So I just got the GOTY edition and I've been playing the Blade of Dunwall DLC. I have to say, Daud's Blink is so much better than Corvo's.
So anyway I was wondering what do people think of Dishonored? Would you like to see a sequel?
Thoughts on Dishonored
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So I just got the GOTY edition and I've been playing the Blade of Dunwall DLC. I have to say, Daud's Blink is so much better than Corvo's.
So anyway I was wondering what do people think of Dishonored? Would you like to see a sequel?
Meh. Wasn't terribly impressed, to be completely honest. I saw a lot of similarity between it and Bioshock 2, and almost all of the overlap I perceived ended up in Bioshock's favor. The world of Dishonored has the potential to be interesting and the attention to detail seen through liberal usage of the heart is spectacular, but honestly I can't see it holding up a franchise without some changes to gameplay and tone in any future installments.
Dishonored was a good game, but it wasn't great in my opinion. The stealth is among the best in recent years (AAA wise) and while it draws influence from Thief and BioShock in its style and gameplay it's not done in a mean spirited way and gives the world a unique look. Unfortunately Corvo being a silent protagonist holds him back as the entire prologue happens because of his apparent inability to speak and all the other characters have to flesh out the cast for him. Said characters aren't interesting, either. Dishonored's biggest flaw is the horrible morale choice system. The stealth and combat both work fine, but the morale choice stops you from going kill crazy if you're going for the good ending. I can't just slit a guard's throat before he calls the guards I just have to start over again. Then the ending was boring and obviously half arsed.
Dishonored could have been a great game but oh well. At least if you're among the six people who liked Hitman: Absolution you had that game to be your great late 2012 stealth action game.
Dishonored could have been a great game but oh well. At least if you're among the six people who liked Hitman: Absolution you had that game to be your great late 2012 stealth action game.
Ehhhhhh...
Dishonored is one of those "I want to like it a lot more than I actually do" games.
I can say I loved the setting. Felt very... real? Tangible? Well realised? Consistent? I dunno, it just felt like a plausible, and lived-in world, fantasy elements and all.
Loved the art style too, with the "painterly" environments and character visual designs that almost looked like toned-down newspaper cartoon caricatures.
Gameplay... bleh. The very exemplar of unbalanced. The initial 'blink' ability that you're given for free pretty much breaks the game right off the bat. I mean, it's a near-instant silent teleport that's easy to aim, can be used for free so long as you wait a few second between casts, can be used for easy insta-kills even on alerted opponents (blink into the air above them and drop-kill them) and causes enemies to lose track of you. I mean Jesus Christ, goodbye any sense of challenge or danger whatsoever, we hardly knew thee. It's be like a shooter starting you off with a lock-on one-shot-kill weapon with unlimited ammo.
And that's before we get to the other unlockable abilities, like the one that lets you freeze time for a few seconds and stab/shoot everyone while they're frozen. Or the fact that the game makes an erstwhile attempt to fucking drown the player under a veritable cascade of health and mana potions.
Oh, and it had the usual problems of trying to mix combat and stealth. So the stealth is pointless because if you're spotted you can just shoot everyone and keep right on trucking, so why waste your time sneaking? Or you could just blink away and be done with it. On the flipside, the combat is made even easier by all the enemies being evenly spread out with a tendency to stand staring at walls so you always have the initiative.
The writing was workaday video game fare. Which is to say disposable garbage by the standards of any other medium. It just serves as the bare minimum to string together a series of killings. Shame really, those character designs were crying out for some decent dialogue and characterization to go with them. But no. This is a video game. Just give 'em something to kill and call it a day.
I did really like the talking heart. Being able to point and random NPCs, including enemies and hear, "When not on duty he searches for his sister, missing a week now", or, "He has taken to feeding a stray dog each night, he named her Billy", was a nice touch. Well, until it started repeating itself, but hey, they can only record so much dialogue. Some of the other stuff it said was really interesting too, but it was interesting because it never had to explain itself. I have no doubt that if the writers were to expand on any of the hints given by the heart, the full story would prove to be much more dull than the mysterious hints.
Oh, and lastly, tone. The first time I came across the corpses of a couple who had committed suicide in each other's arms rather than die of plague it was sad. By the seventh time, not so much. All depressing all the time just becomes monotony, something which the writers of would-be "dark" games struggle to grasp. You have to break it up with some levity or optimism for the dark bits to really hit home. (For a masterclass in this, see Telltale's The Walking Dead).
