Arkane Deathloop - first-person action game from Arkane set on a time loop island

[Ivan]

even more NoClip

 

[toughasnails]

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Dishonored is one of Arkane's worst. Stealth is hard? in Dishonored? What the fuck...Bro, do you even game? I know you're mocking other's views on stealth, but it makes no sense because stealth in dishonored is modern stealth, as in not hard at all. Blink/quicksave/indicators above everyone's head/see through walls/slow down time....Who would or has ever said "stealth is teh hard" in the context of Dish? More like fucking boring. though the combat style is too so whatever.

I am ready to argue that Dishonored's stealth is in fact harder and more demanding on player than Thief, as long as you play it on highest difficulty and without power.
I wrote this earlier in this thread:

I disagree. If you mean the removal of Thief\s reliance on lighting, I think that it actually makes the game more challenging and tactical. You have to be more dynamic, to have better grasp of the environment and the movement of AI bc you don't have Thief's "safe space" that is you cannot be safe in spite being within AI's line of sight bc you're in space whose lighting is bellow their visibility threshold.
Everything else, meaning the exploration, freedom of movement, looting, is classic Thief. I'd say that Dishonored duology is faster paced Thief more than anything else. That is as long as you play them as you SHOULD, without powers and with all helpers turned off.

 

[Curratum]

I played Dish 2 once only, on max diff, without any powers AND without killing, it was a great experience. Not up there with Thief, largely because of the different ambience and worldbuilding, and I prefer Thief's, but the difficulty and tension were on point.

 

[toughasnails]

I played Dish 2 once only, on max diff, without any powers AND without killing, it was a great experience. Not up there with Thief, largely because of the different ambience and worldbuilding, and I prefer Thief's, but the difficulty and tension were on point.

I prefer Thief's setting too but imo both Dishonoreds have a very similar vibe to Thief 2.

 

[toro]

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Dishonored is one of Arkane's worst. Stealth is hard? in Dishonored? What the fuck...Bro, do you even game? I know you're mocking other's views on stealth, but it makes no sense because stealth in dishonored is modern stealth, as in not hard at all. Blink/quicksave/indicators above everyone's head/see through walls/slow down time....Who would or has ever said "stealth is teh hard" in the context of Dish? More like fucking boring. though the combat style is too so whatever.

I am ready to argue that Dishonored's stealth is in fact harder and more demanding on player than Thief, as long as you play it on highest difficulty and without power.
I wrote this earlier in this thread:

I disagree. If you mean the removal of Thief\s reliance on lighting, I think that it actually makes the game more challenging and tactical. You have to be more dynamic, to have better grasp of the environment and the movement of AI bc you don't have Thief's "safe space" that is you cannot be safe in spite being within AI's line of sight bc you're in space whose lighting is bellow their visibility threshold.
Everything else, meaning the exploration, freedom of movement, looting, is classic Thief. I'd say that Dishonored duology is faster paced Thief more than anything else. That is as long as you play them as you SHOULD, without powers and with all helpers turned off.

Please sign out and never come back.

 

[lametta]

is this game basically like Prey Mooncrash?

 

[copebot]

No, Dishonored is way more punishing in terms of stealth mechanics than Thief. It's just you also get super powers that evens it out. The AI is very sensitive. Deathloop's AI is a lot more like Thief 2's AI in that it can't see very far in front of itself and forgets its alert status pretty quickly.

It's not like you can't aggro an entire level in Thief and kill everything exactly with sword and arrow except when banned from doing so by difficulty setting. If you'd played Thief and Dishonored, you'd know that the latter is way more punishing in terms of stealth mechanics. You can sit in a shadow right in front of an NPC in any Thief, even Thi4f (may Allah forgive me for uttering its name). With Dishonored, NPCs can see you a zillion miles away, they have more realistic cones of vision that track their modeled eyeballs.

The sound detection in Dishonored (or Deathloop for that matter) is not more sophisticated than the model used in Thief 1, but no one has ever produced more sophisticated sound propagation technology than Thief 1 and 2. FWIW I prefer Thief to Dishonored, it's just that it's indisputable that it's harder to stealth (at least without abusing things like timestop) than in Thief.

 

[Raghar]

Hitman blood money was realistic about view distances and sight. With nearly infinite view distance, enemies found you in instant.
I had to mod Dishonored to make for its shortcoming. The REALLY important part is to increase number of dead bodies the game allows to exist simultaneously. Thus a dead body somewhere is a possible problem. With default setting, you just make few more and the original body disappeared. Dishonored NPCs don't bother to look up or down, which is likely by design to force you to use walls, streetlights, roofs...

 

[Child of Malkav]

FWIW I prefer Thief to Dishonored, it's just that it's indisputable that it's harder to stealth (at least without abusing things like timestop) than in Thief.

