Dishonored is Arkane, not Bethesda. Most Arkane Studios games have issues, but Dishonored 2 seems to take the cake. I'm still interested in it though.

Anyway, the biggest problem I have with Dishonored is the complete and utter lack of challenge at any point, ever; it doesn't matter your difficulty setting, you can stockpile titanic amounts of insta-use health and mana pots, you unlock detecto vision in the first hour of the game, you can teleport around while carrying a body in your hands, you can stop time and shoot literally every motherfucker in the room with a sleep dart, enemies will continue to hit your sword even if you're holding it in parade nonstop, and will take 15 minutes to line up a shot with their pistol while you can blow them away first, etc etc etc. I'm being extra hard on it though, because it's basically a carbon copy of their previous game, Dark Messiah, except stripped of almost everything that made that game good to begin with.

The sole improvement over Dark Messiah is the writing, going from "insanely, embarrassingly bad" to merely average. I agree it has good worldbuilding and most of the writings scattered around are detailed and illuminating; however, the storytelling and characters and dialog are just incredibly bland and lifeless, where every single character seems to exist in a vacuum and is merely pretending to interact with others. It definitely doesn't help that they enlisted token celebrity voice talent who probably recorded all of their dialog on Skype in a single take; even Brad Dourif sounds bored out of his mind.

Also, audio logs. Fucking audio logs everywhere.


I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed.

You should pick up Dark Messiah sometime; think good melee can't be done in first person? Think again. Extremely well done stealth and magic systems too. Pretty much a perfect game, and the Hardcore difficulty setting could topple even the most seasoned gamer. Just try to ignore the shitty story.

Dishonored was an incredible game, I should send Corvo after you.

I'm waiting for the sequel's price to get it, no way I'm paying 80 bucks for a game!

Brilliant

Welp, goodbye, everybody. I found a Burning Crusade private WoW server, and now all my time is going to be devoted to it. Tell my wife I loved her, whenever I finally get married.

I don't have an objective marker floating over my head and I live in an apartment complex without 99% of the doors boarded up, so he'll never be able to find me.

You do realize you can turn off the objective markers, right?

I did that first thing, and the game was amazing. The level design really shone when you had to explore all the paths and figure out a way to your mark.

Certainly. Much to my surprise I actually had a lot of fun with Dishonored (never tried the DLC though), even though I played through pretty much the entire thing with no sound. It was just that fun. I am pretty stoked to play the 2nd one, though that probably won't happen until it goes on sale on Steam.

Ultra nightmare is just crazy. The further I get in ultra nightmare, the more I realize this game is not good for my heart.
What I can recommend though, is playing nightmare with the following settings:

1. No HUD whatsoever (also disable glory kill highlights)
2. No crosshair
3. Classic Doom Weapon Pose (weapon in the middle)
4. Do not use Glorykills (unbind them or bind them to a very hard to reach key -> the only time they're mandatory is against the bosses)
5. Do not use the chainsaw (unbind)
6. Do not use runes or rune trials


This gives a nice challange, makes ammo and health pickups that are lying around in the levels more important, makes the game feel more mobile (cause glorykills make you lose momentum), gives less weapon upgrade points (some challenges are bound to glory kills and rune trial interactions), makes every successful hit feel more satisfying (aiming is done via the centered weapon and guessing the vertical aim... no crosshair) and gives a more fluent feeling to the campaign due to not being interrupted by the rune trials.
The only optional rune you might want to get is "In Flight Mobility", which is just awesome because it improves the movement and makes the game even faster.
Unobstructed by the UI, the game is also more immersive.

I did indeed disable markers, and for the most part it worked pretty well, but I did have to re-enable them to find Samuel (boat guy) a couple times, because there was no mention of where he was in dialog or in your journal.

The level design is indeed quite good, though it reminds me a lot of Human Revolution in that environments don't feel like actual worlds, they feel like playgrounds specifically built to accommodate the player (such as air vents that always lead you exactly where you need to go, ledges always being just the right height for the player to jump onto, etc). Compare this to something like Thief 1/2 or Deus Ex 1 or many of the Hitman games, where environments feel like actual places that were built as functional locations designed for a reason. This is something that Alien Isolation nails too btw.


Did you find the mission where you literally hand over your target in a red dress to her creepy-ass suitor to be as, er, "problematic" as I did? Seemed like a fate far, far worse than death, if you ask me.


Also also: I went from Dishonored to Thief (2014), and now I wish I was still playing Dishonored. How did Eidos Montreal fuck this up so much? All they needed to do was remake Human Revolution in the Thief universe and it would've been... well, roughly on par with Dishonored. But nooooo...

The DLC is fantastic and easily on par with the vanilla game (sometimes it even improves on it). Well worth a purchase.

True, I liked how they gave more non-lethal toys to play with if you want to go the non-lethal route. That said I never used them 'cause hell, I play an assassin after all, it seems out of character for the DLC protag to be all that merciful (as for Corvo, in my canon he also gives no fucks ).

