Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

[Twig]

And as much as I'm enjoying the game as I'm playing it now, seeing all the gifs posted here and elsewhere definitely makes me want to do a second, completely balls-to-the-wall lethal run.

[melmer]

I'm a little annoyed at the moment. I'm on the masquerade ball mission, and every at the part is fine but two of the sisters, who completely freak out if they see me. I'm thinking its probably because I signed the guest book. Assissin school boy error.

I'm going to have to load up an earlier save, which sucks as I had stolen ever single valuable in the house

[melmer]

Nah, it was one of the guards upstairs finding an unconscious body, so I put them all to sleep just to be sure.

[Badfinger]

I have no idea what signing the guest book does, but it's an awesome touch and I totally did it.

[Frenetic Pony]

Playing the last mission, and yeah I'd agree with Scoops et. al. (latest podcast, people on here, etc.) You know what? The stealth in this game kinda sucks. IT SUUUUUUUUUUUCKS! I tried uber sneaky totally non violent for so long. And then I just said, screw it, I'm going as fast as I can with everything I have. And it's better without a doubt! The very fact that they even put the "non violent play through" in at all basically ruined parts of the game for me, as if they designed the game to be fun that way when they didn't.

Now, at the very end of the game I've finally switched to "just screw it" and am blinking around like a mad man, sleeping everyone and everything with possession and sleep darts and choking them out, and the game is definitively, tangibly better. I can only imagine I'd have enjoyed parts I didn't like before by just doing this. Do not, DO NOT be tricked into playing this game like a ghost. It's not designed for it.

[Twig]

I'm doing it and loving it. It's totally designed for it.

[youmeyou]

Now, at the very end of the game I've finally switched to "just screw it" and am blinking around like a mad man, sleeping everyone and everything with possession and sleep darts and choking them out, and the game is definitively, tangibly better. I can only imagine I'd have enjoyed parts I didn't like before by just doing this. Do not, DO NOT be tricked into playing this game like a ghost. It's not designed for it.

How are all of the things you mentioned not possible in a stealth-only playthrough?

[Twig]

Maybe he is saying that, before now, he never engaged an enemy period. He tried to make it through everything without touching an enemy, except for targets. I can't really think of any other way to interpret that quote.

...That might be an interesting playthrough, too, though. Hmm. I'll have to think about that one.

[TychoCelchuuu]

How are all of the things you mentioned not possible in a stealth-only playthrough?

Frenetic Pony mentioned "playing this game like a ghost," which is presumably a reference to a ghost playthrough, where you leave as little as possible changed. So, a ghost can't go around shooting people with sleep darts. A ghost has to never be spotted.

The game definitely isn't designed for ghosting. There's an achievement for it but I think you have to really love ghosting or really love achievements to want to bother with that. Dishonored is amazing for a lot of reasons, and one of the biggest reasons is that your magic powers add some real variety to the systems driven gameplay that you get when guards are hunting you, and of course if you quickload whenever you are spotted you'll never see that neat emergent stuff happening.

[Twig]

The "ghost" achievement is simply "don't kill, don't get seen", which the game definitely is designed for. You seem to be mistaking "I don't like it" with "The game wasn't made for it".

[Orv]

Their definition of "ghost" in regards to the achievement/stealth self-challenge is very liberal. NPC interaction is allowed, you just can't get caught/kill.

[Twig]

You can't be seen, either. You literally can't alert any guards. At least, according to the description. That doesn't mean alarms, because I never set off any alarms, but I still didn't get it for the first level. And I'm assuming that's what that checkbox at the end of a level means.

[Vegas]

I think it's basically no alerts from an NPC.

It is really hard to do without using saves.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Okay, I actually hadn't looked at what the achievement required, but if that's their ghost achievement then it's not really a "ghost" achievement. "Ghost" is stringent enough to require, like, closing any doors you open. Choking someone out is a huge no-no, unless they were already choking on a pretzel or something, in which case it's probably okay to speed the process up a bit as long as you don't leave any marks on the body.

[soggybagel]

I'm a little annoyed at the moment. I'm on the masquerade ball mission, and every at the part is fine but two of the sisters, who completely freak out if they see me. I'm thinking its probably because I signed the guest book. Assissin school boy error.

