LESS T_T
Arcane
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A new DLC appid (596060) added on SteamDB: https://steamdb.info/app/403640/history/?changeid=2706764
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Arkane Dishonored 2 - Emily and Corvo's Serkonan Vacation
- Thread starter prodigydancer
- Start date
https://steamdb.info/app/403640/subs/
"Blacksparrow for Beta Testing"
Hinting to more Emily adventures.
Intradesting.
"Blacksparrow for Beta Testing"
Hinting to more Emily adventures.
Intradesting.
Actually, Black Sparrow refers to the costume Emily wore in the Dishonored: The Corroded Man novel.
LESS T_T
Arcane
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I guess that's the reason they used it as a codename for base game. (Devs said the game was originally Emily only, right?)
That "Blacksparrow for Beta Testing" sub on SteamDB was created with base game app in 2015. (The name was leaked when the Big Steam Helpdesk Leak hanppend, but I guess people had no way to know that Blacksparrow is reference to Dishonored 2.)
D2 is currently available on GMG for €26.99
https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/dishonored-2/
https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/dishonored-2/
Better wait for the goty edition at the end of the year
meanwhileInPoland
Arcane
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i will wait for goty edition and buy it once denuvo is gone
Latelistener
Arcane
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GOTY
Denuvo
Cuck
Denuvo
Cuck
tormund
Arcane
You are all to blame if this series dies due to low sales, so I hope I won't see you whining if Bethesda decides to shelve it for the foreseeable future like Square did with DE. You voted with your wallets and you still do...
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- Jan 19, 2014
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Sure I did. There's no fucking way that I buy a game with Denuvo installed. I voted with my wallet, indeed.
LESS T_T
Arcane
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http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/292719/Level_Design_Deep_Dive_Dishonored_2s_Clockwork_Mansion.php
Level Design Deep Dive: Dishonored 2'sClockwork Mansion
Deep Dive is an ongoing Gamasutra series with the goal of shedding light on specific design, art, or technical features within a video game, in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren't really that simple at all.
Check out earlier installments, including creating believable crowds in Planet Coaster, evolving stealth detection in Shadow Tactics, and designing dynamic audio for destructible environments in Rainbow Six: Siege.
Who: Christophe Carrier, Level Design Director at Arkane Studios
My name is Christophe Carrier and I'm the Level Design Director at Arkane Studios in Lyon. I am one of the few remaining founders of the company. When the company was founded in 1999, we were all fans of good old fashioned action-adventure sims such as Deus Ex, System Shock, and of course Thief: The Dark Project. I worked on Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah, BioShock 2 (in collaboration with the 2K Marin team) Dishonored 1, and Dishonored 2.
Daniel Todd was the co-founder of Through the Looking Glass, a site dedicated to the System Shock and Thief series’, and was the first to interview us and publish our Arx Fatalis demo on his site. It was then spotted by our first publisher and allowed us to cut a deal and commercialize the game.
Daniel has a master’s degree in architecture and made several fan-missions for Thief 2 under the name Digital Nightfall. We later hired him and he's been a valuable level designer ever since. Daniel is the level designer that built the Clockwork Mansion in Dishonored 2 along with level architect David Di Giacomo.
What: The intricate level of the Clockwork Mansion
The Clockwork Mansion is a level in Dishonored 2 where players have the ability to trigger architectural and mechanical transformations of some rooms by pulling levers. David, the level architect, has said that one of his main sources of inspiration for the Clockwork Mansion was Bob Potts’ kinetic sculptures and the smart way he uses one source of movement that translate to the entire sculpture.
The number of player types and playstyles we have to think about in level design is pretty big. It includes low or high chaos, combat or stealth and shadow, non-lethal or lethal, exploration or playing without reading a single note, playing with ‘no powers’ mode or without markers, series fans or total new-comers, and any combination of them all. This is what makes the level design of the Clockwork Mansion particularly challenging because, on top of these constraints, it adds another layer of complexity.
Why?
In this level, the player is put in a situation where their orientation is changing constantly. This was a huge risk! So it was extremely important to let the player be able to construct a mental picture of the house while they're progressing. We tried to avoid long and tight passages that go in and around the walls because in our game that’s the best way to cause confusion. Players can also go backstage, a bit like in the Portal series, and see how it’s all working while trying to reach their goals.