I would kinda like to see a sequel because I think the setting had an absolute ton of potential, but I doubt I would actually like the squel that we are likely to get. It'll just be more teleporting assassins. Toootally baaaadaaass brah!
...
Yeesh. This post ended up being about six times as long as I intended.
Dishonored is one of those "I want to like it a lot more than I actually do" games.
I can say I loved the setting. Felt very... real? Tangible? Well realised? Consistent? I dunno, it just felt like a plausible, and lived-in world, fantasy elements and all.
Loved the art style too, with the "painterly" environments and character visual designs that almost looked like toned-down newspaper cartoon caricatures.
Gameplay... bleh. The very exemplar of unbalanced. The initial 'blink' ability that you're given for free pretty much breaks the game right off the bat. I mean, it's a near-instant silent teleport that's easy to aim, can be used for free so long as you wait a few second between casts, can be used for easy insta-kills even on alerted opponents (blink into the air above them and drop-kill them) and causes enemies to lose track of you. I mean Jesus Christ, goodbye any sense of challenge or danger whatsoever, we hardly knew thee. It's be like a shooter starting you off with a lock-on one-shot-kill weapon with unlimited ammo.
And that's before we get to the other unlockable abilities, like the one that lets you freeze time for a few seconds and stab/shoot everyone while they're frozen. Or the fact that the game makes an erstwhile attempt to fucking drown the player under a veritable cascade of health and mana potions.
Oh, and it had the usual problems of trying to mix combat and stealth. So the stealth is pointless because if you're spotted you can just shoot everyone and keep right on trucking, so why waste your time sneaking? Or you could just blink away and be done with it. On the flipside, the combat is made even easier by all the enemies being evenly spread out with a tendency to stand staring at walls so you always have the initiative.
The writing was workaday video game fare. Which is to say disposable garbage by the standards of any other medium. It just serves as the bare minimum to string together a series of killings. Shame really, those character designs were crying out for some decent dialogue and characterization to go with them. But no. This is a video game. Just give 'em something to kill and call it a day.
I did really like the talking heart. Being able to point and random NPCs, including enemies and hear, "When not on duty he searches for his sister, missing a week now", or, "He has taken to feeding a stray dog each night, he named her Billy", was a nice touch. Well, until it started repeating itself, but hey, they can only record so much dialogue. Some of the other stuff it said was really interesting too, but it was interesting because it never had to explain itself. I have no doubt that if the writers were to expand on any of the hints given by the heart, the full story would prove to be much more dull than the mysterious hints.
Oh, and lastly, tone. The first time I came across the corpses of a couple who had committed suicide in each other's arms rather than die of plague it was sad. By the seventh time, not so much. All depressing all the time just becomes monotony, something which the writers of would-be "dark" games struggle to grasp. You have to break it up with some levity or optimism for the dark bits to really hit home. (For a masterclass in this, see Telltale's The Walking Dead).
I would kinda like to see a sequel because I think the setting had an absolute ton of potential, but I doubt I would actually like the squel that we are likely to get. It'll just be more teleporting assassins. Toootally baaaadaaass brah!
...
Yeesh. This post ended up being about six times as long as I intended.
Got it last month and haven't played it yet, just tried it for good luck. Looks like a fun game but from what I'm reading it's dreadfully short.
Depends how you play it.Johnny Novgorod said:
You could rush through it in 4-5 hours easily on your first run.
As someone who tends to play in a thorough manner and stops to smell the roses, I took about 11 hours to complete it, if memory serves.
Make of that what you will.
I loved it. It's up there amongst the games from this generation (or rather, the generation just gone I suppose) that I had the most fun with. Aside from anything else about the game - things like the facts that the graphical style is wonderful, conveying a grimy, lived-in world that oozes character from every street corner, the soundtrack is nicely balanced between a tense background ambience and powerful songs, the combat is visceral, the powers are neat, the stealth system has the ability to be both forgiving and challenging and the character designs have a charming, political-cartoon quality to them - the fact that I simply had so much fun messing around with ways to play the game endeared it to me. Sure, the story is of average quality for videogames but the presentation made up for it. Yes, the powers swing between utterly useless and widely unbalanced but they encourage creativity and open up the gameplay for hijinks. The mechanics make it fun to replay in tons of different ways and that made it stand out above so many other games for me.
