Arkane's Dishonored

I'm in what I guess is the main little hub city for the first time, and so far I'm just confused. The game asks me to be stealthy but I feel I have none of the tools to do so. Blink seems like it'd be good for this, but the collision on it can be spotty and there's not a lot of cover to be found in the spot I'm at anyway (Dunwall Distillery). Sleep darts don't seem to be readily available, and I only have one left.

Being not-stealthy doesn't seem to be much of an option, as I don't have the ammo or melee capability to take on more than three or so opponents at once. I've watched a bit of Certis' video, and..well, countering and slicing heads off doesn't work so well if there are three swordsmen and one guy breathing fire on me.

Suggestions? I have to say I'm not feeling the game so far, but considering the critical praise I'd really hate to dismiss it after less than two hours. On the other hand, all the Giant Bomb guys who I generally agree with weren't very hot on the game. And of all the games you see this one compared to, I only kind of like Bioshock, disliked what I played of DX:HR, and have no experience with the original DX or Thief franchises.

One big tip for this game is to look up a lot more than the guards do.

Spoiler:

Dunwall Distillery has pipes and catwalks both inside and out. You should be able to stay high and out of sight fairly easily.

Blind_Evil wrote:

On the other hand, all the Giant Bomb guys who I generally agree with weren't very hot on the game.

They're quite dismissive of games they don't get into, so take their thoughts on Dishonored with a pound of salt. Oh, and not having Dishonored in a Top 10 is subjective, but that doesn't make them any less wrong.

It's not a stealth game, either. How you play determines what kind of game it is. I took vengeance quite readily. I killed lots. Alarms? Hold on a sec, I'm still killing.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm in what I guess is the main little hub city for the first time, and so far I'm just confused. The game asks me to be stealthy but I feel I have none of the tools to do so. Blink seems like it'd be good for this, but the collision on it can be spotty and there's not a lot of cover to be found in the spot I'm at anyway (Dunwall Distillery). Sleep darts don't seem to be readily available, and I only have one left.

Being not-stealthy doesn't seem to be much of an option, as I don't have the ammo or melee capability to take on more than three or so opponents at once. I've watched a bit of Certis' video, and..well, countering and slicing heads off doesn't work so well if there are three swordsmen and one guy breathing fire on me.

Suggestions? I have to say I'm not feeling the game so far, but considering the critical praise I'd really hate to dismiss it after less than two hours. On the other hand, all the Giant Bomb guys who I generally agree with weren't very hot on the game. And of all the games you see this one compared to, I only kind of like Bioshock, disliked what I played of DX:HR, and have no experience with the original DX or Thief franchises.

Blink is your friend. Learn to use it well early on because you will most certainly need it in later levels if you wish to remain stealthy. (Just remember, that this is not a full-on stealth only game.) The glowing targeting indicator that shows where you will blink to is actually pretty accurate. If you aim for edges, it will turn into an arrow and you will canter over the edge if you blink to it.

As far as not having a lot of cover... definitely think of going up and over obstacles. Also, don't think of it as a Thief-like game with tons of cover. My main strategy early on was to...

Spoiler:

...hide behind cover as a guard approached me. If I stayed there, he would certainly see me when he got too close. Therefore, I would lean out, blink behind him before he reached me, and choke him out nice and quite like.

I'll second the "onwards and upwards" approach.

If you're going for non-lethal then you can choke people out instead of stabbing them. I do think the sleep darts are in limited supply so you can't rely on them for a non-lethal approach.

I think a good way to play the game is to be semi-stealthy. Eliminate as many enemies as you can from behind so that when you do get discovered you don't have to fight off a large mob of enemies. Also while darts may be in limited supply, many of the city watch enemies that you fight have pistol ammo. Certain powers that you get can also help in a straight up fight like Bend Time and Windblast. Personally I was just sword fighting a lot and hacking through enemies. You don't have to counter to kill the more basic enemies in the game.

Also note that the number of people you kill throughout the game effects the ending.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm in what I guess is the main little hub city for the first time, and so far I'm just confused. The game asks me to be stealthy but I feel I have none of the tools to do so. Blink seems like it'd be good for this, but the collision on it can be spotty and there's not a lot of cover to be found in the spot I'm at anyway (Dunwall Distillery). Sleep darts don't seem to be readily available, and I only have one left.