It's harder to stealth because it's just trial and error until you get it right. In Thief the light and shadow isn't there to make the game easier but to provide a smoother, gradual transition from invisible to visible and not just be binary like in every hybrid game there is out there. On top of that, the light and shadow system exists to provide the player with a tool for information gathering outside of sound and leaning and scouting orb.
What information gathering tools are there in Dishonored? You have dark vision but that's a power. If you play without powers you have the monocular but that is best used from a vantage point which you don't find yourself at all the times. What about the interiors? You're stuck with leaning. And if you play with the modifiers at max, you get seen instantly. So your information gathering turns into combat. Great design.
Only DotO managed to get the information gathering right with its foresight ability which was just pure brilliance as it acted like a drone and had some limitations. Assuming you play with powers. Without powers you're screwed. It's just trial and error.
As for combat in Thief you can't face 2 opponents at the same time in an open conflict. With or without mission restrictions they simply delete you. Unless you can abuse some mechanics or whatever. Compare this with Dishonored where all you need is a parry and that opens up the enemy to a one hit kill. Challenge doesn't exist in Dishonored. The Dishonored games are the easiest games I ever played together with Outer World.
I also did an ironman run on Dishonored 2. The oy time I died was because I placed a mine somewhere and forgot about it and it killed me when I was running from some guards.

 

[copebot]

FWIW I prefer Thief to Dishonored, it's just that it's indisputable that it's harder to stealth (at least without abusing things like timestop) than in Thief.

It's harder to stealth because it's just trial and error until you get it right. In Thief the light and shadow isn't there to make the game easier but to provide a smoother, gradual transition from invisible to visible and not just be binary like in every hybrid game there is out there. On top of that, the light and shadow system exists to provide the player with a tool for information gathering outside of sound and leaning and scouting orb.
What information gathering tools are there in Dishonored? You have dark vision but that's a power. If you play without powers you have the monocular but that is best used from a vantage point which you don't find yourself at all the times. What about the interiors? You're stuck with leaning. And if you play with the modifiers at max, you get seen instantly. So your information gathering turns into combat. Great design.
Only DotO managed to get the information gathering right with its foresight ability which was just pure brilliance as it acted like a drone and had some limitations. Assuming you play with powers. Without powers you're screwed. It's just trial and error.
As for combat in Thief you can't face 2 opponents at the same time in an open conflict. With or without mission restrictions they simply delete you. Unless you can abuse some mechanics or whatever. Compare this with Dishonored where all you need is a parry and that opens up the enemy to a one hit kill. Challenge doesn't exist in Dishonored. The Dishonored games are the easiest games I ever played together with Outer World.
I also did an ironman run on Dishonored 2. The oy time I died was because I placed a mine somewhere and forgot about it and it killed me when I was running from some guards.

I agree with most points except that you can't fight more than 2 opponents at once in Thief. You can fight unlimited enemies at the same time with just the sword. If I had it installed, I would take a clip just to show that Garret's combat power is actually pretty high even without considering I-WIN buttons like flashbombs. I'm not making Thief combat out to be all that sophisticated: it's just you can abuse the AI by shifting in and out of its attack range and then stunning the closest model with a repeated overheads, even the tough guys like hammer haunts. It's not that different from Dishonored combat, just you only have a couple I-WIN buttons (flashbombs, gas arrows, gas mines etc.) instead of having 6 different I-WIN buttons like Corvo and the gang have.

 

[SharkClub]

They tried real hard to copy the boring weapons from Prey, but they couldn't even do that right so instead they ended up with a cool and interesting arsenal completely by accident. That's why Deathloop is derivative!

Um, actually Zombra, it has black people in it, so the weapons are bad by default no matter what they actually did with the weapons.

 

[Child of Malkav]

just you only have a couple I-WIN buttons (flashbombs, gas arrows, gas mines etc.) instead of having 6 different I-WIN buttons like Corvo and the gang have.

In Thief you have gas mines and gas arrows but they're the most expensive tools and very limited. All the other tools are basically consumables so you will run out if you keep using them liberally. But in Dishonored? You have a bunch of powers that are only limited by your amount of energy which can be replenished with potions or bought from stores, found throughout the levels. And the other tools are also very effective: the sleep darts, the mines, the pistol, the bolts with the different types etc. Plus bone charms that give you different bonuses including chances to retrieve darts from enemies etc. Plus you have the aerial takedown which is extremely effective and abusable.

 

[SharkClub]

is this game basically like Prey Mooncrash?

Sort of but mechanically it's not totally the same. It is obviously heavily influenced by it though.