I think I would've preferred the GOTY version but I always squeeze all I can out of a game anyway. I know there's some replayability value in Dishonored what with the different endings and different kinds of moral runs you can do, so I'm a happy camper.Zhukov said:
Dishonored is pretty damn good. Not the pinnacle of all gaming; at the end of the day, it's really a one-trick pony. You sneak around for a while and sometimes to stab/strangle some folks and then move along.
There are also a lot of weird design and technical choices. For example, being in light or shadow does not affect your stealth in any way. All you have to do is stay silent and outside of the NPCs cones of vision and you're golden. That is a really weird choice when there are other games that actively keep track of how much light you are currently reflecting, light that could enter a human eyeball and create a recognizable image in the brain.
Furthermore, many of the upgrades and powers that you receive over the course of this game are really made for lethal playthroughs. The rat summoning, the grenades, the wiretraps, half of the ranged ammo, Shadow kill, and Lethality all increase your death-dealing potential whereas you only get one upgrade to your sleep darts, your one specifically peaceful tool. Why were there no smoke grenades? Why were there no incapacitating proximity traps? Why couldn't I trade my sword for a blackjack? Why were there no bullets for my pistol? Overall, the game has serious issues with its balance that should have been addressed back during its development.
Despite all of the above, Dishonored is extremely fun. The slaying is fun. The sneaking is fun. The choosing whether to sneak or slay is fun. The whole thing is just fun on a bun.
There are also a lot of weird design and technical choices. For example, being in light or shadow does not affect your stealth in any way. All you have to do is stay silent and outside of the NPCs cones of vision and you're golden. That is a really weird choice when there are other games that actively keep track of how much light you are currently reflecting, light that could enter a human eyeball and create a recognizable image in the brain.
Furthermore, many of the upgrades and powers that you receive over the course of this game are really made for lethal playthroughs. The rat summoning, the grenades, the wiretraps, half of the ranged ammo, Shadow kill, and Lethality all increase your death-dealing potential whereas you only get one upgrade to your sleep darts, your one specifically peaceful tool. Why were there no smoke grenades? Why were there no incapacitating proximity traps? Why couldn't I trade my sword for a blackjack? Why were there no bullets for my pistol? Overall, the game has serious issues with its balance that should have been addressed back during its development.
Despite all of the above, Dishonored is extremely fun. The slaying is fun. The sneaking is fun. The choosing whether to sneak or slay is fun. The whole thing is just fun on a bun.
The world is excellent and believable, the gameplay is fun if a bit easy cause of blink. One of the better games last gen, but (to quote the eternal Yahtzee; and this is a big stinky butt) the characters are boring, like *all* of them. The Beyonder, or whatever he was called, is the most interesting, all the others have the personalities of boiled water. Corvo doesn't work as a silent protagonist, mostly because we are told he has a life outside of being a projection of the player (unlike Gordon Freeman, who exists solely to *be* the player and has no other purpose or backstory) and that's a low point for the game overall. That's the only thing pushing the game down (besides blink, but I did find it fun to use it), Zhukov said that it was all depressing all the time and that's true, but it's because the characters really have no character to convey any other sort of situation, actually scrap that, they don't convey *any* sort of situation and everything feels forced.
I don't think I have to say anything about the story (which includes narrative, setting, characters etc.) it will just be more bile. The worst part is that it is wasted potential and nothing gets me as frustrated as wasted potential (looking at you Bioware). I do hope for a sequel, because as I said it was fun to play, but please get some talented writers.
I don't think I have to say anything about the story (which includes narrative, setting, characters etc.) it will just be more bile. The worst part is that it is wasted potential and nothing gets me as frustrated as wasted potential (looking at you Bioware). I do hope for a sequel, because as I said it was fun to play, but please get some talented writers.
It's even more broken in the DLC. Daud's Blink is just hax. While holding the Blink button down, if you stay still, time literally stops while you search for a place to Blink to. So if you make a bad jump, or an enemy catches a glimpse of you, you can instantly disappear in a second.Zhukov said:
Both the theft of valuables and the rooftop running reminded me of Thief, though I only ever played Deadly Shadows. I kept comparing the combat to Assassin's Creed. It felt like one was a first-person incarnation of the other in terms of combat versus stealth. The world-setting was solid: it set up a distinct city mired by plague and intrigue, yet the main story was slightly lacking (in part due to the uninteresting protagonist). The Heart really spruced up the setting. It helped that the Heart's statements had to be laconic enough to pertain to one individual or scene while also being profound enough to actually be interesting.