Having the walls move in such an elegant and credible way is already very difficult in itself, but making sure the player wouldn't be lost was one of the biggest challenges for us. Every backstage area had to be, as much as possible, visually connected to the big areas of the building so that the player would always be able to perceive them, consciously or unconsciously, to get a good mental picture of the mansion.
Rooms also had to have specific functions that the player could relate to from their real-world perspective so that attentive players could understand the house and even play without markers on a second playthrough. The room where two aristocrats are waiting for and talking about a Clockwork demo to be held in the assessment chamber transforms into an elevator going down to... the assessment chamber.
Also, if you pay attention to details, you’ll notice that the kitchen is below the dining room so that servants could lay out the table while the guest are drinking whisky, smoking and playing pool. The maid can then move the table up directly in the room, when required.
I like to think that level design is not only about building an environment, which is of course fundamental, but it's also, among many other things, designing the conditions in which the player will traverse it. All the conditions. Whether geometry related or psychological.
The idea for this level first began with a fantasy of mine. A lot of people of my generation were raised with pop culture of the 80s and 90s…James Bond villains who have incredible headquarters with escape pods and rocket pads that appear from behind walls, temple altars that reveal dark stairs going down into dark crypts, Hyperion's rich houses in Dan Simmons saga where each room is in a different galactic system. And back in that time, some games were using transformations to a smaller degree. Portal does that brilliantly.
I thought that it would fit perfectly with the mind of Kirin Jindosh, the owner of the Clockwork Mansion who is a cynical and psychopathic inventor that likes to show off, impress his guests, brag and feel rightfully superior. So I proposed a "transformer" house concept for Jindosh's mission, and pitched the idea to Harvey Smith, the game’s creative director, who liked it.
We started prototyping with the Dishonored 1 engine while the animation tools for the new engine were being developed. Original prototypes ranged from super crazy abstract environments that did not resemble a house at all to very normal places with a few fancy elevators and secret doors. I remember that the team was skeptical. After all, it was a big technical challenge, a risky one in terms of level design and very demanding for almost every team.
On top of that, it would only be used once, which is heresy in AAA game production. The original idea was reduced to some walls rotations, secret doors and appearing furniture. Then the Clockwork Mansion was chosen as the map to showcase in our announcement trailer that Blur was doing. We briefed them on the general ideas and they used the craziest ones in the final trailer. When everybody saw what Blur did it was so good that we had to do it all the way.
Result
In the end, it paid off, because everybody was on board with the idea and gave the best of their talents. And furthermore, it allowed us to create more sophisticated tools that we wouldn’t have had, if only for the complexity of this map.
One of the most challenging parts was ensuring that AI locomotion still worked not only in the two configurations, but continued to work even as the rooms were moving. AI also needed to be able to behave convincingly when they were trapped.
Obviously, animation tools also greatly benefitted. The tech we developed was used throughout the game. Any time a rail carriage moves, a secret door opens, or the player is transported through the Void on a flying platform, the tools and systems we developed for the Clockwork Mansion are used. Nearly every map in the game is touched by these features, so in the end, it made the entire game better.
There's a little bit of every one of us "Arkanites" in the Clockwork Mansion which is another very cool thing about it.
More from Christophe Carrier:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...red-2-hides-its-best-details-in-the-periphery
How Dishonored 2 hides its best details in the periphery
Dishonored 2 begins by throwing you in a locked office against your will, trapped and unarmed. An open window across the room teases the possibility of escape, so - once you're done rifling through the room, reading discarded notes and idly spinning a globe - you climb onto the ledge outside. There, you are teased with a vista of smokestacks and gothic spires. You can taste freedom, but a huge pipe blocks your path. You head back inside, and it's only then that you realise there's another window, closed, just across the room. Open it up and slip outside, and that promise of freedom is fulfilled.
"Most [players] struggle for a while," says level design director Christophe Carrier. "When they find that these windows can be opened, they often react like 'Of course, how didn't I think of it before? For them, it became some kind of unconscious guideline for the entire game that is: 'I should try things that I assumed were not possible'."
The resulting freedom can be discombobulating; today, players are hardwired to seek out alternate routes solely for collectibles, rather than to move through a level in an unexpected way. Dishonored 2's trick is no more than a modern variant on old school side-scrolling platformers would reward you for moving left along the screen at the beginning of a level before venturing right.
