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Weird West: Definitive Edition - top-down immersive sim action-RPG from Arkane founder Raf Colantonio

Roguey

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It's exactly what's its trying to be. Watch some Harvey interviews about how they designed it. It's not Thief by a long shot. It was never even meant to be.
Yeah, it's Assassin. Thief is about being a thief. Dishonored is about being an assassin. Obviously an assassin game isn't going to play like a thief game.

Furthermore https://www.dualshockers.com/making-of-dishonored-harvey-smith-raph-colantonio/

Off the back of one of these interviews, Raph was contacted by Todd Vaughn, a former games journalist and immersive sim enthusiast who was now a producer at Bethesda. Vaughn was a big fan of Arkane's work and was regarded by Raph and Smith as something of an unsung hero of Dishonored. "Going public with Arkane's problems saved us, because immediately Todd got in touch and said 'Hey, I have something for you if you want to talk,'" Raph tells me. "So I hopped on the phone, and he said 'Do you want to make the next Thief?'"

Bethesda didn't yet have the Thief IP, but Vaugn said it would soon be a done deal. Arkane got to work, and within a couple of months, Raph had written a full story for a new Thief game. While this was going on, another unexpected opportunity came up at Bethesda which caught Harvey Smith's attention. "We had the possibility of getting this work on two pitches at once, and then we'd see which one we get. Maybe we'll get both!" Smith recalls. "The other pitch was Blade Runner. At that point, I was like 'I'll slit my wrists if we don't get Blade Runner,' and Raph felt the same way about Thief, so we kept advancing the two ideas."

With Bethesda's acquisition of both IPs in the air over the next few months, the focus kept shifting between Blade Runner and Thief. After a few months, however, in what seemed to be yet another example of Arkane's rotten luck in getting to complete their projects, Vaughn said that Bethesda couldn't get either IP. Raph thought that it was game over for the Bethesda collaboration, and quite possibly for Arkane.

But Vaughn had a plan. "He said to us 'we like who you are, we love your past games. Just do what you were doing with Thief and call it Dishonored." I suggest half-jokingly to Smith and Raph that it almost sounds like Vaughn was playing 5D chess, and even though he was uncertain about the Blade Runner or Thief IPs coming through, he just used them as an excuse to bring Arkane under Bethesda's umbrella. "Who knows, right?" Smith chuckles. "We've been wondering for the last 12 years whether Todd Vaughn is playing 5D chess."

For the first time in their history, it seemed that Arkane was working with a publisher who didn't want to tether them. With a strong team that included former Half-Life 2 art director Viktor Antonov, future Deathloop director Dinga Bakaba, and Arkane veterans Sebastien Mitton and Christophe Carrier, the team got to work in earnest. Naturally, Dishonored took on bits from the Thief game that Arkane had tentatively started on, while the early work for Blade Runner was scrapped because, according to Colantonio, it would've been "a little bit more of an RPG" than the action game they were looking to make.

Blade Runner was going to be the Deus Ex successor, but it fell through.

For the first time in their history, it seemed that Arkane was working with a publisher who didn't want to tether them.

That didn't last. :lol:
 

Gargaune

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Dishonored tries to combine stealth and combat equally, like Deus Ex did. It was designed that way. And that's what Deus Ex is about. Not about inventory management or dialogues.
No, that's minutiae, it isn't what Deus Ex is about, that title was designed to be a comprehensive adventure with combat, stealth, and RPG elements ranging from dialogue choices and exploring social hubs to skills and inventory management, all forming integral parts of the whole. Whereas Dishonored, like the others said, adds the "assassin" approach to the "thief" one but is still fundamentally stealth-centric - you're not striding down the street introducing people to your "little friend", you're not chatting people up to make headway, you're just avoiding enemies or stalking prey from the shadows (metaphorically speaking).

Again, it's fine to lament that Dishonored's systems don't rise to Thief's level or that its formula's been diluted by other influences, but to claim its parentage is anything else is to miss the forest for the trees. These ideas pop up every now and then (the late TotalBiscuit also had a thing claiming Prey 2017 was Colantonio's Deus Ex), but Arkane's work has always been brazenly obvious about its inspirations - Arx Fatalis is (literally) their take on Ultima Underworld, Dishonored on Thief and Prey 2017 on System Shock, we don't have to plunge into yet more endless agonising over the nature of an immersive sim to recognise that.
 

Latelistener

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Just because at some point in pre-production they had ideas for a new Thief game doesn't say anything about Dishonored.

