Raff

Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

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I'm having fun using Blink and feel relatively challenged going for no alarm/no kill on hard. Though I also just finished the physician level and do agree that blink makes the end bit trivial. Still it didn't make me feel like it was the only tool worth using. I possessed animals and people throughout the level and took every route I could find, both high and low. Most of the challenge in the game comes from not being spotted, not necessarily about finding the right route to take. I think the game encourages you to take all routes, especially to get at all those shiny runes lying around. (I enjoyed the safe painting puzzle too, very resident evily)

Anyway, it's only 3 levels in, I'm interested to see how difficulty ramps up later on.

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I'm only at the second mission and I'm enjoying this A LOT - I just stopped because it crashed after what I thought was 30 minutes but it had been 2 hours+.

To get the few bad things out of the way:

  • I still think that the textures and lighting tech could be better - I support the style 200%, but I think higher-res version would have really carried it the extra mile.
  • I'm also getting a lot of LOD popping.
  • The facial animations are veeery poor and the body animation are a bit subpar during the dialog involving the player (e.g. briefing).
  • The feedback for the range of the Blink ability is confusing and the raycast used is sometimes buggy (it 'collides' with something right in front of me

Everything else is excellent though.

I'm playing in the hardest mode and passed the escape mission, it turned out to be a great blend of everything I love about Hitman, Half-Life, NOLF, Deus Ex and Mirror's Edge.

I LOVE it.

I love the ideas of factions, the idea of being able to solve some elements by understanding the storytelling mechanisms and the power struggle.

I love how the number of people you kill impact mission further down the road. I love that every single item you can pick up seems to be contextualized and be there for a reason.

I love that I'm not super comfortable about the prospect of putting a young empress on the throne.

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I won't get to play beyond the 1st-and-a-half mission for a while, but is my impression correct that the characters and story stuff is probably the weakest part of the game?

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I won't get to play beyond the 1st-and-a-half mission for a while, but is my impression correct that the characters and story stuff is probably the weakest part of the game?

Pretty much yea. There's interesting stuff in the world itself, but the main story and characters aren't so interesting.

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I'm so totally going back to play this lethal, if only to try this move:

8067502530_ec20452363_o.gif

It's kind of amazing that this kind of stuff can exist in the same universe as my sneaking around simulator.

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I am really, really loving this game. I love the silent protagonist thing because it allows me to develop Corvo in my head. In my head, Corvo is a nice guy who had a rough time in prison and he really just wants a drink and a bath. And no one will give these things to him. People are like "Oh, are you murdering someone RIGHT NOW? Then go sleep, recharge your murder batteries."

I tend to panic when I switch weapons and I thought that I really finally had it totally down while i was crouching up in the rafter at the distillery. I was just going to fire off a shot to alarm the guards so I could separate them and pick them off nonviolently, and I didn't realize I had the wrong ammo equipped. So, now there's a guard on fire, screaming, and all his friends are wondering where the sick bastard who set their buddy on fire is.

...oops.

Also I enjoy flirting with Granny Rags, which probably says bad things about my overall character.

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Regarding his silence, I kind of expected Corvo's tongue to be cut out during his incarceration. They don't want him spilling the beans about the nefarious plot, after all!

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you ploughing taffer

So i'm going to start this over the weekend, may even be able to get an hour in before i'm off on the piss tonight

Are many of you playing it on the hardest difficulty? and would you recommend i play at the highest difficulty? (i still want to have fun with the game)

I normally play fps on 'hard'

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I'm playing it on hard and it feels like normal. Then again, I'm not engaging in combat when I can help it... and I bet that's where most of the difference will be felt. Once I finish it, I'll go back and play on 'very hard.' This is one of the few games were I honestly think I'm going to complete a second playthrough, there are just so many awesome little details in the world and ways to interact with it.

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I think i'll just play on Hard, i don't want my first experience of the game to be a frustrating one

Also, i'm not the most patient person when it comes to stealth games, so probably for the best

going to complete a second playthrough

i've run through half life 2 and the like to enjoy the same experience multiple times, but I've never been the person to ever replay a game to have a 'different experience' or seek out alternate story paths. My in game decisions are always made with my gut instinct and i'm normally kinda boring in that respect and always play the nice guy. It just wouldn't feel natural to replay a game and choose the evil path just for evils sake.

Although i blame my boring good guy play throughs on past games making decisions so blatantly 'good' or 'Evil' (thinking back to games like KOTOR - this man has been caught stealing, will you forgive him of execute him / would you like jedi points or sith points)

I really enjoyed the decision making presented in the Witcher 2 as quite often your choices would have unforeseen consequences, that you weren't in control of the world, you are just playing a part in it

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Witcher 2 is actually another game I'd like to play through again. I went with the humans for the most part and would like to see how the storyline plays out if I had sided with the Elves. And you're right, it's not a good/bad dichotomy in that game, just a matter of picking a side and tagging along.

I've played the Mass Effects multiple times going either paragon or renegade. Both are fun and valid ways to play and despite the binary nature of the conversation choices I don't think it paints one as a 'good' route and one as 'bad.' When playing renegade you're just a brusque asshole that's tough but fair. It's not like, say in fallout 3, where you nuke megaton just for the hell of it. There are always reasons for being a dick in the Mass Effect universe so I had fun exploring that mode as well as the white knight one.