Blink is incredibly powerful once you've learned its limits. I'll agree that hitting your destination accurately can be a bit tricky at times, but oh well. A screwed up blink was about the only time I reloaded in Dishonored. You really want to get the high-level Blink as soon as possible, and go for the silent running as well. Between the two you can traverse a space being actively patrolled by guards at speed and with the proper timing they'll never know you were there. But generally, you don't have to be that daring. Basically every space in the game has multiple routes in plus a Blink "highway" up near the ceiling. Sometimes you'll be crawling on pipes, sometimes blinking between candelabras.

Regarding Dunwall Distillery specifically, the tricky part is getting from the front door to the highway (if I remember correctly, the access point is a chain at the top of the stairs near the entrance). Once you're up there though, you can traverse the area easily without being discovered.

Yonder wrote:

One big tip for this game is to look up a lot more than the guards do.

Spoiler:

Dunwall Distillery has pipes and catwalks both inside and out. You should be able to stay high and out of sight fairly easily.

Thanks, that helped. I'm still not in love with the mechanics, though. Can't tell you how many times I felt I should have started to choke a guy but instead raised my sword to block and ended up alerting everyone.

Are all the mission the same size/scope as the Overseer Campbell one? I don't know if I have seven more of those in me, frankly.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Are all the mission the same size/scope as the Overseer Campbell one? I don't know if I have seven more of those in me, frankly.

The missions get progressively longer as the game progresses. But since you get more adept at traversing spaces, they don't take much longer to complete.

Latrine wrote:

Also note that the number of people you kill throughout the game effects the ending.

The number of people you kill doesn't seem to matter. Except for the prison level, I murdered almost every guard I came across and had the low chaos ending. I think it's who you kill that matters since I went with the non-lethal solution to every assassination.

Yeah, the distillery is optional in the first mission for a reason. I personally had a much easier time with it on my high chaos run, as I just found a high spot and started sniping with the crossbow. But it took me a while on low chaos, and I also needed to get good at being high up.

Truth told, if I'm doing a low-chaos run, I might avoid the distillery altogether. Then again, it does have that rune...

Re: High Chaos v. Low Chaos runs

This is more of a "beat this game as quickly as possible to sell toward a PS3" run.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Latrine wrote:

Also note that the number of people you kill throughout the game effects the ending.

The number of people you kill doesn't seem to matter. Except for the prison level, I murdered almost every guard I came across and had the low chaos ending. I think it's who you kill that matters since I went with the non-lethal solution to every assassination.

Hmm, interesting. I thought it was possible to get the low chaos ending even if you chose to kill all the assassination targets though. I wouldn't know personally since I went high chaos all the way.

Latrine wrote:

Hmm, interesting. I thought it was possible to get the low chaos ending even if you chose to kill all the assassination targets though. I wouldn't know personally since I went high chaos all the way. :)

It might be possible. I'm just assuming that's what causes high chaos because those were basically the only people I didn't kill. I guess I didn't kill any civilians but are there really that many civilians to kill outside of the whorehouse?

Blind_Evil wrote:

Re: High Chaos v. Low Chaos runs

This is more of a "beat this game as quickly as possible to sell toward a PS3" run. :P

Definitely go high chaos, then. Get the depressing evil ending or whatnot, and enjoy all the necks you get to stab while you do it.

Seriously, nothing more satisfying than dropping down and insta-killing a Tallboy.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Are all the mission the same size/scope as the Overseer Campbell one? I don't know if I have seven more of those in me, frankly.

Depending on your approach and how thorough you want to be, they can vary quite a bit in amount of time to complete. The Campbell mission took me several hours to do, and may have been the longest of them all in my first, stealthy playthrough. Subsequent ones were more straightforward, and the bridge mission later on was a joy to traverse through.

Depending on your approach you could speed run the game in about forty minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N-N...

And of all the games you see this one compared to, I only kind of like Bioshock, disliked what I played of DX:HR, and have no experience with the original DX or Thief franchises.

Well, if you actively disliked DX:HR, then I think it might be hard for you to enjoy this one. It's sort of a combo of Bioshock, Deus Ex, and Thief, and if you're meh about one pillar, and actively dislike the second, I doubt the third will hold the game together for you.