My point still stands though, it's a game designed in the vein of Deus Ex, rather than Thief.

No, that's minutiae, it isn't what Deus Ex is about, that title was designed to be a comprehensive adventure with combat, stealth, and RPG elements ranging from dialogue choices and exploring social hubs to skills and inventory management, all forming integral parts of the whole. Whereas Dishonored, like the others said, adds the "assassin" approach to the "thief" one but is still fundamentally stealth-centric - you're not striding down the street introducing people to your "little friend", you're not chatting people up to make headway, you're just avoiding enemies or stalking prey from the shadows (metaphorically speaking).
You seem to have misunderstood Dishonored. What makes you think that "you can't introduce people to your little friend"? That's exactly what the game allows you to do, unlike Thief.

They even build Chaos system with a whole new ending for that occasion. Just because you played it stealthy doesn't mean it's "stealth-centric". Neither it's combat-centric.



Just so you know, Dishonored also has various progressions systems: runes, charms, gear. It has a central hub. Some of its levels can also be called hubs since they contain traders, missions and paths to smaller levels. You can choose options through dialogues.

The only thing missing is inventory management, but that's not what Deus Ex is about.

Prey wants to be system shock 3 so bad I'm pretty sure the working title would have been Nueroshock
Actually it was suppose to be System Shock, but the deal fell through because of Jason Schreier. I think Raph is still pissed about that.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I think the answer here is obvious (Dishonored = Magical Assassin simulator with a world and factions broadly inspired by Thief) but somebody should ask Raf Colantonio about it on Twitter and settle this argument once and for all.

Roguey, you have my permission to use the RPG Codex account for this.
 
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Roguey

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Just because at some point in pre-production they had ideas for a new Thief game doesn't say anything about Dishonored.

My point still stands though, it's a game designed in the vein of Deus Ex, rather than Thief.

I bolded the relevant parts for you, did you not read or comprehend them? Here they are again.

Vaughn said that Bethesda couldn't get either IP. Raph thought that it was game over for the Bethesda collaboration, and quite possibly for Arkane.

But Vaughn had a plan. "He said to us 'we like who you are, we love your past games. Just do what you were doing with Thief and call it Dishonored."

Naturally, Dishonored took on bits from the Thief game that Arkane had tentatively started on, while the early work for Blade Runner was scrapped because, according to Colantonio, it would've been "a little bit more of an RPG" than the action game they were looking to make.

Blade Runner was the Deus Ex game! It was an RPG but that scope was a bit too big for them to rework as an original idea (too much risk).
 

sosmoflux

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Just because at some point in pre-production they had ideas for a new Thief game doesn't say anything about Dishonored.

My point still stands though, it's a game designed in the vein of Deus Ex, rather than Thief.

No, that's minutiae, it isn't what Deus Ex is about, that title was designed to be a comprehensive adventure with combat, stealth, and RPG elements ranging from dialogue choices and exploring social hubs to skills and inventory management, all forming integral parts of the whole. Whereas Dishonored, like the others said, adds the "assassin" approach to the "thief" one but is still fundamentally stealth-centric - you're not striding down the street introducing people to your "little friend", you're not chatting people up to make headway, you're just avoiding enemies or stalking prey from the shadows (metaphorically speaking).
You seem to have misunderstood Dishonored. What makes you think that "you can't introduce people to your little friend"? That's exactly what the game allows you to do, unlike Thief.

They even build Chaos system with a whole new ending for that occasion. Just because you played it stealthy doesn't mean it's "stealth-centric". Neither it's combat-centric.



Just so you know, Dishonored also has various progressions systems: runes, charms, gear. It has a central hub. Some of its levels can also be called hubs since they contain traders, missions and paths to smaller levels. You can choose options through dialogues.

The only thing missing is inventory management, but that's not what Deus Ex is about.

Prey wants to be system shock 3 so bad I'm pretty sure the working title would have been Nueroshock
Actually it was suppose to be System Shock, but the deal fell through because of Jason Schreier. I think Raph is still pissed about that.

What'd Schreier do?
 

Gargaune

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You seem to have misunderstood Dishonored. What makes you think that "you can't introduce people to your little friend"? That's exactly what the game allows you to do, unlike Thief.

They even build Chaos system with a whole new ending for that occasion. Just because you played it stealthy doesn't mean it's "stealth-centric". Neither it's combat-centric.



