Arkane Dishonored: Death of the Outsider - standalone adventure featuring Billie Lurk

[Infinitron]

 

[fantadomat]

What an ugly animal mug!

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Billie is cool, so what's the problem, you rayciss?

She's black, and every iteration of Dishonored, she's becoming more black.

Oh wow, like a reverse Michael Jackson.

Tradition in game development was to make different game after finishing one game. Sequels were only with some delay between them so both players and developers have some rest and sequels were without mishaps of previous games. This situation where one company practically make one game and sequel one after another feels like a way to lower and lower quality and worse story made by people who are making one type of game for so long, they are unable to make something new.

Can't make new I.Ps anymore, games are too expensive, too risky. Just remake the same game over and over again, then rehash it with a gritty or comical reboot. And add microtransactions, gotta pay for all that marketing somehow.

 

[Mynon]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/08...ored-games-would-feature-different-characters
Good thing, I guess, is that this means that Corvo/Emily art won't be stretched ad infinitum.

 

[Morgoth]

There better be a Dishonored 3 dammit.

 

[Mynon]

In a way, this might be for the best. I wouldn't want more games that are direct continuation of existing arc and are featuring existing characters, anymore than I would want several more DE games that feature Jensen and continue with HR storyline and style.
So, as long as we ARE getting another Dishonored (and it looks like we probably are... at some point), healthy pause and a fresh new storyline with a geographic/temporal removal from the existing one & its baggage is the best case scenario.

 

[Infinitron]

https://bethesda.net/en/article/2GGUlPbsgU4OoooUYOaiks/taking-on-contracts-in-death-of-the-outsider

Taking on Contracts in Death of the Outsider

Billie Lurk sees the world from a different perspective than Emily Kaldwin or Corvo Attano. While Corvo pulled himself up from the dark alleyways of Karnaca to become the Royal Protector, and Emily was born into royalty, Billie has spent her whole life in the shadows. From her early life as a street urchin, to her time as a paid killer, and even to her smuggling days as the captain of the Dreadful Wale in Dishonored 2… Billie has never led a charmed life. She’s always done exactly what she needed to in order to survive, and sometimes that meant killing for cash. That hasn’t changed in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider.

“Billie has undergone major changes, and she’s now a supernatural operative in a sense – like Corvo, Daud or Emily before her,” says Creative Director Harvey Smith. “But Billie is not coming at this from the angle that Corvo or Emily did, from a position at the imperial court. Billie is like her mentor Daud, an assassin. In her mind, some people just need killing… there’s no other way.”

Enter the Contract system. In addition to the side objectives you can uncover just by exploring the world, Death of the Outsider introduces a way for Billie to take a break from the mission and help the citizens of Karnaca solve their problems – for the right price, of course. Get rewarded for your efforts, and learn a bit more about how the people live their lives – often through murder and backstabbing. No one wants to do their own dirty work, not when they can pay someone like Billie Lurk to neatly handle it.

“Contracts are a new system dreamed up by the Arkane team members in Lyon, France,” says Smith. “We felt like mercenary Contracts were the right call for Billie as a new featurette, just like adding Favors felt right for Daud in the Knife of Dunwall and the Brigmore Witches, since Daud had years of experience running an underworld organization, and presumably a bunch of people owed him blood debts. Most of the time, Contracts can be found and undertaken in black market shops across Karnaca. They’re often stranger in nature than most Dishonored missions.”

The People’s Stories
Our recent hands-on time with Death of the Outsider demo takes us to Upper Cyria, a new area of Karnaca for players to discover. Before setting our sights on the mission at hand, we chose to head to the Black Market and pick up some Contracts, with the hope that they would help us better map out this new location. The four Contracts we took on did indeed take us to all corners of Upper Cyria, and each one had distinct objectives and demands.