On the disappointed musings about the plot:

Spoiler:

Remember that, given the dynamics of what was going on, Corvo would be the de facto Emperor in the new setup, as Emily absolutely trusted him, and would likely defer to him for as long as he lived. The counter-revolutionaries weren't wide-eyed idealists, wanting to restore the Queen. Rather, they just didn't like that someone else had taken power instead of them, and were using Emily as a pretext to grab for the big chair.

The plot's only nonsensical if you believe they were ever telling you the truth, and I thought it was made pretty clear that, most of the time, you were getting the mushroom treatment.

Now, I'm not saying it's the best thing ever; Arkane still needs to bring it up another couple notches in their game writing. Their world- and level-building is incredible, but their storytelling's a bit weak. But it's not actively stupid, like their earlier offerings. It does hang together pretty well, far though it may be from Shakespeare.

If they improve as much with their next title as they did with this one, well, I think GOTY is a near-certain lock.

Well, I'm just past Lady Boyle's party, and now I'm loving it. Would've bumped a couple games out of my top 10 for 2012 for sure. I rarely turn so hard in either direction on a game.

I feel the game's early failing is that it introduces you to tools without showing you how they work together (been talking to someone else just starting who agrees). Some of this stuff is in loading screens, but that's an ineffective teaching method. Also, I think Dark Vision should be a default power. The stealth makes a lot more sense with one level of it unlocked. I'd like if they had combined it with the Heart.

Once you do understand the capabilities of Corvo and the general game flow, it's easy to become seduced by the power fantasy playing out.

I feel like player choice is a trendy thing to talk about in game criticism now, and I feel a lot of times people are suckered into thinking they have more agency than they do (Mass Effect trilogy, the Walking Dead). Dishonored does a good job of giving the player a lot of mechanical agency and at least loosely tying it to the narrative (I'll see how that plays out). There are still too many obvious preferred paths, but it's a step in the right direction.

Latrine wrote:

Depending on your approach you could speed run the game in about forty minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N-N...

I'd been thinking about a speed run myself. My first run was a meticulous search of everything I could find, but once I had cleared out the level I could get from place to place very quickly, and usually using pathways that guards weren't covering in the first place. The High Overseer especially I feel like could be dealt with very, very quickly.

When watching the first bit of that clip I saw that

Spoiler:

The Empress's last words in life are "You'll know what to do. Won't you? Corvo?" Which I think strengthens the possibility that she was a voluntary guide, since her greatest concern was that Corvo wouldn't be able to save Emily and fix the city without her.

Finished mission 6, Return to the Tower.

Spoiler:

Why the eff would the Lord Regent KEEP that audiograph?

Blind_Evil wrote:

Finished mission 6, Return to the Tower.

Spoiler:

Why the eff would the Lord Regent KEEP that audiograph?

Why did Nixon keep all of his tapes?

Blind_Evil wrote:

Finished mission 6, Return to the Tower.

Spoiler:

Why the eff would the Lord Regent KEEP that audiograph?

Spoiler:

Keep in mind that the Regent legitimately thought it was a great idea, and that the fact that it went terribly, terribly wrong (he doesn't think it started that way from the beginning) wasn't his fault at all. He may have legitimately thought it was a convincing work about how he's the real victim, as he's definitely more than a little insane.

The fact that the Propaganda guy knew about it is probably an indication that the Regent was working with him on some sort of version of the tape that would be fit for eventual public consumption. I like to think that what we found was take 5, and was the result of the Propaganda guy trying to get a more palatable and less incriminating version after four even more horrible admissions of guilt.

This game is driving me crazy. I'm enjoying the gameplay, but the graphic style is just so ugly. It looks like they were trying to go for stylized and missed. It's got blocky low resolution environments and character models that look straight out of the original Half Life.

If I could play Dishonored without looking at it, that would be perfect.

I just wrapped up this game. It was good enough for me to play all the way through, but for whatever reason the game just didn't wow me the way it seems to have for other reviewers. I'm probably in the tiny minority here but in the last 6 months or so I finished Max Payne 3 and Deus Ex: HR and I think I would put both of those ahead of Dishonored. To me it feels like you're spending a lot of time learning the systems and skills, deciding if you want to be more stealthy or just kill everyone. Once you feel you really have a good handle on the game and a feel for the Corvo you want to play, its over before you know it.

