention murdering the majority of the police and leadership of an empire is going to throw an already strained empire into… Chaos has. Not enough guards left to keep the peace. It felt less to me (in high chaos runs) like the game is chastizing me, and more like understandable consequences to my annihilation tactics lol, more rats because of all the bodies, characters becoming disillusioned and turning away, the guards absolutely know I’m a monster now, etc…
You indicated you felt the tools you were given pushed you more towards a lethal playstyle, however what about the non lethal tools you were given? There’s a stun mine, sleep bolts, ability to choke guards unconcious, several powers as I mentioned… Plus you get to choose what you upgrade, most runs I didn’t upgrade the lethal options much at all. 🤷
Idk, I went in expecting a stealth game and it overdelivered and had the bonus of also being open to a less stealth oriented call of duty or dark souls style kill all in your way option with a bunch of completely different powers I didn’t use on my stealth run.
Reading your experience it feels like you might have gone in with a different mindset or maybe misundertstood something about how you can play the game and that it clouded your experience with a game I so thoroughly enjoyed, It’s one of those I go back and play every few years.
It’s silly that I pushed so much on it because of course in the grand scheme it doesn’t matter lol its just a videogame, but eh.
Edit: My wife pointed out to me there’s some additional moral points around how the Outsider basically tempts you with power just to see if you’ll succumb to the “easy route” with the lethal powers. It is kind of the point that it’s harder to do/be morally good in ethically complex situations.
Well an assassin kills his targets. He doesn’t kill every innocent bystander he sees. In the first game, the guard enemies you see are your colleagues who are fully under the impression that you are a traitor who killed the empress. They are functionally your enemies during the game, but they are ultimately the good guys.
The rebel leaders, especially the admiral are going to complain about you killing who are also basically his men.
That’s true, it is a game where each choice has a direct consequence. Going along that train of thought, do you see the “star system” in GTA as the game scolding you for your choices? If you’ve never played it, in GTA you are a criminal and as you commit crimes you get a star rating. The more stars means the more law enforcement that attempts to subdue or kill you. There really isn’t a way to complete the game in a non-violent manner though.
A better equivalent would be a GTA game giving you a mission with a tank and then the mission givers seriously, not for comedy, giving the player shit for doing anything but driving on the road avoiding all cars.
My problem is with the tonal dissonance of giving the player weapons designed to be fun only for the game to complain when they’re used.
The opposite being a Bond game. Really he should only be using sneaky spy weapons but he’s given a ridiculous arsenal and expected to use it. If you give me a machine gun then why would you expect me not to use it?
I think there is a difference between what the developers expect and what characters expect. In Fallout3 a settlement builds their town around a deactivated nuclear bomb. There is an opportunity very early in the game to detonate it, which most characters understandably react poorly to. But I wouldn’t rate the game poorly because the surviving NPCs of that settlement become hostile to the player afterwards. The developers don’t really expect anything from the players as there is the choice to do either thing. I thought Dishonored did that as well. NPCs who cause havoc to the city by killing people and spreading disease will hear complaints from the surviving citizens. Also the story of the game sets up the player to be framed for murdering the empress so most NPCs by default already hate the player character. I liked that the game gave players the choice to remain noble and try to actively prevent further chaos or say fuck it and slaughter everyone who stands against you even if you are technically in the right.
Weird stupid pedantic gripe but the way the headline is written is confusing. Isn’t it only possible “years later” that anything even could be considered a classic?
I haven’t played Thief but it’s supposed to be a big inspiration for Dishonored afaik. Splinter Cell is fantastic but plays so differently it’s hard to compare… I guess Prey 2017 is closest, if you play a stealth build. There’s also Styx but I haven’t played it yet. Apparently pretty cool
arstechnica.com
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