Just so you know, Dishonored also has various progressions systems: runes, charms, gear. It has a central hub. Some of its levels can also be called hubs since they contain traders, missions and paths to smaller levels. You can choose options through dialogues.

The only thing missing is inventory management, but that's not what Deus Ex is about.

Even in that video, much of that balls-out combat consists of zipping around and getting the drop on unsuspecting enemies, not trading blow for blow, that's what I meant by stealth-centric as opposed to Deus Ex, which was theoretically meant to let you deal with enemies as in a straight FPS if you wanted to. Further, calling levels "social hubs" over having traders (like in Thief: Deadly Shadows, if I recall correctly?) isn't appropriate when the reference point is stuff like Hell's Kitchen or Hong Kong. The light RPG elements aren't a point of contention, I said they iterated on the idea of Thief, not copied it verbatim.

The point, which Roguey's quotes support as well, is that Arkane's vision for Dishonored was "Thief plus some new stuff", not "Deus Ex minus some core designs." FPS combat, resource management, social hubs and dialogue trees, these are dimensions of gameplay that impact the top-level abstract experience - i.e. the forest, whereas sound propagation and shadows, or lack thereof, are downgrades in specific systems - the trees. If they'd set out to make "a" Deus Ex, it would've looked very different.
 

Latelistener

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I bolded the relevant parts for you, did you not read or comprehend them? Here they are again.
I mean, you quote someone else on stuff that doesn't directly confirms or denies anything. Both studios that were trying to make Blade Runner and Thief concentrated on one game called Dishonored.

One man says "Just do what you were doing with Thief". And? We don't even know the initial pitch, not to say that it doesn't confirm whether they actually followed that statement.

"Dishonored took on bits from the Thief game". What bits? I can see that there are without a doubt Thief inspirations in sound and visual design, but gameplay is completely different.

That reminds me of situation some years ago when I said to you that immersive sim are in fact not limited to first-person because it's a set of design principles. You disagreed with me until you found a quote from some dude. I mean, can we just turn the logic on and skip the quote finding stuff?

Even in that video, much of that balls-out combat consists of zipping around and getting the drop on unsuspecting enemies, not trading blow for blow, that's what I meant by stealth-centric as opposed to Deus Ex, which was theoretically meant to let you deal with enemies as in a straight FPS if you wanted to. Further, calling levels "social hubs" over having traders (like in Thief: Deadly Shadows, if I recall correctly?) isn't appropriate when the reference point is stuff like Hell's Kitchen or Hong Kong. The light RPG elements aren't a point of contention, I said they iterated on the idea of Thief, not copied it verbatim.

The point, which Roguey's quotes support as well, is that Arkane's vision for Dishonored was "Thief plus some new stuff", not "Deus Ex minus some core designs." FPS combat, resource management, social hubs and dialogue trees, these are dimensions of gameplay that impact the top-level abstract experience - i.e. the forest, whereas sound propagation and shadows, or lack thereof, are downgrades in specific systems - the trees. If they'd set out to make "a" Deus Ex, it would've looked very different.
He does what he does in the video because it looks kewl and shows how much effort was put into lethal combat, rather than Thief-inspired stealth.

I'm starting to have doubts whether you actually played the game. There is adrenaline meter that fills up when you fight (that allows you to instakill anyone when full), grenades, pistol with explosive ammo and crossbow that isn't actually silent with standard and incendiary ammo. There are runes that allow you to increase build up of said adrenaline meter and slow down its drainage, increase your hp, break down doors and summon rats to devour enemies. While for stealth we have... well, choke-hold and sleep darts. That's definitely Thief-inspired.

Yeah there is a central hub where you rest before going on a mission, talk to characters, buy and upgrade stuff. I call it correctly. Other levels you may call as you like, but the point is that they structured differently than what we have in Thief and Thief 2, mostly because they act essentially like hubs with side missions / locations, characters you could talk to and traders. The first mission High Overseer Campbell has 4 side missions with different outcomes that affect the world later on in your walkthrough, a few neutral non-combat characters and 2 relatively big side locations + 1 smaller side location that you may not even visit if you don't want to.

I mean, you didn't possibly expect that this game that was suppose to be selling on consoles have RPG features from Deus Ex? That's exactly what it is, a console version of Deus Ex, but better than Invisible War. Also, please stop mentioning "dialogue trees" from Deus Ex. It's laughable. There aren't any that actually change the experience or compare to proper RPGs like Bloodlines.

