faetal on 11/11/2016 at 00:30
DH would make more sense surely?
Jason Moyer on 11/11/2016 at 06:22
Quote Posted by Renzatic
A lot of people complained about the same thing you just did above, that MD didn't look all that much better than HR, but only ran half as well. But when you actually go back and play HR, you're suddenly smacked by the HUGE jump in quality between the two.
I thought the same thing when Faetal was posting screens from his first HR playthrough recently and complaining about how bare the environments were. My memory of DXHR was that everything was cluttered, but in reality the minor details were very sparse except for certain areas. DXMD has that detail in spades.
Malf on 11/11/2016 at 09:24
Okay, some good stuff so far, although I do notice frame-dips here and there. However, having a G-Sync monitor helps smooth the rough. I'm able to play comfortably at 1440P, despite Bethesda claiming you need a 1070/1080 in order to play comfortably at that resolution (see (
https://www.bluesnews.com/s/176217/dishonored-2-tech-tips) here for their latest tech tips in response to complaints of poor performance).
The performance issues however do make me wonder if they'll bring the id team in for some optimisation, in particular Vulkan implementation. Yes, I know they say that there's roughly only 20% of the id tech engine left in their Void engine iteration, but still, if you have the guys at id on-hand and under the same corporate umbrella, might as well use them. Even sans-Carmack, they've proven they know their shit with just how incredibly well new Doom performs.
Game wise, I left it last night after completing the Dunwall introduction, saving at the point where I'm just about to get on to the skiff to Karnaca. The old atmosphere is there, and the game moves almost identically to the original game, even down to picking up items being strangely lacking in feedback. Animations have that weird, stilted look to them that the first game had; not necessarily
bad, just distinct. They've re-used a lot of the music assets from the first game (well, in the intro level at least), but there's no complaint from me there. It helps re-establish my feeling of presence in their world.
I have problems with a couple of things that I had a problem with in the original game. One is, as mentioned previously, how the presence of achievements affects my play-style. I'm aware that this is a personal thing and that some people will be able to ignore achievements, but I find myself constantly saving and reloading when things go wrong so as not to ruin progress towards one achievement or another.
And this is why I hate achievements; in games like this, they feel like they constrain the game. The developers have implemented all of these wonderful systems that only really kick in when the player is forced to improvise when things go wrong. But at the same time, achievements punish the player for continuing to play when things go wrong. They break the very core of the game.
Yes, the argument can be made that I should just ignore the achievements, but that's harder than it sounds.
The other thing that annoys me that's a hangover from the first game?
Look, I know some people like lore being conveyed via books, but the amount of time I've spent stopping and reading so far has been grating. This game is one that's first and foremost about
movement, yet I feel like I'm stopping every couple of minutes or less to read something. And a lot of the time, it's something I've already read. But it's very hard to know if that's the case before you've opened the document.
Still, whinges aside, it's sucking me right back in to the world Arkane have created, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. It's particularly nice that there's now more non-lethal options, including a choke immediately after a successful counter and a non-lethal aerial takedown that's still rather wince-inducing due to you slamming heads against pavement. I've gone with Emily for my first play-through, saving Corvo for later. I've also decided to go with no powers this time through, and so far haven't felt overly constrained, although I suspect no being able to blink around the place is going to lengthen the time it takes to complete. But I've not really got a problem with that when being in the world is so interesting.
froghawk on 11/11/2016 at 16:43
Quote Posted by Yakoob
That's interesting but hmm... for some reason it didn't impress me? Not that the tech isn't great but it's not quite the some "WOW" or "this is so much more immersive" I expected. Granted, a lot of audio is very subconscious, but it did make me wonder if this tech would really make much of a difference.
Perhaps it was just utter lack of context - it's just empty halls with sound boxes. Perhaps if I was actually fighting some enemies, sneaking around avoiding monsters, or listening for enemy patrols, it would register more significantly?
I think a lot of it was just shitty sounds. Like the waterfall propagation sounded better once they turned it on, but the actual waterfall sounded like hiss from a laptop speaker.
Renzatic on 11/11/2016 at 16:52
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I thought the same thing when Faetal was posting screens from his first HR playthrough recently and complaining about how bare the environments were. My memory of DXHR was that everything was cluttered, but in reality the minor details were very sparse except for certain areas. DXMD has that detail in spades.
Yup. That's pretty much it. Though it's not just the clutter and incidental details that make MD a better looking game than HR. Everything just looks all around better in general. From the textures, to the lighting, to the characters, to everything. You put the two games side by side, and HR just looks flat and lifeless in contrast.
Aja on 11/11/2016 at 17:22
I just played through Dishonored the first and I can say that Renz' video shows a dramatic visual improvement. The architecture and design looks the same, DH1 has a very flat, cartoony look, and what I see in that video looks far more realistic. Which makes me think I might just hold off on the game for now, and maybe look at getting a new PC in the new year.
Just as an aside, if I were to buy an RX480 and put it in my system as is (i5 760), would that be a complete waste of time, or do you think I'd get decent improvement over my 7870?
Sulphur on 11/11/2016 at 18:23
You'd definitely get an improvement in older games which aren't as CPU heavy, so everything from the PS3/X360 generation would mostly run at a crisp 60 FPS (except Crysis 3). Expect unevenness in new-ish games like Assassin's Creed: Syndicate*, where I could max it out on my 970 and a core i5 750 (OC'd to 3.6 GHz) but the frame rate would dip a bit to 56 or so every other second. With the new CPU, it's an even 59.9 in comparison.
*AC:S is less demanding than AC: Unity in terms of CPU utilisation, so AC:U will perform a fair bit worse on the same setup.
Neb on 11/11/2016 at 18:47
I found an example video of how the mouse sensitivity is tied to frame-rate. It makes the variability in FPS completely unbearable for me.
(
https://vid.me/9ZJe)
No idea why he didn't put it up on Youtube.
Renzatic on 11/11/2016 at 23:42
Speaking of which, I just checked out my video on Youtube.
WHO VOTED ME DOWN! WHICH ONE OF YOU DID IT? :mad:
PigLick on 12/11/2016 at 01:49
Aja you will definitely see an improvement, but if its enough to make DH2 nicely playable is another question. My situation is a good example, when my 7870 died and I had to use the older 6950 (which according to benchmarks is pretty much just as powerful), there was a noticeable drop in game performance.
