Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

[Roswell47]

Just finished snoozing old Sokolov and bringing him to The Hound Pits. Impressions so far: excellent level design, art(Models, textures. I don't know why but it looks a lot like a Valve game), sound(music, ambiance, situational stuff and the mixing of all that) level design. Couldn't give a shit about the story and the characters (Thank god it's a video game and a good one at that). Voice performances range from pretty good to awful (Did they get a random guy off the street to voice Piero?) Been playing with all UI off except 'interactive' and 'pick up log'(A man wants to know what the hell he's picking up). Only had to turn on objective arrow twice. One because the game didn't clearly message a thing that made it impossible to complete the main objective and the second time because video games has made me lazy.

[Badfinger]

  On 10/15/2012 at 10:42 PM, Wikipedia Brown said:

Really? I love Piero. But then, I already loved Brad Dourif, so maybe I just gave him a pass automatically.

I think the voice acting is fine all around. Not much of it jumps out at you, but that's OK… it's a lot better than being taken out of it by bad acting. For a while, I thought all the Carrie Fisher characters were voiced by Carol Burnett. She totally sounds like her now!

The character is supposed to be completely fascinated with the natural world around him, and he has fears and hopes and frustrations and grudges. The weird voyeur scientist should maybe be the most interesting character of any of them, but his voice is just this slow, whiny drawl with no urgency or energy in it in the same dead flat delivery every single line.

Anything

I

can

do

to

help

you,

Corvo...

I want Piero on fast forward. Inject some processed whale oil right into his veins or something.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Stop being mean to Brad Dourif

He's awesome.

[Badfinger]

You're mistaking my criticism of the character and direction with criticism of the actor.

Although to be honest I'm not sure your video clip didn't reinforce my point.

[Gormongous]

Also, why wouldn't you post something from Dourif on Deadwood, a much more seasoned and period-appropriate performance?

[youmeyou]

He was also fantastic as Piter de Vries in Dune. I'd blame direction over acting on the poor delivery of Piero's (and pretty much every character's) lines.

Really it's a shame (as it always is) that the story doesn't live up to the gameplay. They flesh out a lot of concepts superficially (the outsider, the assassins, the motivations of the regent) and fail to develop them. The world itself is very interesting, and listening to characters is usually fascinating, though they could have recorded quite a few more idle NPC barks. "Think we're getting a promotion after the raid last night?" "He says to undress i undress" being the ones I heard most.

Honestly, I'm not hugely surprised after playing through the sophomoric writing of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (and exemplary mechanics). Its just frustrating because narrative constantly trails behind mechanics in games and it doesn't seem to be catching up even when the gameplay strides forward in leaps and bounds.

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My biggest problem was with the betrayal. Any player who had read the journals or wasn't blind could see that the admiral and his gang would turn on you. And when it happens it's dull and predictable. I wish games would take some of the examples set by Heavy Rain when it comes to forking narratives. How cool would it have been if you had had the option to avoid the betrayal and thus alter the telling of the story? One of my favorite recollections from Heavy Rain was visiting the doctor's house as the reporter and accepting the spiked wine only to wake up in a horrifying Hostel-style basement as a result of my decision. I learned later that I could have avoided drinking the wine and left. Of course, the basement was its own reward as it was a really exciting bit of gameplay to escape. Back to Dishonored, I could imagine a scenario where you could either drink the booze or not and alter the way the rest of Dishonored plays out. It's just so gamey and contrived to sit through: "press f to drink wine, press f to continue dull storyline."

[Orv]

You talk smack about Brad Dourif and you and I will have words.

[Upthrust]

  On 10/16/2012 at 2:53 AM, youmeyou said:

He was also fantastic as Piter de Vries in Dune. I'd blame direction over acting on the poor delivery of Piero's (and pretty much every character's) lines.

Really it's a shame (as it always is) that the story doesn't live up to the gameplay. They flesh out a lot of concepts superficially (the outsider, the assassins, the motivations of the regent) and fail to develop them. The world itself is very interesting, and listening to characters is usually fascinating, though they could have recorded quite a few more idle NPC barks. "Think we're getting a promotion after the raid last night?" "He says to undress i undress" being the ones I heard most.