It's telling that the game's skills were built around being able to kill targets rather than stealthily avoid them. Probably half of the skills you unlock with runes involve messily dispatching enemies or anybody unfortunate enough to get in your way. It rather limits play styles for non-lethal or undetected playthroughs.
But the best thing of all has to be sliding. You can actually attack while sliding! If that's not a feature, I don't know what is.
It's telling that the game's skills were built around being able to kill targets rather than stealthily avoid them. Probably half of the skills you unlock with runes involve messily dispatching enemies or anybody unfortunate enough to get in your way. It rather limits play styles for non-lethal or undetected playthroughs.
But the best thing of all has to be sliding. You can actually attack while sliding! If that's not a feature, I don't know what is.
Dishonored was a good game but it could have been a great game if we were allowed to explore dunwall and the isles. To be fair Ive never played the DLCs and I probably wont so I dont know if they effect that critique or not. FOr me, I dont think the level structure really worked for that game. I understand why it was there and how it fit into driving the plot but I still dont think it really worked for most of it.
That said, I really liked the plot and setting of the game. I just feel like it could have been so much more. Also as a bit of a disappointment considering the publisher I was also disappointed at the lack of mod support. Thats one of the big things that draws me into Bethesda games, if I dont like something I can just change it, but that didnt really happen for dishonored
That said, I really liked the plot and setting of the game. I just feel like it could have been so much more. Also as a bit of a disappointment considering the publisher I was also disappointed at the lack of mod support. Thats one of the big things that draws me into Bethesda games, if I dont like something I can just change it, but that didnt really happen for dishonored
I enjoyed it immensely. There were certainly some missteps throughout the game, and it's story and characters had a lot to be desired, but I felt that it did a very good job with its level design, mechanics, and the ways those two worked together to allow for a variety of approaches. It's world was also incredible, especially if you use the heart to its fullest potential. In many ways, it really gave me a similar feeling to what BioShock did, and while I did prefer BioShock (mostly for its vastly better story and characters), Dishonored was certainly a solid game in its own right.
It was tied for my GOTY that year (with Farcry 3 and Borderlands 2). The combat is satisfying, the stealth is even more satisfying, and the story was actually pretty good IMO. Plus, I loved the art design. It looks like it came straight out of a painting. It can be short if you just power through but that's doing yourself a disservice. Try doing the no killing and no being spotted run in the same playthrough. Add in the no upgrading beyond the very first blink spell too if you want to make it extra tough.
One of the best games for making me feel like the ultimate badass. Air-assassinating Tallboys never got old for me. Also, bonus for having a pretty great end credits song.
One of the best games for making me feel like the ultimate badass. Air-assassinating Tallboys never got old for me. Also, bonus for having a pretty great end credits song.
I liked it quite a bit especially since it was my first full on stealth game, the world was quite interesting despite most of the characters being blander than cardboard. What really did it for me though was the gameplay, the first person parcore was really fun as was stalking guards from above and evaluating when to fire a crossbow bolt or simply leap on them when they were alone. Overall I really enjoyed it, I went back to it a few times after by terrible first run where I often ended the missions killing several guards as I sprinted away to the boat which gave me the high chaos ending and I felt compelled to do a no kill run.
Loved it personally, so much that I got the GOTY edition for Christmas about two years after trading in the original copy (I used to have a serious problem with getting games, completing them in a day and then trading them in immediately....). The world is immersive, the stealth mechanics superb, the killing nice and juicy, and best of all, in a pseudo-Victorian industrial revolution setting there are NO Cockney accents!
I will say that going for the stealth based trophies sucks some of the fun out of the game though: I did a never spotted/no kills playthrough on the highest difficulty that very quickly turned tedious due to the amount of times I had to re-load after being spotted. Not to mention most of the powers were restricted due to their lethal nature.
And yes, Daud's Blink is insanely uber compared to Corvo's!
I will say that going for the stealth based trophies sucks some of the fun out of the game though: I did a never spotted/no kills playthrough on the highest difficulty that very quickly turned tedious due to the amount of times I had to re-load after being spotted. Not to mention most of the powers were restricted due to their lethal nature.
And yes, Daud's Blink is insanely uber compared to Corvo's!
Very good game that reminded me a lot of the now 'old fashioned' style of level design that was often used for games like Deus Ex and Thief but which fell out of favour some time in the 2000's and hasn't really been seen much since.
Linear progression of levels but with each level being a large open-ended map with its own little self-contained story. I like that!
Linear progression of levels but with each level being a large open-ended map with its own little self-contained story. I like that!