Really liking it so far with a low chaos, stealthy go at it. I seldom kill anyone unless they are either a marked target or rewire something to kill hostiles. Blink, agility and slow time are awesome powers to get with a low chaos approach.

BadKen wrote:

This game is driving me crazy. I'm enjoying the gameplay, but the graphic style is just so ugly. It looks like they were trying to go for stylized and missed. It's got blocky low resolution environments and character models that look straight out of the original Half Life.

If I could play Dishonored without looking at it, that would be perfect.

What are you playing it on? I played on 360 and could not say I found the same thing at all. I saw a review that described the art style as 'painterly' and that pretty much described how I saw it - stylised and abstracted. The character models reminded me of what I saw of Brink's art design. I guess if that's not your taste though...

I thought the art style was really well done. They chose a point between stylistic and realistic that conveyed a human likeness, and allows for a little exaggeration to give more to the character and keep them unique but without needing to stress if someone's nose is two pixels too long.

I'm playing it on PC at 1080p. I guess I just really don't like the irregularity of the art style. It looks sloppy instead of stylized to me. For example, there are lots of low resolution textures for junk in the environment (I mean literally junk, like piles of trash). The faces have interesting variety but the shading is all messed up.

I haven't played Brink, but Dishonored looks to me like it's kind of trying to do a Bioshock sort of thing, but not really pulling it off all the way. Bioshock has interesting architecture, decor and texture to its world, but Dishonored is just bleak everywhere. Even the "bath house" looked bleak and decrepit. I get that this is a plagued city, but the environments look more weathered, old and post-apocalyptic than recently wiped out by plague.

I think I'll try to collect some screenshots to show what I mean. I want to better understand what is bugging me about this game. I am very much enjoying it, because I keep playing, but I just feel icky after every session.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/HNJI4Nsl.jpg)
Just finished.

Spoiler:

The start of the flooded district was intense, since I had no equipment and was trying to go non-lethal against magic blinking assassins. I managed to figure out how to do it, but until I found my equipment again it was touch and go. I stopped playing for external reasons right before reaching Daud.

I loved the touch that Daud also had time-bending powers, though I ended up leaving him with a warning.

Starting up again, the rest of the flooded district didn't take too long, and kept things interesting enough without being too fiddly and slowing things down. I was expecting a revisit to the pub ever since they first let me walk around it, so that was interesting. (My alternate scenario was that it was going to be a raid, at night, with everyone trying to run to safety.)

The last level was a breeze, since I wasn't trying to see everything and had no reason to conserve my powers and didn't care as much about ghosting. Which apparently meant that I still ghosted the level. Was slightly disappointed that when the Admiral was talking about me, then turned around and saw I was standing right behind him, his reaction was slightly more subdued than I hoped, even if the dialog actually fit that.

Does anything happen at the very top of the tower? Seems like something ought to.

The non-lethal takedowns of the targets were all pretty clearly fates worse than death, except for Daud. I would have preferred a little more effort for them on my part (the deal with Slackjaw, in particular, seems like it would have been better if I had to knock them out and carry them to a drop-off point) but I think part of that was because I was expecting all of the non-lethal takedowns to be challenge-mode compared to the outright assassinations.

I liked the ways that the endings and the gameplay reflected your choices along the way. Not just low/high chaos, but stuff like Granny Rags, the poisoned elixir, and Cecilia carrying through was nice at feeding the eventual consequences of your actions back to you. Much better than the way Deus Ex:HR did the multiple ending choice at the very end. I did the low-chaos route, and I'm not sure how I feel about going back and doing high-chaos right now.

The epilogue was a but abrupt, admittedly...I'd like to have had a bit more interaction and then cut to the summing up. Stay in the virtual, interactive world just a bit longer, maybe talk to Emily a bit. Just a little space to breathe at the end.

I wasn't expecting the Outsider to get resolved in this game; the plot was pretty clearly not focused on him and Corvo didn't seem to be too introspective about his interference. I viewed him as a parallel to The Trickster from Thief, minus Garrett's very personal grudge. There's stuff going on in the larger world in this game that wasn't resolved this time. (Whale oil being a prime example.)