In an age of complex 3D environments, though, it's now all about looking up. "Players new to our games are not used to being able to climb everywhere on everything," explains Carrier. "I think it has to do with some sort of unconscious conditioning. In the first [Dishonored], some players were not climbing at all because they assumed that, if it was climbable, there would have been a UI prompt, so we had to add a prompt every time the system was detecting a possible climb. But we didn't do it for Dishonored 2, probably because we assumed that, nowadays, climbing and verticality were more common, with the Deus Ex, Assassin's Creed or Batman series being very popular."
Still, one of my favourite secrets in Dishonored 2 has gone unnoticed by so many players. Even if you haven't played developer Arkane's immersive sim, you'll probably be familiar with the Clockwork Mansion level. Filled with switches and pulleys that transform the construction around you, it's home to unhinged inventor Kirin Jindosh. In thrall to his own brilliance, he refers to his mechanical mansion "a testament to engineering itself". It's ironic, then, that the mansion's real creator, Arkane, presents this shifting maze to its players with no hint of self-importance. If players just glance up as they enter, they will see a skylight - they only need to shoot out the glass and use spectral powers Blink or Far Reach to teleport up into the rafters. From there, they are free to creep through the mansion's inner workings, ignoring the splendour of much of this reshuffling residence, never pulling a single lever to make the clockwork gears whir.
"I remember the expression on people's faces when I proposed the idea [of the Clockwork Mansion]," remembers Carrier, "but [co-creative director] Harvey [Smith] liked it. It was a perfect match for its owner Kirin Jindosh, so we decided to give it a try. The design was a lot crazier at the beginning but, at some point, it was decided to reduce it to its minimum when people realised that it was more difficult to make than a 'regular' level. I was a bit disappointed at the time because it wasn't close, even remotely, from what's in the game at the moment. Then, Blur, who was briefed earlier on the idea, made the trailer, and it was exactly what I had in mind. After that, it was difficult to do less.
"The level design in such a environment is about making sure that, each time a room is transformed, it has all the level design elements that we have elsewhere in the game - cover, patrols, hiding spots, verticality, etc. It's like designing several maps within the same space and it requires [you] to be very careful about each room combination working well together. It's also a technical challenge regarding AI, lighting and animation. One of the really cool things about the [level] is that you can go behind the scenes, and see the mechanisms in action. But we had to be very careful to avoid that the players go through the entire house behind the scenes and bypass huge parts of gameplay. Usually, we try as much as possible to have a stealth route that goes through the same areas as the combat route, so that players can switch from one to the other without noticing the design behind each of them. It was particularly tricky in the case of the mansion, so we had to design a few bottlenecks."
At a time when so many games are desperate to show you each and every expensive set-piece, there's a refreshing ambivalence to Dishonored 2's approach. Arkane's ethos of giving zero shits whether you see everything or not is probably most visible in Crack in the Slab, another level set in an ostentatious residence. Only this time, instead of coping with the logistics of a building crossed with a rubik's cube, here you have a device that allows you to shift between the past and the present. In the present, the mansion is dilapidated and barren, save for the odd bloodfly nest and reanimated corpse. In the past, the mansion is resplendent, filled with guards, guests, and maids. Each timeline has its own art, NPCs, and other quirks, so Arkane essentially created two levels in one. Only they didn't. It's three levels, and most people will never even know.
If you knock out the mansion's owner, Aramis Stilton, in the past, the timeline of the present completely changes. He never attends a fateful meeting, and therefore he never loses his mind, saving the mansion from ruin. Suddenly, the mansion in the present is populated with renovation workers, maids, and all-new details, from paintings to giant statues. Not only that, but the Dust District you pass through on the way to the mansion has also undergone a transformation, as has one of your allies back at your hideout, The Dreadful Wale.
"I always had a soft-spot for time travel stories and especially the ones where the main protagonist does something in the past that changes the present," says Carrier. "Being able to change the course of events is one of the most exciting parts of time travel but can also lead to paradoxical situations. Thus, in Crack in the Slab, we decided to limit the number of 'big changes' to the strict minimum, but make them significant. At first, the plan was to have four different maps. One for the past, one for the regular present, and two alternate present timelines. One of them was an abandoned version of the mansion, but not wrecked as in the original present timeline, where Stilton was killed. In the end, for production reasons, we decided to use the same map for when Stilton was killed and when he was put unconscious.