Dishonored mostly reminds me of Witcher 2 in its decision making: the whole world is evil, and you're just a pawn. Still, there's a much more standard dichotomy in Dishonored since one route gets you a 'better' ending supposedly.

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Just installing on my Xbox, 38% this disk is either scratched or dirty... What the dick

I feel like the story in mass effect is to pre loaded. Your tasked with saving the galaxy in charge of a whole crew of people that look up and respect you, I can't justify acting like as arse hat. Where as, make me a lone wolf mercenary with amnesia and I have a completely clean slate

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I'm playing it on hard and it feels like normal. Then again, I'm not engaging in combat when I can help it... and I bet that's where most of the difference will be felt. Once I finish it, I'll go back and play on 'very hard.' This is one of the few games were I honestly think I'm going to complete a second playthrough, there are just so many awesome little details in the world and ways to interact with it.

Agreed. My first playthrough was on normal and my new playthrough is going to be on hard, and I'm going to play it completely differently.

The first time I played, I role-played and made the decisions I thought appropriate at the time. I was betrayed, and I murdered my betrayers. I ended up as dirty as they were. I saw Dunwall collapse into chaos around me as I explored it and found new reasons to love it.

Having had that experience, role-playing means something entirely different in my second playthrough. I feel more attached to Dunwall now, and realize that it's not necessarily doomed. The world is only as good as I choose to make it. I feel as though the people in this city aren't evil, but are pushed to the limits of their humanity in the face of a very real crisis. Knowing and feeling these things, I can't in good conscience murder everybody I encounter. I have decided to take the stealth route, trying not to kill anybody.

Both decisions toward my play style were reached through role-play. I do feel that my second playthrough is somehow more "valid" or "accurate" to the role I'm playing, as Corvo would have prior knowledge of and an attachment to his world before the events in the game.

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Just finished it.

That end section was insanely easy. The bit after you get poisoned was quite a bit harder, same with going back to the bar.

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I want to pick this up on Steam SO BADLY right now, but Borderlands 2, Torchlight 2, X-COM and god knows what else have my free time in a vice-like grip.

Will be watching for more Thumb impressions of Dishonored though, to see if I should buy in a bit or maybe wait for inevitable crazy Steam sale down the road...

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heh... same here. I just started/continues Borderlands 2 after I finished Torchlight 2. So Dishonered has been put on the TODO list.

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So basically the best tip I can give in this game is don't quickload if you're spotted. I've seen some people elsewhere online complaining about how the game isn't very interesting for stealth players because you only have two real nonlethal options (choking and knockout darts) but 90% of the excitement in a stealth playthrough comes from trying to escape when a guard sees you. Blinking away, running frantically until you find a hiding space, possessing a rat, etc. leads to awesome moments, and if you just quickload every time you're spotted there's no reason to carry around all those health and spirit potions because you'll never need them, and you won't see much interesting emergent stuff happen.

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Yeah I was thinking of doing a playthrough with quicksave and quickload unbound. I quicksave every two seconds by muscle memory so I probably don't have the self-control to just not load

Also, Harvey Smith is an awesome dude. He seems to reply to every tweet he gets, and says he will play my HL2 mod if he has time. Yesss

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Anyone know any reason I shouldn't get this for the PS3 (that being the only computer in the house that can play this game)?

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If you don't have the PC option then there are no real flaws known in the PS3 version. The PC version just looks quite a bit better.

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So basically the best tip I can give in this game is don't quickload if you're spotted. I've seen some people elsewhere online complaining about how the game isn't very interesting for stealth players because you only have two real nonlethal options (choking and knockout darts) but 90% of the excitement in a stealth playthrough comes from trying to escape when a guard sees you. Blinking away, running frantically until you find a hiding space, possessing a rat, etc. leads to awesome moments, and if you just quickload every time you're spotted there's no reason to carry around all those health and spirit potions because you'll never need them, and you won't see much interesting emergent stuff happen.

Yeah I don't see the point in playing an immersive game when you're consciously breaking the immersion every time it doesn't go perfectly

Edit: okay I do see the point, especially if you're consciously going in there to play around with the systems. But if you're in it for the story and for the world, reloading like that is ...non-preferable in my experience.

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Also one of the things that this game does better than many stealth games is that the combat doesn't suck. I'm playing broadly stealthily, but if I get spotted by a couple of guys I will murder them as quickly and quietly as I can before escaping in whatever way seems applicable, and it really helps the flow of the game to do that rather than reload/fail the mission. Also it actually provides a use for that knife you're constantly carrying around anyway.

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Yeah I don't see the point in playing an immersive game when you're consciously breaking the immersion every time it doesn't go perfectly

Definitely. Played my first game this way.

Doing a ghost/nonlethal/flesh and blood run now, and thinking of changing tacks to restart at mission begin instead of compulsively quickloading on detection. Make a roguelike of it. :)

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Just started playing it the other day and have started most levels by trying not to kill anyone, end up running out of sleeping darts and just murdering the rest. Thinking about just powering through as a murderous SOB for the first play through and sneaking around when I know the game better the second time around.

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