Apparently for Dishonored 2 they once again made the powers, weapons and charms heavily slanted for lethality, despite the game again having the (weird) binary morality system.

It's almost like doing the upstanding thing is hard or something!

It's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. It's one of the stupidest tropes of these stealth games that they give you all these awesomely lethal toys, but try to shame you for actually using them.

AM2R is absolutely fantastic and I happily place it among the other 2D Metroids. It's THAT GOOD. It's free too. The only, and I mean only, problem with the game is actually the fact that its based off of an admittedly flawed game. It takes Metroid II and gives it a much deserved overhaul. I have nothing but good things to say about it. It's amazing. It's also tough too, relative to Fusion and Zero Mission. The soundtrack is great, the original bosses are awesome, the artwork is top-notch, and Samus handles like a champ. Go play it, peeps.

They don't shame you though. Your actions just have consequences. The high chaos ending isn't even a "bad" or "evil" ending, too.

Also, some people had a lot of fun going low chaos (I preferred going high chaos myself, but it was great how various playstyles worked), so it's not inherently less fun going low chaos. If you prefer stealth games over action it's arguably more fun.

Darkeningday hates yet another fun thing due to obtuse flaws that only he seems to perceive? Dayum, never saw that one coming.

Oh c'mon now, the kingdom you have in the high chaos ending is CLEARLY a better place than the one in the low chaos ending, although yeah it's not quite as much of a good/bad ending dichotomy as you see in some games. But actions having consequences is silly when it's a game that gives you really awesome killing tools and really not-awesome stealthy non-lethal incapacitating tools. Like the thing that makes corpses vanish into dust when you backstab people - that's fucking badass. Where's something equally cool for a non-lethal route?

The Deus Ex series is really bad with that too - the lethal guns are fuckin awesome, the non-lethal guns blow chunks.

Again, the game doesn't shame you, it just has its own living, reactive world. The fact that the game does offer you alternate non-lethal options shows that it's not "shaming". It's true that they could have balanced it a bit more in terms of the loot/powers, but the DLC and the sequels largely fixed that.

It's like whining that in Fallout, you can solve a quest by stealth + lockpick instead of blazing your way through because it's "less cool". In your opinion, maybe. But in F:NV I sure preferred going non-combat (because the combat sucked ) if I could.

New Vegas's alternate playstyles are much deeper and more fulfilling than Dishonered.

Dishonered's nonlethal playthrough is just a less flashy version of the lethal one. Reminds me more of System Shock's nonlethal options than New Vegas's.

Well, duh, comparing an RPG to an action-adventure game here...


I don't know what it means. But having played some early Dishonored 1 levels fully stealth and having played the rest in high chaos, I can't say that it makes any kind of sense. The playing style/experience is completely different.

I think I get that point - a stealth playthrough is much more subtle and restrained in terms of actions taken, since you're just using powers like teleportation, possession and stopping time. A lethal playthrough is CRAZY AND INTENSE with actions like rat swarms, exploding bullets, eviscerating tripwires, stabbing people in the throat...Some people thought that you shouldn't be punished (largely in terms of story, but also in how the game gets harder if you kill frequently) for using all the flashy and cool mechanics of a lethal playthrough, especially since the devs showed all the lethal tactics at length during previews and demos. I can sort of see that, but I love the tension and atmosphere of slowly creeping around unnoticed, so it was never any problem for me. Felt similarly about Deus Ex HR. /shrug

Same, I straight up killed everything in sight while playing as Daud. It was immensely fun.

As I say, excellent level design. The mission set in the square (I think it's the first DLC?) was amazing.

You brought up New Vegas, not me



I'm looking more at the difference between a stealth playthrough where you kill everybody vs. a nonlethal stealth playthrough, which are extremely similar except that your nonlethal moves are comparatively uninteresting.

I'm not saying that Dishonored isn't good, it's fantastic. But I feel like, moreso than most good stealth games, it fails to make nonlethal playthroughs interesting in and of themselves. Players should be saying "I want to do a nonlethal playthrough because of the interesting gameplay scenarios it creates," not "I want to do a nonlethal playthrough because the game 'punishes' me for not doing one."

I'm now replaying this, and I take back the last part. This game is amazing, (almost) all around. I also started reading the first of the novels, which I like a good bit more than the volume of short stories I'd read. With no need to tie everything up with a pretty little bow in 4000 words his stuff feels much more natural and well-paced--no need to shoehorn in religious opinions or attempts at witty closers before things end.

Would you be so kind as to explain to me where the hell I said I hate it? There's a lot to like in Dishonored, I was just bummed after dropping from Alien Isolation's goddamn amazing stealth, atmosphere and storytelling and Dark Messiah's gameplay perfection to something that feels a helluva lot more half-baked. However, I'll be the first to admit it may be one of the most objectively gorgeous games to come around in a long time; I remember staring wide-eyed with my jaw agape when I first walked inside the masquerade ball mansion and The Golden Cat, not even wanting to play the game before I'd seen every square inch of them. Beautiful.