• Kidnap the Bartender. The bartender in the Spector Club (an exclusive club run by the Eyeless, a new faction in Death of the Outsider) has made some enemies, and one in particular wants him to disappear for a little while so he can think about what he’s done. In this particular Contract, we have to kidnap the bartender from the busy club and deposit him – still alive – in a crate sitting on a rooftop.
• Death to the Mime. Someone in Karnaca really hates mimes. If we can remove one particular mime from the picture and make it look like an accident, we’ll receive a healthy stipend. Lucky for us, he plies his silent trade near the district’s infamous suicide spots. (Smith points to this particular Contract as perhaps his favorite in the game.)
• Workplace Harassment. A bank employee is being threatened on a regular basis and they want it to stop. The client figures the woman bullying them must be working for someone, and they want the abuse to stop. It’s up to us to trail this troublesome “customer” back to her associates and kill them all. This was a good opportunity to put our new Foresight ability to the test and mark her so we wouldn’t lose her.
• The Missing Brother. There’s a missing brother and just one clue: the Spector Club. We’ll have to search the club, locate the missing man and deliver him to his brother’s cabin alongside the canal. Of course, getting him out of the club without anyone noticing could be tricky.

“With each new Dishonored game, we try to introduce interesting new ideas,” Smith explains. “Both in terms of flavor and game mechanics, Contracts give players something fun to toy with. Often, Contracts will pull you over to another part of the world, away from the main mission, so you get a chance to see something tertiary, and when you move back toward your primary objective, you see the situations along the way from a different angle.”

Unlike main missions, it is possible to fail a Contract. That’s not a game ender; it just means you won’t be paid for your efforts. But that’s OK. You can always try the mission again in a second playthrough, maybe with the help of Original Game +, a mode we’ll be shedding more light on in the weeks to come. A mercenary’s work is never over in Karnaca.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider releases on September 15, 2017, on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

 

[Vibalist]

So, this is a pretty cool video with ten minutes of gameplay, where the guy flawlessly pulls off a string of combos. It looks as fun as the earlier iterations, if nothing else:

 

[ColonelTeacup]

There better be a Dishonored 3 dammit.

Wouldn't it be better to leave the series as it is to rest, without a greater decline in quality?

 

[Hines]

PCGamesN: One of Death of the Outsider's writers was hired because of her great tweets

 

[DeepOcean]

No wonder the storytelling is the way it is, it was literally made by fanfiction writers.

 

[Morgoth]

No wonder the storytelling is the way it is, it was literally made by fanfiction writers.

Good thing writers at Arkane seem expendables. Gameplay/Level designers are in charge there, as it should be.

 

[fantadomat]

Who needs a good writers when there is tumblr!

 

[DeepOcean]

Who needs a good writers when there is tumblr!

Hiring process:

Tweet: "Fuck Trump!"
Harvey Smith: You are a genius writer, I gonna hire you naow!

 

[DeepOcean]

So, this is a pretty cool video with ten minutes of gameplay, where the guy flawlessly pulls off a string of combos. It looks as fun as the earlier iterations, if nothing else:

Just wished you gained any real reward for playing that way, you know, beyond showing off your keel skills on youtube, you don't need to master anything on Dishonored, the difference between the results of a skillful player and the non skillful are pretty small, you can achieve the same result of the guy of the video: killing everyone and not dying, with little effort. You hardly meet a challenge wall that requires you to up your game to this level.

 

[Durandal]

So, this is a pretty cool video with ten minutes of gameplay, where the guy flawlessly pulls off a string of combos. It looks as fun as the earlier iterations, if nothing else:

Just wished you gained any real reward of playing that way, you know, beyond showing off your keel skills on youtube, you don't need to master anything on Dishonored, the difference between the results of a skillful player and the non skillful are pretty small, you can achieve the same result of the guy of the video: killing everyone and not dying, with little effort. You hardly meet a wall that requires you to up your game to this level.

Thiiiis. I always wished for some kind of Bulletstorm-ish point system which rewarded creative takedowns. You can get through a level, but you could also do so with style since survival is easy enough. Give the players something challenging to do.

 

[DeepOcean]

Thiiiis. I always wished for some kind of Bulletstorm-ish point system which rewarded creative takedowns. You can get through a level, but you could also do so with style since survival is easy enough. Give the players something challenging to do.