Some differences:

• Mooncrash has some roguelite randomization elements whereas Deathloop for the most part does not, there is a lot of emphasis put on learning something in one loop to make use of it in another.
• You're only one character, not five(?). You can keep stuff between loops by spending a resource called residuum but it's not really that similar to purchasing stuff before starting in Mooncrash using those Gamer Points™. Once you've spent the residuum on an item you keep it in your arsenal for every loop following, not just the next loop.
• The number of accessible areas is the same (Mooncrash has 4 I think? Deathloop has 4) but Deathloop has time of day permutations that open up larger areas of some maps, close off others, water freezes and becomes walkable during a certain time of day, it drains in another, etc. Deathloop is obviously a bit bigger/longer than Mooncrash, seeing as it's a full game versus a DLC.
• Deathloop has poorly implemented pvp with cancerous player invasions lol, I think there's a limited number of times you can be invaded per loop (is it 2?). So half of the levels will have retarded enemy player-based difficulty just thrown into the mix if you keep the online enabled.
• Deathloop is much easier than Prey Mooncrash. Mooncrash also tried to address the lack of enemy variety in Prey by adding a few new creature types IIRC. In Deathloop aside from boss fights where they have powers there is one type of enemy: human you shoot in the head with 1 bullet.
• The weapon selection in Deathloop is better than Mooncrash and Prey in general. There's a lot of variety and they're all very powerful. The biggest problem is the balance of the silenced weapons being extremely overpowered versus the stupid AI so it kinda gives you less of a reason to use more fun and interesting weapons.
• There is no time limit or anything while you're in a mission like how Mooncrash has a time limit and you had to constantly be eating hour glasses to keep the difficulty from going into rape mode. Free to explore at your leisure, though. The longer you spend in a mission the more likely you are to get invaded though I guess.
• Resource management is pretty much nonexistent in Deathloop. There is health and ammo fucking everywhere, they literally may as well have made it a regenerating health popamole at this point (there are trinkets for that but why even use them when health pickups are so widely available), the magic power already does regen from zero to full unlike Dishonored needing potions. Prey Mooncrash also had traumas and inventory management and shit which is obviously also absent in Deathloop. I think you could reduce the amount of health and ammo in some maps by half and it'd still have too much, maybe they put it all there so Julianna could use it too which ends up destroying any semblance of single-player resource management hard.

Julianna queue times are getting longer. I should have ground it out earlier if I wanted to see all the epic gamer skins. I just queued for 15 minutes to get into a match with a Colt that I killed once and then he hid in the corner of the map for 30 minutes while I ran all over the map looking for him. Eventually he dodged me and hacked the antenna while I was running around but I managed to kill him two more times before he got to the exit. Extreme borefest but the guy didn't really have a choice because he was obviously a new player with the grey SMG going up against my full purple kit, though he was just delaying the inevitable. I was surprised he didn't just pull out the ethernet cable.

I doubt there are even 10% of Colts playing that still have the online component turned on, and most of those are probably just new players who haven't had a chance to turn it off. It's not like Dark Souls where you die once to an invader and have to walk back to your souls, if you die three times to an overpowered Julianna you get your loop progress reset and you lose all of the residuum and non-infused weapons/trinkets/slabs you are currently carrying, which can be quite a lot if you happen to invade after they've cleaned up Alexis's party on Updaam Night or something.

 

[Excommunicator]

Game devs & pubs see this and they don't see "make a better game next time and market it properly", they see "make some non-game cheap pandering crap meme product like gas station simulator next time"...

The even more annoying part is many of them will say "we're being review bombed unfairly" or "the game was just too unusual for players" rather than accepting the hard facts that its fundamentals are just too mediocre in parts

 

[Riskbreaker]

What they should say, but nobody from Arkane would dare do it unless they leave the company prior to that, is that this was a complete failure of Bethesda's marketing department. What we have here is a polished, shiny AAA game released during a drought, one that is also an exclusive for a new console that is lacking in properly exclusive, non cross-gen titles.
By any account, it could and would sell well regardless of how you feel about it. With any semi decent marketing that is.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

It's like that in Thief (1998), there you move slower while crouched

System Shock 1 had a crouch system where you moved slower and were less obvious to enemies.

The first 3D game to include the mechanic was System Shock, which was generally known for the variety of player actions it afforded. In PC games it is common for crouching to be bound to the Ctrl or C key, while in console games players commonly crouch by clicking in one of the control sticks. Source: https://www.giantbomb.com/crouching/3015-378/

Thiefs contribution to the mechanic was lighting and AI behaviour as SS1 its a bit hard to tell if they've spotted you yet or not.

 

[toughasnails]

The even more annoying part is many of them will say "we're being review bombed unfairly" or "the game was just too unusual for players" rather than accepting the hard facts that its fundamentals are just too mediocre in parts

Shitty meme bait, streamer bait game becoming a bestseller on Steam out of nowhere and instantly developing annoying and in-joke ridden fanbase is business as usual for Steam tbh. PC master race my ass...

But do we have any indications that Deahloop isn't doing any better on PS5? In any case I think this game's sales might have long legs thanks to good word of mouth and I doubt that its budget was anywhere near as lavish as Dishonored 2's so their sales target is probably lower too.