What'd Schreier do?
He learned that they were making Prey and came to Bethesda demanding another juicy leak or he would leak that stuff only. They basically went with "no negotiations with terrorists" policy and blacklisted him.

He leaked the stuff. The other party that was going to sell them System Shock rights didn't like that and they called it off. Schreirer didn't even know they were in the talks about System Shock, but he still ruined it.
 

Roguey

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"Dishonored took on bits from the Thief game". What bits? I can see that there are without a doubt Thief inspirations in sound and visual design, but gameplay is completely different.

Yeah, because it's an assassin game, not a thievery game.

That reminds me of situation some years ago when I said to you that immersive sim are in fact not limited to first-person because it's a set of design principles. You disagreed with me until you found a quote from some dude. I mean, can we just turn the logic on and skip the quote finding stuff?
The logic is that it plays like a game called Assassin and not Deus Ex. Though I'm sure Raf would say that Deus Ex was an inspiration just as Thief was.


I'm flattered that people fight about which great game Prey is the spiritual successor of. The inspiration was System Shock / Arx / Deus Ex/ Imsim in general, and a bit of HL2... We worked for them at some point after all. Games inspire other games...
 

Gargaune

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He does what he does in the video because it looks kewl and shows how much effort was put into lethal combat, rather than Thief-inspired stealth.

I'm starting to have doubts whether you actually played the game. There is adrenaline meter that fills up when you fight (that allows you to instakill anyone when full), grenades, pistol with explosive ammo and crossbow that isn't actually silent with standard and incendiary ammo. There are runes that allow you to increase build up of said adrenaline meter and slow down its drainage, increase your hp, break down doors and summon rats to devour enemies. While for stealth we have... well, choke-hold and sleep darts. That's definitely Thief-inspired.

Yeah there is a central hub where you rest before going on a mission, talk to characters, buy and upgrade stuff. I call it correctly. Other levels you may call as you like, but the point is that they structured differently than what we have in Thief and Thief 2, mostly because they act essentially like hubs with side missions / locations, characters you could talk to and traders. The first mission High Overseer Campbell has 4 side missions with different outcomes that affect the world later on in your walkthrough, a few neutral non-combat characters and 2 relatively big side locations + 1 smaller side location that you may not even visit if you don't want to.

I mean, you didn't possibly expect that this game that was suppose to be selling on consoles have RPG features from Deus Ex? That's exactly what it is, a console version of Deus Ex, but better than Invisible War. Also, please stop mentioning "dialogue trees" from Deus Ex. It's laughable. There aren't any that actually change the experience or compare to proper RPGs like Bloodlines.
The discussion is getting nowhere because you keep splitting hairs to dodge the basic argument - that Arkane set out to make Dishonored using Thief as the primary reference. What you seem to be saying, however, is that what they ended up making resembles Deus Ex more than it does Thief... Which I also disagree with, for all the aforementioned reasons, and you'd be better off saying that what Arkane made simply failed to resemble what you value about Thief, denying the inspiration is ridiculous. It sure as fuck doesn't resemble what I value about Deus Ex, but that's fine because it's not what the devs were trying to do.

As for my Dishonored "credentials", I played it once back when it came out, almost to completion. My memories of it are what they are and I'm in no rush to refresh them, but at no point did it make me feel like I was playing some sort of Deus Ex successor.

The bigger problem seems to be you not getting Deus Ex since, like some other Codexers, you're entertaining a very sterile assessment of it - shooting versus stealth versus (occasionally) dialogue, managing resources and progression, the way that you navigate those social hubs, these things aren't just checkmarks on a feature list, they're integral parts of a holistic vision for the player's experience. Deus Ex and Thief built up on Ultima Underworld but in different directions, then Dishonored built up on Thief. It ended up taking some steps towards Ion Storm's title, but not close enough and it's not where it came from.
 

Latelistener

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The discussion is getting nowhere because you keep splitting hairs to dodge the basic argument - that Arkane set out to make Dishonored using Thief as the primary reference. What you seem to be saying, however, is that what they ended up making resembles Deus Ex more than it does Thief... Which I also disagree with, for all the aforementioned reasons, and you'd be better off saying that what Arkane made simply failed to resemble what you value about Thief, denying the inspiration is ridiculous. It sure as fuck doesn't resemble what I value about Deus Ex, but that's fine because it's not what the devs were trying to do.

As for my Dishonored "credentials", I played it once back when it came out, almost to completion. My memories of it are what they are and I'm in no rush to refresh them, but at no point did it make me feel like I was playing some sort of Deus Ex successor.

