Dishonored by Arkane

[SoupNazi]

Respawns only happen in town areas.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Ah. Ok, much better.

 

[sea]

Respawns only happen in town areas.

Hmm, I must have been mistaken, but it seemed like there was an endless stream of guards in various places.

One thing that is both cool and annoying: the guards seem to remember what you last did if you reload a save, so they tend to anticipate what you did to prevent you from trying the same trick again. Doesn't always happen but it seems like often the game doesn't "want" me doing something if I screw it up the first time.

 

[Whisper]

the guards seem to remember what you last did if you reload a save, so they tend to anticipate what you did to prevent you from trying the same trick again. Doesn't always happen but it seems like often the game doesn't "want" me doing something if I screw it up the first time.

Examples?

 

[Haba]

Respawns only happen in town areas.

Hmm, I must have been mistaken, but it seemed like there was an endless stream of guards in various places.

I never had any respawns, even in public places. No bodies were found and no-one was killed, so maybe that is why.

 

[LESS T_T]

Alarming also cause respawns.

When I kill all guards and ring alarm myself, several guards spawned from place where I can't see.
You (probably) can repeat it after kill them.

 

[sea]

Examples?

Stuff like, if you try to hide in a corner and the guard just happened to spot you on the way, the next time he might make a straight line for the corner in order to force you to move. Sometimes they also change patrol routes between loads or perform different idle actions that stop you from just running up and trying the same thing twice.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Interesting.

Anyway, I'm having more fun with this than I anticipated. I was impressed with the Kennel Room alone, last night.

Spoiler

I was stumped for a bit (I'm not going for a non-lethal game but I am trying to not alert anybody) and was pleasantly surprised to find the option to open the crazy dog's cage, hop back up on the pipes, let the dog do my bidding, and then planted a "frag mine" (wtf are they called, again?) near the area the mad dog was raging and that was that. Nobody alerted, everybody taken care of. Nice touch, I thought.

I also later wondered what the difference in the outcome of switching the poisoned drinks vs knocking them both off the table would be. A little disappointed that the only difference seemed to be the mentioning of the black book if you poison the dude (is there more of a difference that I'm missing?) and obviously one less enemy to take care of.

 

[JarlFrank]

I noticed in the golden paw mission that if a guard is patrolling and sees another guard missing, they can actually switch patrol routes.

This is true. In the Flooded District mission with all the teleporting assassins, I noticed after a while that a guard I KOd was there again. At first I believed it to be a respawn, but then I noticed that it was just another guard who saw that this guard was missing and took over his patrol route.

 

[potatojohn]

First DLC announced:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/25/dishonored-starts-adding-bits-on-in-december/

“Ten distinct trials await challengers – including an arena battle against waves of enemy AI, a gravity-defying run of drop assassinations, and a race against the clock. Dunwall City Trials also features a whole new set of achievements and trophies as well as a global online leaderboard that will establish the greatest assassins for each challenge.”

Whatever. I don't care enough to put in a rage emoticon.

 

[Multidirectional]

Bring on the Rat Armor.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Is "Windblast" useful or fun? The first tier doesn't sound particularly appealing to me but I like the sound of the second tier.

 

[Morgoth]

Second Tier means you're willing to kill. Means more rats mang.

 

[Whisper]

Examples?

Stuff like, if you try to hide in a corner and the guard just happened to spot you on the way, the next time he might make a straight line for the corner in order to force you to move. Sometimes they also change patrol routes between loads or perform different idle actions that stop you from just running up and trying the same thing twice.

They change patrol routes to avoid save-scumming. But it has nothing to do with knowing where you are.

So sometimes patrol will go straight to you, same as he can go another direction after loading.

 

[sea]

They change patrol routes to avoid save-scumming. But it has nothing to do with knowing where you are.

So sometimes patrol will go straight to you, same as he can go another direction after loading.

Hmm. I guess it just seems like more often than not they are more "aware" of you than before you reloaded. Way too many times I've been spotted after reloading because the guard simply decides to turn around right before I have the chance to choke him out. Seems like more than a coincidence.

 

[Surf Solar]

I only "played" through some of the first levels and already had much more endless talking and cutscenes than actual time controlling my character. Does that get better later on? I know one can skip the talking bits but its kind of annoying when I just want to play...

 

[Toffeli]

Yes apart from the pub scenes and misson briefings there's hardly any cutscenes. At least I didn't feel that way. Plus even in the talky bits they don't remove control from you. Or if they did, I don't remember it.

E: Well okay, the pub parts are hardly cutscenes, but there are lots of talking. But there is however a cutscene many times when you pick a bone charm or that other thing. (forgot already what it was called)

 

[SoupNazi]

Skip all the talks with the Outsider. Seriously. Not only do you get more playtime, you also never realize how unfinished the game is, story-wise.

RE: DLCs: I'll probably just pirate the game for the DLCs (don't care about the story ones, but the trial missions are going to be fun). Sucks that you can't pirate DLCs for an original game.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Just finished the game, didn't get the no-kill achievement despite playing on very hard and not killing one (And in fact my mission stats screen says 0 kills on every mission). Shit game 0/10 would not play 7 times.