Yep, if you are really into not frustrating the casuals thing, at least throw some carrots to the players that are willing to be good at the game. Maybe divide the powers on lethal and Non-Lethal with the Lethal powers requiring skill points that can only be earned by killing enemies with style. I dunno, add some challenge for fuck sake, something to break the tedium for players interested on challenge.

 

[Ivan]

So, this is a pretty cool video with ten minutes of gameplay, where the guy flawlessly pulls off a string of combos. It looks as fun as the earlier iterations, if nothing else:

Just wished you gained any real reward of playing that way, you know, beyond showing off your keel skills on youtube, you don't need to master anything on Dishonored, the difference between the results of a skillful player and the non skillful are pretty small, you can achieve the same result of the guy of the video: killing everyone and not dying, with little effort. You hardly meet a wall that requires you to up your game to this level.

Thiiiis. I always wished for some kind of Bulletstorm-ish point system which rewarded creative takedowns. You can get through a level, but you could also do so with style since survival is easy enough. Give the players something challenging to do.

you guys are really asking for cheevos?

 

[Morgoth]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...tsider-is-far-from-the-end-for-arkane-studios

The Death of the Outsider is far from the end for Arkane Studios
"I wish there were rules, then everyone would be rich."

By Chris Tapsell Published 04/09/2017

The immersive sim has seen a kind of mini-renaissance in the past couple of years. Prey, Deus Ex, and of course Dishonored 2 stand out as games that recently arrived to varying, but all positive, degrees of critical acclaim. But that critical reception was conclusively unmatched by sales - so much so that it is now very easy to draw less-than-optimistic conclusions about the future of the entire genre itself, and indeed the series within.

But we are getting more Dishonored, anyway - at least for now we are - in the form of Death of the Outsider, a significant, full-fat expandalone that I spent some time with at Gamescom.

At this point I would normally say something about how Death of the Outsider is more of the same - it is - but I feel that might not do it justice. It's only more of the same insofar as more of the same is just what we want from it; Dishonored 2 was excellent, a sort of sickeningly beautiful construction built for the ingenious mass-murderer in all of us. Edwin, who reviewed the game, called it a "masterpiece of open-ended design." Death of the Outsider, from what I played, seems like about ten to twelve more hours of exactly that.

There are a few tweaks here and there from the master tinkerers behind it. There's no more reliance on elixirs to power your abilities, for example, which admittedly sounds like a huge change, but is still gated by a system of slowly regenerating ability-fuel. Billie Lurk - they should be in prison for that name - the only playable character, hasn't been touched by the Outsider in the same way as Emily or Corvo had previously, and thus it's merely her own energy that's keeping things in check.


It's a gentle, effective re-tuning, a hard stop followed by conscious refueling transformed into unlimited ability usage, gated by what is, in essence, just a cooldown and the passage of time. Still, as well as playing Death of the Outsider out at Gamescom I also spoke to Dinga Bakaba and Christophe Carrier, lead designer and lead level designer respectively on Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider, and being the men behind of some of recent gaming's finest level design they had some predictably intelligent things to say about it.

"Everything is linked together, right?" Carrier says, "the way you play Billie is not the way you play Emily or Corvo, it's faster when you play Billie, because you don't have the limitation of the mana, you try things, you combine things, so it's a different way - it's a different character and a different way to play it." If Dishonored or Dishonored 2 were to have that same potion-free system, he continues, "the exploration would be less interesting because you would have fewer things to find. Each game has its own identity."

I do worry, though, that regardless of the clever ways your abilities are paced, or the genius intricacies of the level design, I'm just not actually good enough to play Death of the Outsider the way it's intended. The recharging energy bar does give me a few more stabs at a trick before failing to land it becomes fatal, but I didn't personally play the game any faster, and there was no added slickness or rhythm to my time with it. The more tools I have the more I freeze, wanting to stop and read every tooltip, watch every tutorial, overthink every angle, before cocking it up in practice again anyway.

It's just the way I'm built, it's for any game that's similar, and I do wonder if that's a problem I'm not alone with. Immersive sims are intimidating, at least to some, and you could reasonably assume that to be a part of why they don't shift the copies of some of their more inviting peers.