Honestly, I'm not hugely surprised after playing through the sophomoric writing of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (and exemplary mechanics). Its just frustrating because narrative constantly trails behind mechanics in games and it doesn't seem to be catching up even when the gameplay strides forward in leaps and bounds.

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My biggest problem was with the betrayal. Any player who had read the journals or wasn't blind could see that the admiral and his gang would turn on you. And when it happens it's dull and predictable. I wish games would take some of the examples set by Heavy Rain when it comes to forking narratives. How cool would it have been if you had had the option to avoid the betrayal and thus alter the telling of the story? One of my favorite recollections from Heavy Rain was visiting the doctor's house as the reporter and accepting the spiked wine only to wake up in a horrifying Hostel-style basement as a result of my decision. I learned later that I could have avoided drinking the wine and left. Of course, the basement was its own reward as it was a really exciting bit of gameplay to escape. Back to Dishonored, I could imagine a scenario where you could either drink the booze or not and alter the way the rest of Dishonored plays out. It's just so gamey and contrived to sit through: "press f to drink wine, press f to continue dull storyline."

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What really bothered me was that "THE LOYALIST CONSPIRACY HAS DISSOLVED" fail condition shows up if you stab the Admiral and company immediately after getting poisoned. I have clearly been poisoned, maybe I should so something about it while I have the strength?

[Salacious Snake]

  On 10/16/2012 at 12:27 AM, Roswell47 said:

sound(music, ambiance, situational stuff and the mixing of all that)

Oh yeah, holy shit. The whole soundscape of this game is fucking terrific. It's weird and unnerving at times, and very interesting. It's yet another area in which it reminds me of Thief.

I feel bad using comparisons so heavily when I talk about this game, but it very strongly takes me back.

[Vegas]

  On 10/16/2012 at 4:35 AM, Upthrust said:

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What really bothered me was that "THE LOYALIST CONSPIRACY HAS DISSOLVED" fail condition shows up if you stab the Admiral and company immediately after getting poisoned. I have clearly been poisoned, maybe I should so something about it while I have the strength?

I noticed that if you start trying to choke out the admiral but let him go, you still get the game over screen and it says "The loyalist conspiracy has dissolved due to irreconcilable differences"

[Upthrust]

  On 10/16/2012 at 5:59 AM, Vegas said:

I noticed that if you start trying to choke out the admiral but let him go, you still get the game over screen and it says "The loyalist conspiracy has dissolved due to irreconcilable differences"

Yup! It also happens if you try to possess them.

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In retrospect, it's not really any surprise they betray me, given the number of times I've attempted to murder them.

[Frenetic Pony]

So I'm pretty sure I'm at about the end of this game. It was both pretty fun and a mixed bag at the same time.

I enjoyed it for being an open-ish game with multiple ways to complete objectives. There's plenty of ways to sneak around and paths to go on, but it bothered me that a lot of the level design felt so "game"ified. You want a path specifically to sneak around this obstacle? Here's a convenient series of pipes and ledges to do exactly that! Rather than trying to figure something out because it wasn't obvious, like I've had to do in say Assassin's Creed, the "alternate paths" are usually clearly broadcasted as such; removing some of the fun of discovering them for yourself.

I also enjoyed the constantly changing gameplay. There was always some new scenario, new mechanic, new enemy, new power to get or etc. throughout the entire game. I never really felt like I was just repeating the exact same thing over and over again, at least not for too long. Certainly this and the detailed nature of these environments were fun. An amalgamation of fun I've had before. A mix of thing like Dark Messiah, Deus Ex, Thief, Hitman, and etc. But an almagamation of so much that I never thought I had really done any of the things I was doing specifically before.

It's just too bad a lot of my enjoyment had caveats. Putting up with the story was one of them. And by putting up with it I mean exactly that. I'm usually one to pay attention to the story, to read the scattered bits of extra lore in the form of notes from characters and etc. But here I just ignored the story whenever I could, and wished it would hurry up when it was taking too long. The characters are empty, the setting an incoherent mishmash, the presentation spotty. I didn't care for it.