The bigger problem seems to be you not getting Deus Ex since, like some other Codexers, you're entertaining a very sterile assessment of it - shooting versus stealth versus (occasionally) dialogue, managing resources and progression, the way that you navigate those social hubs, these things aren't just checkmarks on a feature list, they're integral parts of a holistic vision for the player's experience. Deus Ex and Thief built up on Ultima Underworld but in different directions, then Dishonored built up on Thief. It ended up taking some steps towards Ion Storm's title, but not close enough and it's not where it came from.
The discussion is getting nowhere partially because you can't for some reason understand a simple idea: to make a game that can be called "inspired by Thief" (and you meant gameplay-wise) you have to built it solely around stealth, making combat deadly and unwanted (Human Revolution, by the way, entertains this idea much more). Dishonored, on the other hand, tries to embrace the middle ground taken by Deus Ex, where both combat and stealth are presented in equal amount (partially fails to do so, because there are more options for lethal combat than stealth) by sacrificing stealth complexity and some combat mechanics. I don't need a quote from Raph to see that.

And it's getting nowhere also because you didn't even understand what kind of game you've played. I mean:
you're not striding down the street introducing people to your "little friend", you're not chatting people up to make headway, you're just avoiding enemies or stalking prey from the shadows (metaphorically speaking).
Do I need to mention that there is a mission in which people think you're wearing a costume of a wanted assassin that can be completed almost entirely through talking?

I've played this game perhaps a little bit more than I should have and that's exactly what's going on here. It's easy to say that it's inspired by Thief if you played it 10 years ago using only stealth, but it's actually not.

Some guy made two similar videos to show elements of emergent gameplay in both games:

 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Arkane set out to make Dishonored using Thief as the primary reference.

Arkane might have used Thief as a primary reference for Dishonored, but they added a lot of non-stealth gameplay elements to the point where, if you want it, Dishonored plays nothing like Thief (in fact even if you want it, it hardly plays like Thief because of lack of light-based visibility).

Indeed i almost never bothered with any of the stealth aspects of Dishonored and went guns (and magic) blazing on all enemies in Dishonored, something that was outright impossible in Thief. To me that is a clear indicator that Thief was an inspiration at most - a strong inspiration, but still just an inspiration. Unlike Thief, Dishonored is not a stealth game, it is a game where stealth is one of the available options, which is closer to Deus Ex than to Thief.
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
wow i finally tried it the aiming are truly shit. free cam mode is much better but it still feel kinda off. downloaded the first person mode , i dont think i will ever look back. there are jankyness but feels much better. need to edit .ini file to remove the shitty weird vignette effect too.
 
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I got this on a sale, wow, first character you play is a woman bounty hunter who has to go save her husband, followed by Native American he-witch, followed by Pigman, followed by even weirder characters. Yeah, then they wonder why they can't sell any games.
 

Fedora Master

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lol prey

absolute garbage game
The real Prey is damn awesome.

I got this on a sale, wow, first character you play is a woman bounty hunter who has to go save her husband, followed by Native American he-witch, followed by Pigman, followed by even weirder characters. Yeah, then they wonder why they can't sell any games.
I'd tell you to stop being part of the problem but I know that's not an option for you so uh, tough shit.
 

antimeridian

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Codex Year of the Donut
Played a few hours of this, not too impressed.

-Numerous issues with how combat in general plays out, already discussed ad nauseum here - overall too chaotic, too fast, unsatisfying.
-Combat on harder difficulties: cheese it with very specific abilities or else have fun with the extremely tedious stealth.
-Level design barely exists in the first place, and is exacerbated by the procedural elements.
-Trash loot everywhere (not good) plus color-coded weapon varieties (seriously??)
-Previous two points mean exploration sucks.
+Graphics are simplistic but nice. I'm glad the devs poured enough effort into the visuals to create a pleasing image, but knew when to stop.

The level design and bad itemization are what kills it. I'd be more patient with the shitty combat if the game delivered on solid exploration in the vein of classic immersive sims.
The action-RPG elements feel tacked-on and detract massively from the game's potential. But it doesn't feel like there's enough here for action-RPG fans either.
 
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DesolationStone

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IMHO, what this game really needs is a permanent slow motion mod when aiming, because too much happens in a few seconds and you can't understand a shit of what's going on.
Trash loot everywhere (not good) plus color-coded weapon varieties (seriously??)
For the main problem it's that exploring and looting seems to be completely useless
 

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