Dishonored by Arkane

[Metro]

A spoiled brat simulator being played by a spoiled brat tweenager trying to be funny. Are we the dreamers or merely part of someone's dream?!?!

 

[JarlFrank]

So I just started playing it. Got through the prison without any kills and only a single knockout (the one guard at the beginning who is stationary and has his back to you when you start your escape - is it even possible to sneak past him without a KO?), and I think I managed to pick all the pockets and get all the coins.

Pretty good so far. I only wish the shadows would have an effect on your visibility - because honestly, the devs saying they removed that feature because of not wanting to make everything dark is a shitty argument, considering that there's sufficient shadows everywhere, at least in this level. Enemy AI are incredibly aware compared to good old Thief and it took me a while to get used to it. No more running through their line of sight for a second and them only going "oh probably just rats", they actually chase you when they merely get a glimpse of you. Shit's pretty good so far.

Attempting full ghost run with as much loot collected as I can. I'm gonna taff this shit motherfuckers.

 

[Crooked Bee]

So I just started playing it. Got through the prison without any kills and only a single knockout (the one guard at the beginning who is stationary and has his back to you when you start your escape - is it even possible to sneak past him without a KO?), and I think I managed to pick all the pockets and get all the coins.

Pretty good so far. I only wish the shadows would have an effect on your visibility - because honestly, the devs saying they removed that feature because of not wanting to make everything dark is a shitty argument, considering that there's sufficient shadows everywhere, at least in this level. Enemy AI are incredibly aware compared to good old Thief and it took me a while to get used to it. No more running through their line of sight for a second and them only going "oh probably just rats", they actually chase you when they merely get a glimpse of you. Shit's pretty good so far.

Attempting full ghost run with as much loot collected as I can. I'm gonna taff this shit motherfuckers.

Review it for the Codex maybe?

 

[udm]

(the one guard at the beginning who is stationary and has his back to you when you start your escape - is it even possible to sneak past him without a KO?)

Yep just sidle along the walls to the left, he won't notice you.

 

[JarlFrank]

Review it for the Codex maybe?

Sure, why not. I'll do it.

 

[potatojohn]

Well, I finished it, or nearly finished it because I hit some sort of terminal bug. An executive summary follows;

Story: imbecilic
Presentation: idiotic
Graphics: good
Art: decent to good
Gameplay (ghosting/very hard): banal
Sound: torturous
UI: bad
Level design: average
PC version technical competence: above average

Final verdict: E for effort. Would not play again. Would not recommend buying. Would not recommend pirating.

 

[Ion Prothon II]

Graphics: good

This puts the rest of summary into the question.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

God still 8 hours till this fucker unlocks.

I will not use VPN because I respect Gabe.

Oh, Morgoth's a foreigner. Everything's so clear now.

 

[Morgoth]

Everybody's a foreigner on the Internet.

 

[toro]

Graphics: good

This puts the rest of summary into the question.

Not really. The game visuals are not so offending and their style has a charm. In other words, visuals are the least annoying part of the game.

 

[sea]

Based on what I've played (first two tutorialish levels) I'd say that Arkane really know what they are doing. Smart level design and smart gameplay... seeing the whole "feeding corpses to rats" thing become a gameplay mechanic for solving a puzzle brought a smile to my face. Sneaking seems like it might be too easy for Thief veterans but it definitely has a great sense of tension to it. Combat is nothing special and apparently it does not really get better as the game goes. Art direction is excellent and the game is quite beautiful despite being relatively low-poly and having lower-res textures compared to some titles. The levels themselves are very detailed and I can tell a lot of time and effort was put into the small things and to make scenes that are visually interesting in addition to working for gameplay. Best lighting I have seen in an Unreal game.

Story and universe, however, have not sold themselves to me yet. It feels very "weird for the sake of weird" but not necessarily because it's trying to say anything particularly interesting. Also, the FOV, even at 85, is nauseating.

 

[Topher]

I've finished it now and I can say that the level design gets pretty repetitive toward the middle through to the end. There are still some nice set pieces from time to time but the game certainly doesn't have level diversity anywhere near that of thief.

Personally I found the AI pretty brain dead, it really shows in the first real mission where the level design allows you to stay above street level, therefore completely out of their vision, for it's entire duration... even once you're indoors. The middle of the game stops that, practically forcing you to the ground and the AI does function a bit better down there but as long as you stay about 30' away they'll never see you and if you can get elevated, which is easy with blink for most levels, the game is a cake-walk. Even if you trigger the AI they'll give up pretty quickly just like in thief and you can use blink the entire game to teleport kill anyone and just teleport back up to the roofs, it will always cause the AI to loose you unless they're within that 30' radius, that's if they even see you in the first place as guards are rarely anywhere together.

I never bothered with any powers beyond blink, maybe the others are more useful during a low chaos play-through? Near the end I took that passive ash power, which does help a bit during the last level assuming you kill everything that moves.

I can say this, on one level a unique characters is scripted to know when their guards are killed, which is a nice touch. Then there's one spot where guards will spawn infinitely to replace their losses, which I didn't like, and I ended up stealth killing three sets of guards before I figured that out.

All in all, it was a fun game but I'm glad it ended when it did. Anymore levels and it would have overstayed it's welcome, that isn't help by the fact that the majority of the second to last level is pointless.

