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
Played dishonored 1 and 2 earlier this year on my steam deck and they played great. Also FYI - month ago I grabbed expedition 33 and started it - as someone who loved ff turn based games and baldur’s gate and turn based pathfinder, I found it extremely boring. Quit playing after forcing myself to continue for 15 hours thinking it would get better.
Probably just me, but maybe look into it more before making the buy.
Yeah I honestly have so many games that I haven’t played that I’m going to wait for a big sale on it. I’m always so behind the times that I never get anything at release.
Dishonored is my favorite video game series of all time! I play that thing every year, lol. Love the stealth challenges and all the ways you can approach things. I really enjoy the sequels too, and this year I’ve finally gotten into the books. Fantastic game. Also they leaned heavy into the style, so 13 years later it still looks decent. Not nearly as aged-looking as “realistic” graphics from that time. Those still look decent too, all things considered. But stylized graphics tend to fit their current limitations better than pushing for realism.
Dishonored: The Corroded Man
This takes place about a year before Dishonored 2, and POV characters include Emily and Corvo. I really liked this one. Especially how it expanded on the relationship between Corvo and Emily. Some neat character insights too. Emily is canonically a beefcake.
Dishonored: The Return of Daud
This one follows Daud during the events of Dishonored 2 as he looks for the Twin-bladed Knife. Really cool concept that is once again brought down by Daud and his Daud-ness. “Woe is me, I killed the empress! Who can I push this blame upon to heal the hole in my black heart?!”. I’m making my way through though. It does show a bit more of Gristol that is outside of Dunwall.
Dishonored: The Veiled Terror
I haven’t gotten here yet. It follows Billy Lurk after Death of the Outsider, and how she deals with the consequences of the ending of that game.
Comics
I have not read these at all yet, and they may be hard to find.
The Thief vibes were stellar in Dishonored, I liked it more than Dishonored 2 to be honest! Dishonored had the right amount of stealthy gameplay, places you could hide easily without too much issue. I succeeded most levels as a ghost or with few kills, solid stealth gameplay!
The original game Styx game is quite janky in my opinion, with random frame drops and finicky character actions. It wasn't for me, but thank you for the recommendation.
Dishonored (1) is my favorite game of all time. I’ve put in so many hours across every console I’ve owned since it came out in 2012. Some of the best DLC story expansions of all time, too. Glad to see it still getting some love and mourning the fact that we’ll never get another game.
Wow that looks like a blast. I just finished my ~fifth playthrough of Bioshock: Infinite last week and that game looks like it would slot in right beside that. Thanks for sharing!
This isn’t just a violent game. It’s an immersive sim. The fun comes from the many different ways you can handle a level. Even in ways unintended to the developer. Not every game is Gears of War.
I mean, it really isn’t though. You can totally play it that way, yeah, but that’s only one option. The story reacts to how you play and the decisions you make. I find the low chaos (less or non-lethal) ending to be my favorite. Also canonically Corvo isn’t a raving lunatic murderer, so if you’re looking for the “True” story experience that’s the way to go. He still kills some people, notably the Lord Regent, but spares others.
That game is insane. Like, I played the game with a non-lethal route because of the good ending and stuff. But after I finished the game, I wondered how other people played this game, and holy shit, we are playing different games lol. This game is very gorey I don’t even know it’s part of the core gameplay lol
Dude it’s a blast. When they came out I played through each Dishonored once slowly, methodically, and non-lethal. Then immediately started over and hauled ass just slaughtering anything that got in my way. Both ways are valid and so much fun!
It absolutely was, but thats in spite of choosing to launch it on an immature architecture with no developer tooling, not because of it. Imagine what it could have been if it wasn’t so hard to use!
We don’t even need to imagine, necessarily! The quality of games released towards the tail-end of its life cycle speaks volumes: Uncharted 2&3, The Last of Us, God of War 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 etc.
I don’t think there was anything actually wrong with the architecture per se, but rather just the lack of proper documentation and tools set potential developers back significantly.
It was definitely hubris on Sony’s part, thinking that they could do whatever they wanted given the prior success of both the PlayStation and PS2 consoles prior.
Those PS3 launch stumbles definitely were a wake-up call, however I do believe that because it was largely the US/Western arm of SCEI that lead the ‘rescue’ - they ended up wrestling control away from the JP arm, ultimately causing the PS4/5 to end up so risk adverse and largely unremarkable as a result.
Ugh games of this era are gonna age like milk with this forced upscaling and blurry TAA smear shite.
More compression and upscaling… How about just better graphics? How about you make a console that can do path tracing that you can get going with a fairly cheap PC setup.
All these years and these consoles still run 720p30fps like the PS3, but it’s ok with some people because it’s using AI to be dishonest and not just lying like back in the good old days with fish AI.
Forced upscaling and blurry TAA is compensating for the fact that they can’t push graphics much further on the hardware we have. The current hardware progression has stagnated, combined with the fact that we are seeing more diminishing returns in graphics as they improve, requiring more power to deliver less of a noticeable difference.
But it doesn’t mean these games won’t look great when you disable the fakeness and run it with brute force GPU power 10 years from now.
I honestly think the current graphics we can achive are fine and where the true improvements should come from are better animation and actually good art direction.
I’m no expert on the matter, but I know this yt channel argues that the technology is already available. The thing is, big players like unreal engine devs make sub-optimal decisions when implementing these new features, leaving a lot of games being blurry and/or mal-ajusted simply by not knowing any better. Of course, art direction will always be important for a games graphics, but when the vast majority of tools available make things look bad by default, it makes sense that people will assume a better result is just not available yet.
That’s the guy who’s asking for a million dollars to “fix” unreal engine 5 despite having 0 programming experience and sends out dcma strikes for any videos that call him out on it, lol
I think the primary reason for the GPU stagnation has been the AI / GPU compute bubble over the past 5 years.
So much on-die space has been diverted away from raw rasterisation power towards CUDA, that it has artificially held back GPU progress.
When we do see the current AI bubble burst (and it does feel like we’re fast approaching that point, due to all the recent incestuous business dealings), hopefully we can see some innovation return to the sector.
I think calculating the rays in a different way does constitute as rethinking the pipeline, especially when we consider that path tracing is one of the most computationally heavy processes in computer graphics. In fact path tracing is so heavy we don’t even do full path tracing (as in we don’t calculate all the possible rays), we essentially cheat by calculating a handful of rays and then sending it through a denoiser (which is why it takes a second to calculate the shadow of your character). There’s a lot of performance to be found in raytracing and if they’ve found some then that’s a pretty big deal.
I do know all of this, it’s just dedicated hardware for a step we’re currently simulating in shaders. Dedicated hardware that if I’m not mistaken exists on NVIDIA graphics cards already.
That’s an added capability, not a rethinking. But it will enable raytracing in a way that is far less expensive.
arstechnica.com
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