Dishonored by Arkane

[DraQ]

In any game you will find a couple of fucked up textures. However such mistakes don't say anything about the overall visual quality of the game.

They do if they aren't few and far in between.
Dishonored's visual's have four major problems:

• Lighting engine is shitty. UE1 was a masterpiece of its time, UE3 is not.
  
• Different levels of specular and different bumpmaps aren't used nearly adequately to differentiate between different types of surface
  
• Most textures are blurry and low res.
• In attempt at pursuing "painterly" stye most textures look smoothed over and lack fine grained detail, which exacerbates two latter problems.

This means that while distant vistas can be gorgeous in Dishonored and some interior scenes - typically ones involving lots of fabric - can look perfectly adequate, majority of typical environments are rich in naked stone, concrete and wood, which all look like shit. Depending on the surface a lot of metal objects (typically those with elaborate surface detail or rough surfaces) may look like shit as well.
There is also the problem that Dishonored is an FPP stealth game, at least in part. This means that you'll often have your face stuck into some nearby surface rather than admiring distant vistas.

I think you are either (1|) trolling for attention

Yeah, I absolutely crave for attention. Obviously.

(2) making a futile attempt to piss off people who enjoyed Dishonored.

This too. Including myself.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm just not someone who looks around for bad textures. I'm not sure how I could play classic oldies like Deus Ex if I were.

 

[Bubbles]

Deus Ex looks better than Dishonored in parts. That "painterly" vibe makes things looks weirdly plastic-y to me.

 

[Angthoron]

Thing is that you don't need to look for those bad textures. They'll just drop on you themselves amidst an otherwise enjoyable session and and you'll be like Oh for fuck's sake, was it really so hard to have it in higher resolution on the PC.

 

[Zewp]

I'm just not someone who looks around for bad textures. I'm not sure how I could play classic oldies like Deus Ex if I were.

You don't exactly have to look around to find them in Dishonored.

 

[DraQ]

Deus Ex looks better than Dishonored in parts. That "painterly" vibe makes things looks weirdly plastic-y to me.

This too.

Deus Ex isn't really an example of good looking game because devs didn't really get how to use the engine to its fullest, but thanks to advanced 1998 technology known as "detail texturing" its textures, at least those covering level geometry, never looked smeary, even if you stuck your nose into wall.

 

[DalekFlay]

I think you guys are smoking too much grass.

Also GAMEPLAY.

 

[Morgoth]

Ban DraQ for not understanding good-vs-bad graphics.

 

[Zewp]

I think you guys are smoking too much grass.

Also GAMEPLAY.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

 

[DraQ]

Ban DraQ for not understanding good-vs-bad graphics.

Ban Morgoth for being a fucking hipster who thinks "artsy" == good.

I give credit where credit is due - for example Dishonored GFX work really well for distant vistas (thanks to excellent art design) and pretty well for characters and SOME interiors (those without much exposed wood/concrete/brickwork), but smeary low-res textures made even smearier by attempts at artsiness look awful up close (while failing at creating desired 'painterly' looks because the edges of 3D objects stay as sharp as ever), everything looking like it's been waxed doesn't help (see my previous shots), lack of proper bumpmaps for shiny glossy stuff hurts it even further (see my previous posts), and lighting does dip to HL1 levels often enough to be noticeable and jarring:

UE3 - so very advanced.


BTW:
Springrazors stuck onto bottles make for decent improvised grenades.

I wonder if they'd fare well against a tallboy.

 

[Morgoth]

If you have to resort to low-poly geometry and watercolor textures due to hardware/memory limitations, it's always wiser to make a more exagerrated/disproportianal character design like it was decided in Dishonored. If you want realistic, sure you can have that, but it's gonna come at the expense of something else (i.e. smaller levels?).
Arkane made the right compromises given the GFLOPS budget available to them. Bioshock Infinite otoh did it the wrong way (i.e. superb graphics, but tiny shitty levels and curtailed mechanics).

Arkane knows what they're doing. Don't call them shit for the wrong reasons.

 

[DraQ]

If you have to resort to low-poly geometry and watercolor textures due to hardware/memory limitations

...you don't waste whatever little memory you do have for storing smeary versions of textures effectively making them even lower res.

it's always wiser to make a more exaggerated/disproportional character design

Which I have already said I have no problems with.
Repeatedly. In this thread.

If you want realistic, sure you can have that, but it's gonna come at the expense of something else (i.e. smaller levels?).

How about just not exacerbating graphics' deficiencies by smearing everything over with heavy handed specular and wasting already limited texture memory on painterly smears?

Arkane made the right compromises given the GFLOPS budget available to them.

The right compromises would involve using different, possibly more dated engine that isn't so resource hungry, but more competent at lighting and not making everything look like plastic (good ol' Source, for example). They would also involve not playing fast and loose with memory by explicitly storing textures smeared down to even lower res because le art, instead just opting for different filter to apply to unmodified textures when rendering.

We've already had much sharper and more detailed games running on much flimsier rigs many, many years ago.

 

[Morgoth]

It's not smearing dumbfuck, it's watercolor style. If they chose not to make it look that way, then it would look truly shitty.

