Renault on 15/11/2016 at 22:11

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(http://kotaku.com/dishonored-2-the-kotaku-review-1789003972) Kotaku's review said they completed the game in only 8 hours - sounds kinda short to me. I'm guessing that's skipping a lot of side quests/optional stuff.

Nameless Voice on 15/11/2016 at 23:34

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I have 57 hours clocked for the original game + DLC.

froghawk on 16/11/2016 at 00:04

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Hmm they said they made an effort to make this one longer with bigger missions.... guess it didnt pan out

Malf on 16/11/2016 at 08:38

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Bollocks is it short.
I'm still not done with my first play-through and I'm at 44 hours according to Steam. But then, I'm doing Flesh and Steel for my first time through, so I really have to explore to find everything. And surprisingly, I've only come across a couple of places throughout the game that can't be reached without Blink or whatever Emily's equivalent is.
I'm also trying to Ghost it as well as be non-lethal, but I've failed that for one level. I didn't realise I could check my stats for the current until late on in the game. So I got spotted twice and two people died (although I didn't see them) in one of the levels.

Some tips for those looking to do the same:

* You don't count as "Spotted" unless the enemy's lightning bolt awareness indicator reaches full red. Full white is fine and just sets them patrolling, but doesn't affect your stealth rating. I wish I'd realised this sooner, as it opens up a lot more opportunities for distraction. Regular crossbow bolts in particular become very useful for redirecting the enemy's attention and drawing them away from an area you want to get to.


* At the highest difficulty level (yeah, call me a sucker for punishment), enemies spot you very quickly, even when leaning. And civilians in restricted areas spot you almost immediately. However, their behaviour is slightly different. You don't get the white lightning bolt with them, just a "Caution" mode where spotting you in their field of vision immediately interrupts whatever they were doing and makes them bark about how you're not supposed to be there. When they do this, you've got a couple of seconds to get out of sight, otherwise they go to an immediate red lightning bolt, which counts as you having been spotted, and they'll run for help, alerting everyone else in the area.


* Line of sight appears to be controlled by where NPC's are looking, not by their model orientation, so be very careful when approaching from the sides.


* If hounds and other "non-sentient" beings spot you, that counts as spotted, apart from Blood Flies. However, you can kill these without it affecting your non-lethal stats. Again, kinda wish I'd realised that earlier.


Overall, I'd say the stealth in Dishonored 2 is almost on a par with that in MGS V, and certainly better than that of DXMD.
I think MGS V wins out because NPC behaviour is slightly better, and it doesn't punish you as harshly for a body being discovered.
That needs a little explaining; in MGS V, the reason you don't want bodies being discovered is that they get woken up and add to the amount of enemies searching for you. Also, you're better off fultoning them out in order to increase the size of your army. This is an elegant gameplay mechanic that promotes a stealthy and non-lethal approach. However, beyond that, it doesn't affect your stats as drastically as Dishonored 2. Sure, you may not get the "Perfect Stealth" award, but you may still get an "S" rank. And when it comes to achievements, ranks count, but "Perfect Stealthing" the game doesn't. In Dishonored 2, you immediately lose the Ghost rank if a body is found, and because the main stealth achievements are tied to more specific actions rather than MGS V's more general ranks, this results in frequent quick saves and reloads.

I'm not sure about this statement, but I also suspect that if you fail "Ghost" and "Non-lethal" on one level, that's the entire play-through broken. At least, that's the way it was in Dishonored. You couldn't use the level select that opened up after completing the game to go back and perfect that one level you may have failed in order to get the achievement. Nope, you had to do an entire play-through again.
I'll happily stand corrected if this has been relaxed in Dishonored 2.

Malf on 16/11/2016 at 11:27

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To be honest, I cut the game a lot of slack when it comes to performance, as I'm aware my CPU's old, and my graphics card's a GTX970.
But I realised long ago that one of the worst things you can do with games is turn on a frame rate counter. I used to run with one all the time, but found they impacted my enjoyment of games too much. I was concentrating more on performance than the games themselves.

The game actually runs pretty well on my machine at 2560x1440, but does noticeably slow down in open areas, which I'm putting down to the game being based on id tech, which is more focussed on classic corridor shooters. Yes, new Doom runs incredibly well on my machine, but one: the levels are pretty enclosed in that; and two: Arkane's Void engine is based on id tech 5, the same thing that powered Rage and so can't be compared to the latest id tech.

Is there any possibility of Arkane bringing in the programming bods at id to consult on a performance patch Digi? I would hope that one of the advantages of being under the Bethesda / Zenimax umbrella would be sharing knowledge between fellow studios also owned by them.

One thing I do get that annoys the piss out of me is flashing white lights in inappropriate places; it seems the shaders can be a little overzealous at times, although that may be down to the settings I'm playing at. They're VERY noticeable when using the Heart, as you get constant flashes off of the glass window.