"So in fact, the fourth timeline is already in the game, but it is the same map as the third, only with different storytelling - notes, conversations, etc - where someone has bought Stilton's mansion after his death. The most crazy idea we had was to have an alternate version of the entire Dust District where Stilton's influence prevented the gang war and the falling apart of the district, but it was too crazy, so we only did it for the first part of the map."
It was difficult to pull off for Arkane, requiring the three levels to all exist at the same time. In fact, the 'past' is another mansion that physically sits above the present-day mansion - using the device to jump between timelines just teleports you between the two.
"The past version is above the other two [by] 600m, and the two present timelines are on the exact same position, which caused us of lot of lighting problems during the development," Crack in the Slab's level architect Sylvain Fanget tells me. "The trick was to use the chaos system to separate them, so when the player starts the mission, he is in the low chaos level, and if he kills or chokes Aramis Stilton, it switches to the high chaos level, the alternative present. To be able to change the timeline, we just teleport the player with an offset, in this case +600m or -600m. The tricky part, performance wise, was the preview of the other level in the timepiece device, which use the same teleport but with a different resolution.
"It was hard working on this level, and it required rigor since the three timelines had to be maintained simultaneously. I might have missed something, but I really took the time to make the different places believable. Of course I've deleted some assets between the timelines, but mainly to add a vegetation layer in the present. [With] the third timeline, I just kept the layout and changed the entire set dressing and lighting. I have to admit that this one took me some time because I had to build this map for the third time. I didn't ask for new assets since we already hit the content lock by this time, I've just updated the grounds previously exported in the engine for this purpose. Same thing goes for the NPCs - we only used servants and workers instead of guards and dogs, reinforcing the idea that the mansion has been or is being refurbished."
Arkane's level architects spent an ungodly amount of time dressing up Dishonored 2, but the portion of players who actually see things such as the third timeline is a closely-guarded secret, perhaps for the sake of these architects' sanity. So, why go through the effort of adding in entire levels that can be missed if a good portion of your audience will never even see them?
"Because when they do, it's even more satisfying," explains Carrier. "And after all, we're living in an age of constant communication where people will talk about these little things, so eventually, they'll get noticed somehow. From my point of view, I love when the world responds to something I'm trying to do, even if it doesn't have any gameplay consequence. It shows that the world is alive and working, that it's not only a movie set."
Arkane understands the importance of the little details: when you throw one of those sticky grenades, it makes a 'cling' as it leaves your hand - at that exact moment, its spikes fold out of its body before it embeds into a surface; limbs hit by a sleep dart will get numbed first before an NPC falls unconscious and if you zoom in, you will notice the syringe is now empty, the plunger pushed in; you run slightly slower upstairs than you do downstairs, and footstep sounds and frequency change as you run or sprint up and down staircases, too. The game is full of neat touches like these. Hell, you can even flush away any mess you find in a toilet. "It's deceptive," says co-creative director Harvey Smith. "The more you play, the more you see. We probably overdid it, in terms of layering..."
I'm not sure they did. Dishonored 2's best details reside in the periphery; all you need to do is remember to look up from time to time and it will reveal itself to be much more than you originally believed. There's a lot lurking out of sight in Dishonored 2, and it's a game that's always inviting you to tug at the handle of every closed window.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...red-2-hides-its-best-details-in-the-periphery
LESS T_T
Arcane
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Interesting interview of Harvey:
He basically confirms the game sold like shit.
He basically confirms the game sold like shit.
Harvey is such a cool guy, but I'm not one bit smarter now about his next project. Dishonored 3? New IP? :mystarie:
Raghar
Arcane
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They used Denuvo, thus DRM cost them some popularity.
Last edited:
Excidium II
Self-Ejected
Yeah fuck those losers. Bethesda expects me to pay 74 USD for this shit.
Raghar
Arcane
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- Jul 16, 2009
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- 24,069
Of course 59.99€ is the same as 59.99$
Interesting before Denuvo they lowered price a lot faster.
Shitty PC ports at launch do a lot of irreversible damage when the AAA game everyone was hyped for has a Mixed rating on Steam.
You'd think that after past PC port fiascos most developers would spend more time testing their ports like Ubi did with WD2, but eh.
Latelistener
Arcane
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- May 25, 2016
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- 2,624
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