*edit, the game reminded me a bit of the Arkham Asylum demo. I always stuck to the rafters/roofs/street lamps and just 'blinked' down then back up for the overwhelming majority of my kills. That strategy never let me down, the AI didn't know how to respond and every level was mostly conducive to it.

 

[Raghar]

Difference between stealth on normal and hard is massive. On normal you can stick between these two barrels and she would miss you, on hard she would see you in one second.

 

[Topher]

Difference between stealth on normal and hard is massive. On normal you can stick between these two barrels and she would miss you, on hard she would see you in one second.

I'm not sure what that a response to but if it's somehow a response to me... I played on very hard, all assists off.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Arkane are solid at level design, they always have been, it's literally the only reason you'd play this game. Everything else is massively flawed or inferior to other games. (including their own)

 

[Excommunicator]

So what info on the music? Is it the minimal-ambient approach of the likes of Thief or is it typical epic stuff? Does the music get in the way when you enter combat?

 

[ghostdog]

I've finished it now and I can say that the level design gets pretty repetitive toward the middle through to the end. There are still some nice set pieces from time to time but the game certainly doesn't have level diversity anywhere near that of thief.

Personally I found the AI pretty brain dead, it really shows in the first real mission where the level design allows you to stay above street level, therefore completely out of their vision, for it's entire duration... even once you're indoors. The middle of the game stops that, practically forcing you to the ground and the AI does function a bit better down there but as long as you stay about 30' away they'll never see you and if you can get elevated, which is easy with blink for most levels, the game is a cake-walk. Even if you trigger the AI they'll give up pretty quickly just like in thief and you can use blink the entire game to teleport kill anyone and just teleport back up to the roofs, it will always cause the AI to loose you unless they're within that 30' radius, that's if they even see you in the first place as guards are rarely anywhere together.

I never bothered with any powers beyond blink, maybe the others are more useful during a low chaos play-through? Near the end I took that passive ash power, which does help a bit during the last level assuming you kill everything that moves.

I can say this, on one level a unique characters is scripted to know when their guards are killed, which is a nice touch. Then there's one spot where guards will spawn infinitely to replace their losses, which I didn't like, and I ended up stealth killing three sets of guards before I figured that out.

All in all, it was a fun game but I'm glad it ended when it did. Anymore levels and it would have overstayed it's welcome, that isn't help by the fact that the majority of the second to last level is pointless.

*edit, the game reminded me a bit of the Arkham Asylum demo. I always stuck to the rafters/roofs/street lamps and just 'blinked' down then back up for the overwhelming majority of my kills. That strategy never let me down, the AI didn't know how to respond and every level was mostly conducive to it.

Hey Topher, how long did it take you to finish the game ?

 

[Excidium]

Underwhelming ending for an underwhelming game.

 

[Ion Prothon II]

Graphics: good

This puts the rest of summary into the question.

Not really. The game visuals are not so offending and their style has a charm. In other words, visuals are the least annoying part of the game.

Graphics is outdated. With high settings, it's somewhere between 2004 and 2006. It's not *bad* (looks like a heaven when compared to DXHR), but calling it 'good' is an offense to modern hardware and reader's intellect. Developers made a game with 2006 graphics in 2012. Don't call it 'good' FFS, better throw some fucks at them.
Maybe .ini hacks and a texture pack can save the day, but I don't expect wonders.
...
At least bloom & shit is minimal, and colors look almost normal.

As for art direction, I;ve got mixed feelings. It's original and has some atmosphere indeed, but for me it's kinda annoing to see a victorian variation of City 18 from HL2.

 

[Roguey]

Developers made a game with 2006 graphics in 2012.

If that were true it would look as good as Dark Messiah, which it does not.

 

[Gord]

I think it looks as good as console ports will look these days.
Art direction seems decent as well, which is a big plus.

Similar to DX:HR it seems to follow a more stylized art direction, instead of the "hyper-realistic" looks of, say, BF3.

 

[Ion Prothon II]

Developers made a game with 2006 graphics in 2012.

If that were true it would look as good as Dark Messiah, which it does not.

Yeah, an unfortunate simplification. Stalker SOC was produced in 2006 and looks like a science- fiction, comparing to Dishonored.

 

[potatojohn]

Have you actually played it? It looks good in motion.

 

[Ion Prothon II]

Just downloaded the extended demo and finished the first mission. Haven't seen enough to criticize gameplay, story, levels and stuff, but I'm sure graphics won't get better.

 

[sea]

Maybe I'm too old to give too much of a shit about poly counts and super-high-res textures, but I think the game looks fucking great from an artistic standpoint. Seriously:

These aren't just levels that have been slapped together for gameplay purposes, they are scenes which have been composed with an artistic eye. It's obvious that Arkane were paying attention to rule of thirds, line, movement, colour, contrast, balance, and other artistic principles throughout the game, something most developers simply do not do.

(also, turn the game brightness down following the instructions in the menu, the default brightness is much too high and everything gets washed out as a result; it looks far better to my eyes when properly adjusted)

 

[Multidirectional]

I'm really liking the overall look of it as well. Textures and shadows could be higher resolution, but it's hardly a dealbreaker. Plus this game runs amazingly well, I tried downsampling from 2560x1440 and it was still stable 60 FPS. (Screenshot is at 1440x810 with 4x Sparse Grid Supersampling)