Apart from the achievement not popping it's much like I grumbled about previously, the sneaking just isn't all that entertaining to me. The bright side is that blink makes getting around so fast that I was able to haul ass the last few missions when I started giving less of a shit about dragging it on. I give them props for letting you skip so much of the levels (Did the lighthouse in no time at all and only really saw the one guard, which was the guy at the elevator which I assume I needed for the key. Basically seems like the fastest route to everything in the game is to always be climbing) and the level design in general is pretty good, and I appreciate the end of mission score sheets.
I'll probably play again at some point and do a murderspree, but eh.

Oh yeah, and though story and setting were grumbled about previously in this thread I gotta grumble some myself. Apart from the general "This setting is kinda dumb and looks way WAY too much like City-17 with the goddamn Combine walls and shit" there was some grumbling about motivations for some of the ending guys.

Spoiler

Lord regent was one. So he didn't kill the empress as a power grab, he killed her because his mustache-twirling plot to kill the poor people with plague rats didn't work out and he was going to be found out. Solution? KILL THE EMPRESS AND ASSUME COMMAND. Just seemed so goddamn stupid, it wasn't even as if the rats were something he was ordered to do, it was just a "Poor people make me SO GODDAMN ANGRY I'LL SHOW THEM whoop better kill the empress" situation. Maybe you could say the Outsider used warpcraft on him to do all this dumb shit but that's a shitty excuse.

Also, Havelock. They started killing everyone involved because they were "Worried they would be blamed for what they did to recover Emily"? What the fuck? There's also the angle of Havelock trying to manipulate Emily into being a puppet for him which I didn't really like at all. The only foreshadowing I really saw for his powergrab was him bitching about the lord regent not supporting the fleets properly. Didn't like the leap from that to "FUCK IT I'M TAKING THE THRONE AND KILLING EVERYONE".

So yeah, wasn't really a fan of the writing or characters or setting. The voice acting was pretty good though. And choffer is no substitute for taffer. I gueeeeeess I'm happy it got made but a fair amount of it was a disappointment. Speaking of disappointment I kinda feel like they should've leaned more heavily on the supernatural assassin shit. Loading screens saying "DON'T KILL PEOPLE FOR A GOOD ENDING!" softens my murderboner. Maybe do three endings, bad ending where the empress is too soft and Dunwall falls to pieces if you don't kill anybody, best ending if you only kill your targets and don't kill a bunch of guards and servants, and bad ending where she's an ironfisted monster if you kill like crazy. Or best of all not give a shit about multiple endings in an action game and let you play however you want without dangling multiheaded carrots from a stick since this isn't a goddamn RPG or something.

RANT!

 

[ironyuri]

the wrath of the MHC is terrible and unmatched.

 

[Raghar]

Just finished the game, didn't get the no-kill achievement despite playing on very hard and not killing one (And in fact my mission stats screen says 0 kills on every mission).

So how many people have you killed? Have you killed lord regent?

 

[JarlFrank]

Just finished the game, didn't get the no-kill achievement despite playing on very hard and not killing one (And in fact my mission stats screen says 0 kills on every mission). Shit game 0/10 would not play 7 times.

Poisoning Slackjaw's elixir brewery in the first mission makes you not get that achievement.

 

[JarlFrank]

But yeah the motivations of the characters were really, really retarded. Especially Havelock at the very end. It's like everyone just went "K so let's just do some really retarded shit, that'll probably solve all our problems rite guise!"

 

[Crooked Bee]

JarlFrank Ya still up for doing a review?

 

[sea]

I wrote a review for GameBanshee, should be up soon. Despite the complaints I've made in this thread, I really enjoyed the game. It is not perfect at all, but I think that Dishonored is still good enough to recommend along with the likes of Deus Ex and System Shock 2. Hopefully I didn't come across as too positive, however, kinda shitty story, lack of decent subtext and cut-back gameplay options aside, I was actually really impressed with the endgame especially - the Flooded District was a really cool environment to explore and I thought that Dunwall Tower was an awesome penultimate mission with really strong stealth gameplay, and those brought up my opinion on the game significantly compared to the ho-hum middle section.

That said, now I understand why they don't have decent in-game maps:

http://toucharcade.com/2012/10/10/d...-makes-finding-things-in-dishonored-a-breeze/

$2.99 for maps displaying collectables, quests, characters and level layouts.

Spoilers:

Speaking of Havelock at the end - I didn't have a problem with it. His motivations are fine. Doing stupid shit after realizing he has ultimate power, and getting paranoid about being overthrown? Can happen to the best people, especially when they are involved in, you know, conspiracy plots to overthrow an empire. I would have complained in another game but they do a good enough job dropping hints (listen to idle conversations, journals and audio logs) for it to make sense given his character, especially once you learn that his dismissal from the navy wasn't on honorable terms as he led others to believe.

However I did think that the "poison him and dump his body" thing was pretty stupid, why didn't they just shoot you etc. when he has no problem lining up the other characters and shooting them? But I mean, it's not like Bob Page was much better, at least Havelock doesn't come across as a cackling maniac.