Avalon on 22/10/2012 at 16:13
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
This elitist bullshit, and it
is bullshit, really gets my goat.
Slow your roll, it's just a comparison to a game most people here should be familiar with in order to get a point across.
It is an accurate comparison, too, because of the way they designed the power system. They couldn't balance and design the game around you having any power other than the teleport/sprint, because every other power is optional. What if you elected to get all the grizzly murder powers instead? Even picking up runes to unlock powers is optional, so it's entirely possible that you complete the game without very many powers at all.
So rather than pushing the player to
want these things - say by designing complex NPC mechanics that you need to examine through walls, or extremely viable rat routes that you want Possession for, or rooms so busy that Stop Time seems like a no brainer - they went the other way, and designed it to be completed with relative ease without these abilities at all, making the whole system feel like a gimmick with no real attachment to the game.
The best solution would've been to scrap the current implementation of the power system and just give these powers to the player baseline, and then design the game around it. If they really wanted to keep the unlocking thing, they could just let you unlock optional improvements to the abilities - preferably adding cooldowns that can then be reduced.
Schwaa2 on 22/10/2012 at 16:28
Quote Posted by Lootleach
I noticed this too. The missions/levels feel a lot like those in Thief Deadly Shadows. Smaller than Thief1/2 and divided into multiple 'zones'. You'd think that today's 4GB (and more) RAM could hold ENORMOUS levels, but I guess they were limited by the 512MB consoles.
I'd say it probably has to do more with the engine rather than hardware.
Most games don't load an entire level into memory at once, culling takes care of things 'out of view'.
But T3 and Dishonored both used the Unreal Engine. I haven't used it much myself so not sure how it works really, but seems like it just can't handle really large levels. I don't know, are there any Unreal Engine games that DO have really large levels?
Dromed is great at culling so larger levels can be used on low end hardware. It's just not good at a lot of detail in view at once. Unreal can push some pretty good detail in view.
Jason Moyer on 22/10/2012 at 16:41
Quote Posted by Schwaa2
But T3 and Dishonored both used the Unreal Engine. I haven't used it much myself so not sure how it works really, but seems like it just can't handle really large levels. I don't know, are there any Unreal Engine games that DO have really large levels?
First off, they don't use the same engine. Second, T3 and DXIW had limitations based on target hardware and in-house modifications to the version of UE they used. Third, yes, there are tons of UE games with bigger levels than T3/DXIW - you know, like the original goddamn Deus Ex, which was an Unreal Engined game.
DDL on 22/10/2012 at 16:58
Quote Posted by Avalon
The best solution would've been to scrap the current implementation of the power system and just give these powers to the player baseline, and then design the game around it.
Or keep the powers as they are but make them almost certainly necessary for certain bits (but only certain bits), so that if you don't have power X, you can still complete a level, but can't easily use route Y to do so. Like they did in Deus ex.
Adds replayability, too.
Lootleach on 22/10/2012 at 17:04
Yeah, the original Unreal Engine could handle really enormous levels. Anyone remember "NyLeve's Falls", "Bluff Eversmoking" and "The Spire" from the first Unreal? Wow.
Unreal Engine 2 gave us UT2004, which had some pretty big outdoor-maps with all those vehicles.
Batman: Arkham City (UE3) has the big open-world Gotham City exterior. And the areas in Borderlands are not small either.
Maybe it's simply too much work to fill a Thief 2-sized level (multiple mansions + streets) with the detail required in modern games. So they make the levels smaller.
Oh well, I really liked Dishonored for what it is: a good exploration-sneaking game. This talk of graphics is just nitpicking. I just like to see rich detail in a game and I wish we could have those HUGE maps of the Unreal / Thief 2 era again, someday. The bigger the area to explore, the better.
SubJeff on 22/10/2012 at 18:45
Quote Posted by Avalon
The best solution would've been to scrap the current implementation of the power system and just give these powers to the player baseline, and then design the game around it. If they really wanted to keep the unlocking thing, they could just let you unlock optional improvements to the abilities - preferably adding cooldowns that can then be reduced.
Oh, I totally agree with this. It would have made a much tighter and challenging game.
I still don't think you should compare it so closely to Thief though.
Chuck on 22/10/2012 at 22:24
The small levels (that don't seem that small at all, in my opinion) are completely a non-issue for me because of the lightning fast load times. All UE3 programmers should find out what Arkane did to make this happen. It made reloading so painless, I never hesistated to try something new, or take another shot at ghosting some gaurds.
And getting rid of the opening splash screens is a must. Hit the exe and bam! a couple of clicks and 3 seconds later you're back in Dunwall.
catbarf on 22/10/2012 at 23:47
Guards can follow you through loading areas, which I thought was a nice touch.
Pemptus on 23/10/2012 at 12:49
Wow. Got to the bit with Granny rags and Slackjaw near the end. There was a safe with a combination to find. Oh, cool, some information gathering and piecing things together, and actually thinking and shit, one would hope! NOPE, both clues needed to open it are RIGHT next to the safe, and it was a kindergarten-level puzzle. Christ.
Anyway, finished it, fully non-lethal, zero detection, all the collectables, all that jazz. Some missing loot, because fuck those tiny coins. Way too easy. Blink is completely overpowered and makes stealth a cakewalk. Peek around a corner, teleport behind a dude's back, strangle/avoid, rinse, repeat. The other powers felt like cheats, honestly. Dark vision 2.0 is absurd, and there's no reason not to use it once you get it. Timestop? Getoutahere. I had Possesion, but there were actually no interesting ways to use it, rat vents never seemed to lead anywhere special and unique, and possessing people was just another Get Out of Jail Free card.
Still, I had a bit of fun. It takes a reasonable amount of balls to make such a game these days, but I definitely would've appreciated some actual challenge. I wanted to do an insane bloodthirsty bastard playthrough, but I remembered all that times when I screwed up stealth-wise and went on a rampage before reloading my save - I usually ended up wiping everyone out within seconds, so it would be even easier.