 

[Gord]

Of all the console ports with shitty texture resolution I played in recent years, Dishonored still looked best, imho.
At least the lowres, low detail textures fit the overall style.

 

[DalekFlay]

Of all the console ports with shitty texture resolution I played in recent years, Dishonored still looked best, imho.
At least the lowres, low detail textures fit the overall style.

Exxxxxxactly.

 

[DraQ]

It's not smearing dumbfuck, it's watercolor style. If they chose not to make it look that way, then it would look truly shitty.

Ah, so something that looks shitty doesn't look shitty if the shitty looks were intended?

Of all the console ports with shitty texture resolution I played in recent years, Dishonored still looked best, imho.
At least the lowres, low detail textures fit the overall style.

But that's like saying "of all the retards I've met in recent years he's actually the smartest".
Dishonored's visuals have a lot of things going for them - non-technical things mostly - art direction, environment design, etc.
The thing is Dishonored could have had much sharper textures while using exact same amount of system resources and that painterly effect doesn't really work with 3D because both objects contours and lighting are not painterly, so you can only smear the textures so much before it starts looking dissonant.

 

[DalekFlay]

Funny thing is the textures are actually much better on PC, so think on how that Xbox experience must be.

Really though unless you walk up to shit real close looking for bad textures Dishonored looks great overall. That's the point of the sane in this thread.

 

[yes plz]

Has anyone who worked on the game ever given any insight into trouble behind the scenes during development? Currently replaying the game and it definitely feels somewhat... neutered, like they wanted it to be longer, more open, and/or more reactive but couldn't do it. The stuff with Slackjaw and Granny Rags goes basically nowhere, for example. Hell, even the Outsider is barely used for anything outside of giving Corvo his powers; I think the only other time he shows up (not counting Shrines) is during the epilogue.

 

[toro]

Has anyone who worked on the game ever given any insight into trouble behind the scenes during development? Currently replaying the game and it definitely feels somewhat... neutered, like they wanted it to be longer, more open, and/or more reactive but couldn't do it. The stuff with Slackjaw and Granny Rags goes basically nowhere, for example. Hell, even the Outsider is barely used for anything outside of giving Corvo his powers; I think the only other time he shows up (not counting Shrines) is during the epilogue.

The game is a mess. No need to worry about that.

 

[Infinitron]

Has anyone who worked on the game ever given any insight into trouble behind the scenes during development? Currently replaying the game and it definitely feels somewhat... neutered, like they wanted it to be longer, more open, and/or more reactive but couldn't do it. The stuff with Slackjaw and Granny Rags goes basically nowhere, for example. Hell, even the Outsider is barely used for anything outside of giving Corvo his powers; I think the only other time he shows up (not counting Shrines) is during the epilogue.

Bethesda doesn't approve of their developers airing out their dirty laundry, so I'm not sure you can expect to hear anything like that anytime soon.

Although I'm not aware of anybody ever trying to ask, so who knows.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Has anyone who worked on the game ever given any insight into trouble behind the scenes during development? Currently replaying the game and it definitely feels somewhat... neutered, like they wanted it to be longer, more open, and/or more reactive but couldn't do it. The stuff with Slackjaw and Granny Rags goes basically nowhere, for example. Hell, even the Outsider is barely used for anything outside of giving Corvo his powers; I think the only other time he shows up (not counting Shrines) is during the epilogue.

Well the lead designer said their main problem making games last gen was ram.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...lead-level-designer-labels-ps4s-8gb-ram-a-joy

 

[Infinitron]

OK, my top annoyance with this game: overheard conversations that trigger when you're too far away to listen to them closely. Goddammit I don't want to miss those!

 

[DraQ]

OK, my top annoyance with this game: overheard conversations that trigger when you're too far away to listen to them closely. Goddammit I don't want to miss those!

Your zoom has an odd side effect of amplifying sounds as well.

Must be Outsider's doing or something.

 

[Infinitron]

OK, my top annoyance with this game: overheard conversations that trigger when you're too far away to listen to them closely. Goddammit I don't want to miss those!

Your zoom has an odd side effect of amplifying sounds as well.

Must be Outsider's doing or something.

I actually like that. It's useful and mitigates somewhat what I was complaining about. Problem is you don't always know where the conversation is coming from so you don't know where to zoom at.

Often there's a wall between you and the overheard conversation and zooming at the wall makes the conversation louder.

 

[DraQ]

OK, my top annoyance with this game: overheard conversations that trigger when you're too far away to listen to them closely. Goddammit I don't want to miss those!

Your zoom has an odd side effect of amplifying sounds as well.

Must be Outsider's doing or something.

I actually like that. It's useful and mitigates somewhat what I was complaining about. Problem is you don't always know where the conversation is coming from so you don't know where to zoom at.

Often there's a wall between you and the overheard conversation and zooming at the wall makes the conversation louder.

Definitely Outsider.

BTW:
I do love how this game's different mechanics interact. Movement, weapons, various powers, environmental interactivity. For example my aforementioned springnades.
Shame that AI is pretty inept at dealing with you if you're stealthy turning it into power-trip simulator.
Also shame that while movement in general feels great, you almost blink more than you walk - should have really gone with HP casting.