Okay now this game... this game I genuinely hate. It fucking ruined what could have been the best video game trilogy of the last generation. Complete dumpster fire of a video game and possibly the worst $60 I've ever spent. Depressing to me there are people who feel differently from me. Awe well.

The Witcher 3 > darkeningday

I'm inferior to procedurally generated cutscenes, terrible hammy storytelling straight out of Masters of the Universe and MMO design that features bullshit level buffs, shitty random scaled loot and clusters of enemies tied to invisible 10 foot tethers? Harsh...

DID SOMEONE MENTION NEW VEGAS? BEST FO???

Just because someone said it was inherently "less cool" to go stealth vs to go all guns blazing.


That's... just not true? How are they similar?

Going full violence can you don't care about getting spotted. Enemies rush you and you go blam blam and pile up bodies. Or you can still sneak around, but backstab/crossbow everyone safely. Or you can go full stealth, but optimize your chances by just zipping past every enemy and trap with Blink. Or you do like me, you try to stealth as much as possible, then suck at it, get spotted, and shoot/stab everyone in the end >_>. Or you can go full stealth + non-lethal but also explore every nook and cranny and that means you have to be real careful, use bottles to distract guards, sleep bombs/darts, hide when spotted to lose them, etc. Orrrr you can try to go full ghost.

All of these are not "extremely similar", quite the opposite, they change the entire experience. Whether each of these is "interesting" greatly varies on the type of player.


A lot of people inherently dislike stealth gameplay though, and that's not the game's fault.


It was me

I have to say I somewhat agree with Darkening on The Witcher 3. Production values through the roof, the actual gameplay though? Mediocre and a complete slog. I played it for 30 hours and I just couldn't see what others seen in it.

You should all be playing Darkest Dungeon. Best game ever. So metal.

Yooooo there's the final demo of Nioh this weekend (Jan 21-22) before it finally releases in early February. If you missed out on the alpha or beta now's your chance to try the 2017 GOTY (yes, as disappointing as the alpha was, the beta was that good, it's crazy how they improved everything and how a bit of polish fixed all the glaring problems of the alpha).

You can even preload it:

https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-ca/ ... 0000000000

Apparently clearing the demo(s) give you some minor DLC thing (probably just some helmet or loot piece) too, if anyone cares about that.

Seriously, anyone with a PS4, you gotta try it!

I'm really surprised none of my dark soul freak friends are even talking about Nioh. I can't wait, already got the demo downloaded as well.

New Vegas is the best FO other than 1/2 imo.

Righto, but I'm referring to lethal stealth vs. nonlethal stealth.

In MGS3, those are both very different experiences: You have a limited arsenal of non-lethal weapons, two of which will eventually down a guard regardless of where he's hit, making aim less important than in a normal playthrough, but guards will quickly wake back up if you take them down non-lethally. For half the game your only ranged non-lethal weapon is a pistol, and even the tranquilizer sniper rifle doesn't have much range (since guards may just wake back up before you can pass them), forcing you to approach things differently.

In Dishonored, there isn't really any functional difference between you killing dudes with stealth or simply knocking them out with stealth. Unconscious enemies will never wake up and will even despawn like dead ones after a certain amount are left lying about. The only difference is that the game doles out a punishment once you kill an arbitrary number of people, and that nonlethal moves are generally less flashy.



Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think NV is at least as good as FO1 and FO2. Fallout 1 was great, but it always felt a bit too short and lacking in content. Fallout 2 was a rushed sequel that ended up arguably harming the integrity of the setting (and retroactively turned Fallout 1's story about the burdens of heroism into a cartoonish tale about how that meddlesome Vault Dweller almost ruined the government's evil experiments), filled with loads of questionable pop culture references, and the rushed-production cracks began showing in force once you hit San Francisco.

Anyways, NV surpasses FO1 and 2 in several areas, like the faction system and the reactivity that stems from it, the structure of the main quest and the continuous support for different playstyles — and these aren't just minor things but some of the biggest strengths of the whole series. The quest design is also pretty damn impressive at times, although there are also some weaker moments in the mix, which can be mostly forgiven due to the sheer scope of the game. The only real problems stem from the (admittedly common) clunk leftover from FO3.

Ohhhh ok I get it. Thought you meant lethal vs stealth in general. You are right, then. Thing is, though, there's rarely a reason to actually go lethal if you're doing stealth, except to see the results of your murder spree (more rats, more guards in later sections, darker story, etc.). I do think they should have made the guards wake up from tranqs though, but they probably didn't want to frustrate the trophy hunter babies going for low chaos or something.

The thing I really enjoy about lethal stealth is how "loud" it is, especially in Metal Gear Solid 3. I love making guards aware of my presence as I take them out one by one. Whether it's with explosive traps or a loud semi-automatic sniper rifle.

Edit
Oh, and taking out their radioman just to let them know that they're really fucked.

Unstealthed MGS is basically Doom without the demons, so I like to run around Groznyj Grad going "DUNN dun-dun DUNN dun-dun DUNN dun-dun DUN DUN DUN DUN!" :V

....That's no longer stealth, guys