For all their failure at making my own life easier in Dishonored - for which the fault lies entirely at my clumsy fingers - the shift to a more streamlined approach to abilities does seem like an appeal to the wider audience. Bakaba, for example, was keen to describe Dishonored, and even its peers, as "action games," over stealth or immersive sim. I wonder aloud to him and Carrier if that was part of a more conscious attempt to bring in new players, but in fact that seems of lesser importance to them than it just playing the way they want it to. "I don't think it's niche at all, I think it's a matter of continuing to move forward with our values," and likewise "it's not about complexity."


"It's more about some experimentations that we wanted to make, as game-makers first," Bakaba says. The same goes for the decision to go with the expandalone as a format. "One of the main things that triggered this discussion for me was actually The Old Blood for Wolfenstein - I was like man, that's a cool format, because they get one year to make this new campaign, and it's sizeable, and it has a different theme, and it allows you to visit a different area of the world... right now there are different ways to go at game development. Basically it's interesting to question yourself about things like that."

There is, I have come to realise, a surprising amount of freedom in the way Bakaba, Carrier, and Arkane in general are able to approach their work. Out here in the wild it looks, quite frankly, like their genre of specialty is dying, and a mega-publisher like Bethesda, with its giant Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises - and infamous crushing of the original Prey sequel - does not, on the surface, appear to be the most tolerant.

Bakaba though is stoically optimistic. "I know that everyone always says my publisher is cool to work with, but I'm not saying that to please anyone," he laughs, "I think it's a good fit between Bethesda and Arkane for that. I mean they acquired us to work with us because of what we do, and they value what we are in a way. I think that's really good. They've been very supportive. It's good to be in a position to be able to experiment."

Carrier agrees. "I've been playing games since Pong, that's how old I am. And I've seen the game industry change time after time. At some point people were saying, 'Oh single player games are dead' and for some time there were no single-player adventure games around, and then suddenly - bing! - another game, maybe like Dishonored, and everyone's like, 'Oh that's super cool!' So there are no rules - I wish there were rules, then everyone would be rich."

"We're doing what we love... I want to make games forever, I like it, this is something I really like! It's a passion, and I wouldn't make a game that I don't like. So that's my first and only reason for doing games, personally. If a game sells very well and if it's the type of game that appeals to a lot of people, I'm happy. If not, well, whatever."

"As designers if you start to think, 'let's do this because it's gonna work', well it's not gonna work. It doesn't mean that we have to stay locked into what we can do and what we know how to do. You have to be very open to games, I'm playing a lot of games still now - I have a family and I'm going to sleep at three in the night because I have to play a lot of games. I don't like it, but when you're passionate that's what you do, you love things and it has to have a huge place in your life... and that's why I think Arkane managed to do that for so long, because that's what we are, basically."

"I want to do something that I love. That's the point."

 

[Fedora Master]

So we'll see more cargo-cult stealth games, like with Telltale and their undeserved monopoly on cargo-cult adventure games?

 

[Morgoth]

Wouldn't it be something if Arkane gets a shot at making a Fallout game?

I, for one, would not rage.

 

[Goldwell]

Arkane or Obsidian need to make the next Fallout game, Fallout 4 was so shit I played for a couple of hours and never picked it up since.

As for Dishonored, I wouldn't mind if they took a break from Dishonored to focus on a new series. Perhaps one focussing on thieves instead of assassins?

I think we will see a Dishonored 3 eventually, hopefully with a development team more akin to the first rather than giving it a huge budget and trying to make it a "blockbuster" game. Also the contracts thing looks like it could be promising in D: DOTO.

 

[Obsequious Approbation]

Just give me my Arx Fatalis sequel and no-one needs to get hurt.

 

[Morgoth]

Just give me my Arx Fatalis sequel and no-one needs to get hurt.

https://otherside-e.com/wp/games/underworld-ascendant/

U r welcome.

 

[Durandal]

Mana potions were too plentiful in Dishonored unless you used abilities all the time, so I don't mind this change at all. It also helps alleviate me of the need to self-restrict myself when it comes to using abilities, instead I'm given a fixed mana pool which I should learn to make the most of in any time instead of it being refillable ten times over. I do hope there are means of recovering mana other than having to wait or spam potions.