 

[copebot]

Bethesda is just a division of Microsoft. This was gonna wind up as sort of an orphaned project that may be chalked up as a 'success' because of the review scores alone. No Microsoft manager is going to fall over himself to allocate a big TV ad budget to move more copies of a Playstation game that cannot be put onto Gamepass or Xbox. Even if you were braindamaged you'd be able to move a lot of downloads on this for Gamepass, but they're contractually forbidden from doing that. Similarly, Sony was gonna put in the bare minimum to move $60 boxed copies of a Microsoft game.

This happens a lot with acquisitions and orphaned projects that were planned before an acquisition. In the extremely gay future, most games will be launched to competing subscription services before trickling down to the retail market, so as to converge the business models of all "content" types that can all be sold in the same way.

 

[Atlantico]

System Shock 1 had a crouch system where you moved slower and were less obvious to enemies.

Sure, it certainly wasn't Deus Ex that started it. Crouching = sneaking. That's the mechanic in question.

 

[Ash]

Nope, you're missing the point. In ALL stealth games crouching = sneaking, even the majority of the old ones, if for nothing else but reducing your collision size. We're discussing which game simplified and/or slowed down stealth gameplay to essentially moving around in crouch all the time, to boiling down stealth movement & basics to crouch mode. This was Deus Ex. Deus Ex was named because it completely silences footsteps. Thief doesn't do that. And lighting in Thief also plays a major role in staying hidden, while in Deus Ex it is there but has less emphasis.
As for other old stealth games, Metal Gear Solid? It has crouching and crawling, also helps with staying hidden, but it is not how the game is played. The majority of the time you're running around, not crouch-walking or crawling. System Shock also, crouch aids with staying hidden as it does in any game, but that's simply not how the game is played. It's a shooter.

Deus Ex is in-part a stealth game, so can be held accountable. The game's overarching design results in stealth wherein you're spending a lot of time crouch-walking, it is the "mode" of play. System Shock that's not how it plays. Thief that's not how it plays. No, stealth movement is a little more involved than crouch mode. Crouch, walking, hiding in shadows instead of relying on the "mode". Putting out torches to create said shadows to hide in. Leaning around corners and watching guards in darkness, while in Deus Ex leaning is more beneficial to combat than it is stealth half the time (for allowing movement that doesn't reset standing accuracy bonus - whack a mole from cover).

 

[samuraigaiden]

The first game to have crouching as a stealth mechanic in a 3D environment was SEAL Team.

 

[DeepOcean]

Also crouching makes sense from a real world reference thing where you naturally wish to reduce your profile, it makes the player feeling he is being sneaky and fits on his imagination about being sneaky better than just a 2 meters high dude walking slowly (what is kinda of funny even.). Problems start when you croach and it seems the croaching god suspended all the laws of the universe and gravity disappeared from your feet.

You know, stealth games are all about risk management for me, "If I do that, I could get detected, it is a risky move, I must plan for it.", having perfect no sound steps while croaching means boinking the heads of all those fools once I figure out heir patterns of patrol a risk free endeavor and I hate the concept of "risk free" in stealth.

Of course, you dont need to reach retarded levels like on Chaos Theory on the last difficulty where if you farted, half the level knew it was you the responsible for the strange air circulating and could triangulate your position based on the direction of the smell but having your steps causing sound even while crouching specially dependent on surface really throws a wrench on that rote tactic of boinking all the guards in the head .

 

[Zombra]

I just want devs to acknowledge that "crouching is sneaky" is not the same thing as "sneaking is crouchy".

Thief 2 (2000) and Deadly Shadows (2004) had the "creep" function, where you could walk more quietly than crouching at the cost of being more visible. 20 years later, even the most sophisticated stealth games don't bother with more than one mode of stealth. Decline.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

The first game to have crouching as a stealth mechanic in a 3D environment was SEAL Team.

Valid but the criteria was for First Person Crouch Stealth which is very specific and narrow in what counts.
Boomer Arma ftw however its impressive such games were possible in 93.

 

[CyberModuled]

Thief 2 (2000) and Deadly Shadows (2004) had the "creep" function, where you could walk more quietly than crouching at the cost of being more visible. 20 years later, even the most sophisticated stealth games don't bother with more than one mode of stealth. Decline.

Didn't the older Splinter Cells actually improve that since you can change the crouch AND walk speed of Sam depending on the amount of pressure put on the movement stick (or in the case of M+KB, what level of speed you had set your mouse wheel to and would even change certain actions such as if Sam was at max speed, he'd roll if you held down the crouch button while moving)? While I do agree more stealth games should have that distinction, I'm pretty sure something as (somewhat) recent as MGSV had that where you can hold down Ctrl to slow walk while standing.