I also didn't enjoy the difficulty curve, or lack thereof. The beginning of the game, as I was learning about all the basic mechanics, was fine and I was enjoying myself. About halfway through the game, on "hard", playing non violently and with no alarms I managed to complete an entire level be teleporting (blink) through the entire thing in a matter of minutes. I wasn't having the fun, once I'd learned the basic mechanics the game felt like it could be completed sleepwalking. To challenge myself I decided I'd not use blink and not reload whatsoever while keeping my promise of no alarms, no kill. I've managed it so far, and it's definitely been more exciting. Watching a guard walk into a closet type room where I'd stashed one of his buddies, now sleeping, caused a tense moment of panic I'd not have gotten otherwise and ensured I had to get out my sleeping bolts as quick as possible to put him to sleep as well. Much more exciting than simply reloading!

Yet another caveat was the morality system. You can get different outcomes based on how many people you kill in the game. But the actual system for such is haphazard and unrewarding. The game has a lot of fun seeming combat mechanics built into combat only "spells" you can get, stuff you'll never see if you want the "good" ending; instead you're stuck with a much, much more limited and not as interesting stealth only abilities.

The rationale behind the "good" and "bad" endings is also weak at best. The more people you kill, the more the plague is supposed to spread. But there are so many dead bodies and plague already that Nathan Drake and Max Payne put together could hardly make a dent in the body count. The non-lethal methods for eliminating your targets also feel incomplete and generally less satisfying than I imagine just killing them would. And even the mechanics for tracking how many enemies you kill are screwed up. On mission complete screens I've gotten several "kills" almost every time; which my best guess is attributed to people being killed by the environment itself, such as plague rats wandering around or the guards killing the infected. Either way I know I didn't kill anyone, despite the game saying I did.

But despite all these caveats the good portions of the game still stand out enough. It's a fun, enjoyable game with elements of exploration and puzzle solving and stealth and etc. that I'd recommend to many.

[youmeyou]

Nice write up.

I wouldn't agree that the exploration is entirely prescribed. For example:

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In the flooded section there's a building that you must scale ostensibly by hooking up whale oil to a generator to drop a staircase. But I got up by blinking to random and precarious ledges. It didn't feel like the game had fully set that up as a route; it felt like I was exploring it on my own.

I'm also not sure how Assassin's creed felt less gamey. My 'alternate paths' in AC were usually... the roof. Dishonored's levels tend to involve roofs, ledges, interiors and waterways. Lots of verticality where as in AC it always felt like a roof/street binary.

I agree that the story and morality (damn you orv!) systems are really poorly done. The morality system winds up being one of two ending cinematics. Woo. Your actions don't appear to have ripple effects between levels, at least not much more than lip service during mission briefings. Like being able to work with the gangster even after you poisoned his elixer in the last chapter. I get how it can be explained logically but it makes it appear that your actions have no repercussions. (I've also explained my position on other plot points earlier in the thread)

Difficulty felt weird to be sure, balance is non-existent. I'm not sure how much I entirely mind that though... it makes it seem less like straightforward game design where you start easy and work your way to a big boss at the end. I'm not sure if they exactly succeed in branching out toward a more wild imbalanced direction but it certainly gives the game a very different feel than most of what is out there.

[Orv]

  On 10/16/2012 at 10:01 PM, youmeyou said:

...molarity system...

I have to preserve this, I'm sorry.

[Lu]

Molars or incisors, it's such a simplified, banal system that doesn't even begin to describe the depth of the human mastication experience.

[Frenetic Pony]

  On 10/16/2012 at 10:54 PM, PiratePooAndHisBattleship said:

Molars or incisors, it's such a simplified, banal system that doesn't even begin to describe the depth of the human mastication experience.

And what about the tongue? Have we no consideration of it's role in the world of experiences via the mouth and eventual transition into the digestive system at all???

[Orv]

I find the tongue to be too much of a layman for mature story, the esophagus does all the real work.

[MrHoatzin]

Oh, hah, I noticed the same typo before you guys toothed it up. I briefly thought he was bringing up this kind of molarity before my brain properly kicked into gear and reaffirmed the context I was in.

[Vegas]

I also thought chemistry instead of dentistry

[soggybagel]

Having a day to digest the end of the game I come back thinking that I need to be more critical of the story/narrative which was less than ideal. In fact by the mid point I really didn't care much at all about the story or what my motivation was. It was basically lets get revenge and save the girl.

The hope I think was that the story would be filled in organically via extra chatting with characters and through eaves dropping on chit chat and what not but the further the game went along the more ham fisted the story started to feel to me. The worst things were the

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Cut aways when you'd get a Rune at those altars. Really spelled things out as blatantly as possible but yet didn't really explain much either.