I'm going to have to load up an earlier save, which sucks as I had stolen ever single valuable in the house

No. The game is somewhat buggy. I was on a mission for

Slackjaw where you have to get evidence for him to show that his buddy or whatever is dead or not and when I returned to give it back it would always fuck up where I'd be literally in the middle of talking to him finishing the mission and all of a sudden his goons would go "LETS GET HIM" or something like that and start attacking me and Slackjaw would attack and then I'd fail. I had to restart back about 45 minutes prior before I took the mission. This is a bug among a few others where AI and NPC good guys just wig out for no reason.

[Twig]

Okay, I actually hadn't looked at what the achievement required, but if that's their ghost achievement then it's not really a "ghost" achievement. "Ghost" is stringent enough to require, like, closing any doors you open. Choking someone out is a huge no-no, unless they were already choking on a pretzel or something, in which case it's probably okay to speed the process up a bit as long as you don't leave any marks on the body.

Right. That's why I was initially confused by what Pony was talking about.

[Badfinger]

Okay, I actually hadn't looked at what the achievement required, but if that's their ghost achievement then it's not really a "ghost" achievement. "Ghost" is stringent enough to require, like, closing any doors you open. Choking someone out is a huge no-no, unless they were already choking on a pretzel or something, in which case it's probably okay to speed the process up a bit as long as you don't leave any marks on the body.

I actually did close doors behind me. Both out of paranoia at alerting someone, and also because it seemed like the right thing to do.

Also you have a very weird definition of what "ghost" means. To me (and the game), it means don't let anyone know you're doing anything while you're doing it. Why would you need to keep up the illusion after you're gone? Sleepy guards never know what hit 'em. It's ghostly, not ethereal.

Unless you're joking and I can't tell. In which case there should be a second level of achievement above the "ghost" run known as the "ghost dad" run.

[TychoCelchuuu]

"Ghost" is a technical term of art, not a particularly apt description. Read and be enlightened.

[Twig]

I just wanna play a game where I get to choke a guy choking on a pretzel.

Or maybe I could possess the pretzel.

Oh holy fuck I want that game now.

[Lork]

Well, I was enjoying this game up until I did the side mission to poison the bottle street gang's distillery. Now the game crashes every time I try to go back to the main hub for the mission I'm on, and I'm left with no recourse but to wait for a patch that may or may not come at all.

Glad to see that Bethesda's reputation extends to games they publish as well as the ones they develop. They wouldn't want to be considered inconsistent, after all.

[Vegas]

"Ghost" is a technical term of art, not a particularly apt description. Read and be enlightened.

Can you really fault dishonored for not following such stringent requirements, made for another game?

[TychoCelchuuu]

Can you really fault dishonored for not following such stringent requirements, made for another game?

Nope.

Well, I was enjoying this game up until I did the side mission to poison the bottle street gang's distillery. Now the game crashes every time I try to go back to the main hub for the mission I'm on, and I'm left with no recourse but to wait for a patch that may or may not come at all.

Glad to see that Bethesda's reputation extends to games they publish as well as the ones they develop. They wouldn't want to be considered inconsistent, after all.

This is literally one of two bugs I've heard about in the game. Dishonored is nowhere near as buggy as Fallout 3 or Oblivion or something like that. Hell, it's nowhere near as buggy as lots of non-Bethesda-published games, like XCOM.

[Twig]

Yeah I've encountered zero bugs so far (that I've noticed). Unless rats eating an unconscious dude really isn't supposed to happen, like Steve said. Then that's a bug. I assumed it wasn't at the time.

It sucks that you had shit luck, and I empathize with your frustration, I really do... but to compare this to other Bethesda game launch quality? EHHHH. It comes up near the top compared to most game launches, period.

[Badfinger]

"Ghost" is a technical term of art, not a particularly apt description. Read and be enlightened.

While I suppose I understand your point more completely, I don't think using the word "ghost" for a game of similar lineage means it should be beholden or even comparable to rules like that whether its use was coincidental in Dishonored or not. That sure does sound completely insane though!

Still going to petition for a Ghost Dad achievement run.

[Roswell47]

Just finished it. Last level was a bit disappointing (Cleared it in ~10 mins non-lethal). Especially coming off 'The Flooded District'... A. Mah. Gah. Soooo gud! Probably my favorite section of the whole game.