I had fun with this game but I don't have the strong urge to immediately replay it though.

[filk]

I'm kind of the opposite, where the more I play the more I like the story. But I think I may just be buying in due to overexposure. I'm on my third playthrough now, which is unheard of for me.

[Salacious Snake]

It all feels a bit disconnected to me. Like, I know some character told me why I'm on this mission, but I don't remember how it's connected to anything else. I read a note that made my target sound like a jerk, and maybe a friend of the big person I don't like, so I guess that's a reason.

Going after all these people is supposed to somehow weaken the main villain, right? I don't see why I couldn't just have gone after him from the start, since Corvo is a total badass and ready for anything.

Also, I have no idea why everyone at the Life of the Party level decided I was hostile at one point. It turned into a big mess when I thought I was being quite sneaky.

What does the Outsider have to do with anything, other than being an excuse for Corvo's superscientifical abilities?

These and a few other qualms aside, though, I love playing the game. The best levels recall the high points of the genre: locations which seem to have been built as functional places first, and subsequently molded into gameplay spaces. Unfortunately, not all or even most of the game is like that, but it's a treat to poke around a building and find things where you'd expect them to be, based on your experience as a human who has been in real buildings.

It's fucking ridiculous how rare that is in games. It's weird, because I'd think people who get into level design would be the type to have a very serious love of architecture and the creation of convincing places. Exploring a place that seems real adds tremendously to immersion and is interesting for its own sake.

And because I can't help calling out some good shit from the Thief series, I'm talking about places like Cragscleft Prison, the dockside warehouses, the bank, and all the various manors and mansions and other abodes.

Hell, the best Counter-Strike map was cs_mansion. It was horribly unbalanced, but it was a cool little house with working doors and light switches and a bunch of rooms. There isn't a single hallway that's blocked off with an impassable pile of rubble, and that's the way I like it. I don't care if there's no reason to go down that hallway. Let me go down there and find that out for myself.

(I realize that part of the problem is the perceived waste of resources in creating content that a player might not see while following the critical path. That's a really shitty attitude.)

[Badfinger]

I think I read way further into the body count chaos than the game expects you to. More kills for me didn't mean more DEAD bodies spreading plague (although it does mean that to some degree), it means less LIVE bodies to combat the plague. The places you visit don't stop existing after you leave them. The patrols are going to be remanned even if you kill everyone. Someone has to clean up the bodies you do leave behind. Those guards have to come from somewhere, which could be pulled guarding a checkpoint from weepers, cleanup crew, rescue efforts (if they exist) etc. Essentially your chaos is stretching the infrastructure of the city, rather than adding more corpses on the pile.

[Twig]

I don't know from story (it's interesting enough for a vidja gam, I s'pose, and there's nothing outright offensive, so far), but I am probably the worst person: I've played for like six hours, I think, and only just beat the first level. I'm on very hard, going for nonlethal, no alarms (turns out that doesn't mean no detection, though, which is what I thought the goal was... c'est la vie), AND I've turned off objective markers. Am I doing this right? I know I'm slow. Probably the slowest. I DON'T CARE.

It's weird, though. I've never really been the type of guy who can just turn off objective markers. I made a conscious, enforced decision to Just Do It! this time and see what happens. I think it was the right decision. The only time I regretted it was when they asked me to take that girl's uncle to a "safe place". What the fuck does that mean? I turned on the objective marker for the purpose of finding out what specific spot they meant. Turns out it was a dumpster... Well, okay, whatever. Everything else, though, I've done sans markers.

I love just watching the enemy movement patterns for like five minutes. It's great. U:

Honestly, I'm not sure I even give a shit about the story. I'm in this entirely for the gameplay.

[youmeyou]

Sounds like you're doing it pretty dang right, Twig.

I'm on my second playthrough, on very hard, being a violent asshole that jumps around and kills everything. It's great. It is absolutely a different game than the first time around and that is probably why I'm not yet tired of it.

Also, in honor of this thread's title (and because it's fun) I've started a tumblr of gif-ified recordings of the game: http://gifhonored.tumblr.com

If anyone wants to contribute, feel free to message me! I'll hopefully be updating it pretty often. It's super hard to get a good-looking gif under the 1mb tumblr limit though.