samIamsad on 10/9/2017 at 23:09
Hope he's fine either way. I too hope though that Raphael Colantonio will return one day too in one way or another. Similar to other guys, perhaps starting again from "smaller" projects. Sounds like he was burnt out a bit by the end of it. :(
If there's one thing that's can be pretty cheese in Dishonored, this included, it's the combat though. In areas where you can get overwhelmed it's fine. Otherwise, it works on a basic level I guess. Okay, that's not fair, the mechanics / tools itself are fine. However the AI... You probably know that Dust District dilemma. I literally waltzed straight forward into the thick of things, got the head on a pike I needed in like three minutes. A head that was carefully and tensionally built up in prior missions already -- poof, there's it. And all I did was using choke points to lure opponents into narco mines, dodging a few bullets, running straight into packs of enemies and placing a couple mines / explosives, and watching the health meter along that thing. And that was on max difficulty, with every setting cranked up to the max, and I'm no FPS guru whatsoever. Upgraded narco mines zip a load of enemies all itself (sure, you're not forced to uprade). The same thing doing it the stealth way would have taken like fifty times the time. However, it's infinitely more fun and rewarding in so many ways. Naturally going to reload to do it the "proper" way. It's not as if I had "wasted" time on this.
Reminds me of the Timsh estate mission in the D1 DLC. I literally sprinted through that level, just firing a few bullets. And the house was so easy to clear, like hiding under a staircase, placing mines and watching the guards run all in -- one of the few ways in which Dishonored can pose a challenge in combat is in areas where you are ridiculously outnumbered, you have run out of resources, plus a few guys with ranged weapon focus in on you. I don't know for whom this way of playing is balanced, or if it's supposed to be that way, but in a lot of areas it's pretty cheese imo. It oft doesn't feel right. It oft feels as if you're missing the point of the game (and indeed, to me, it is). It's not an "Arkane thing" though. Combat on Prey in particular early on on harder difficulties can be pretty though. And as was announced, there is places in this early on you better come back later -- I immensely enjoyed those early stages as I had to find creative ways around combat / or alternative solutions to get rid off foes as opposed to charging in head-first.
Jason Moyer on 11/9/2017 at 02:26
Quote Posted by samIamsad
And all I did was using choke points to lure opponents into narco mines, dodging a few bullets, running straight into packs of enemies and placing a couple mines / explosives, and watching the health meter along that thing.
I beat all of DH2 as Emily using only the sword/pistol and never crouching unless it was required to get through an opening. I cheated and restarted halfway through to get passive powers though (the ability to block projectiles is a life-saver against the witches).
samIamsad on 11/9/2017 at 13:45
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I beat all of DH2 as Emily using only the sword/pistol and never crouching unless it was required to get through an opening. I cheated and restarted halfway through to get passive powers though (the ability to block projectiles is a life-saver against the witches).
Definitely sounds viable, in particular as if you're up close, enemies take one shot and they're down. In the DLC that's how I approached the first part of the Timsh estate, there's like half a level before getting to the multi-stages building you're supposed to infiltrate in whatever means you deam viable (a bit like a throwback to Life Of The Party, purely structurally). I don't think that'd be fun for me to play the entire game that way. It just doesn't seem
that well balanced, whether you're meant to be a badass assassin or not. It's partly AI, as if you place explosives/mines at spots where you know they'll need to get through to follow you, they'll all pass through there and never react to their guys getting torn to pieces by shrapnel, etc. It's a bit like on Lemmings. In parts it's due to item placement and generally tools available. The explosive stuff is massively powerful, as are the mines, as they can easily dispatch multiple foes at once. Plus running into a pack of opponents and placing a mine straight into their feet is a viable "tactics". Stalker this is not. :cheeky: But then it isn't even Bioshock imo, though the tools and environment to use for killing sprees as such is a lot more interesting. Indeed, playing lethal and creative is fun. Like abusing that dumb waiter by making it not deliver chili cheese burgers upstairs, but something a tad more explosive.
To be fair, not getting detected has always been the more challenging approach, and Harvey argued as such prior to release. On that front, imo they've delivered. It still impacts the stealthy way in a sense too though. If you're caught on Thief, you're like OH FUCK. If you're caught on Alien:Isolation, it's already too late likely. ;) If the same happens on Dishonored, even going headfirst into the thick of things will likely see you coming out pretty fine. You're more likely to reload simply because you want to stay undetected. So the tension isn't quite the same. I've seen guys arguing stealth would be pointless in the Dishonored series. I wouldn't go that far. But it's still an interesting aspect. Speaking about AI, Alien Isolation's robots seemed to receive a lot of criticism. But whilst Creative Assembly aimed for a different experience with that game, they actually were able to properly encircle you, cut off escape paths, whereas Dishonored's combat AI is just closing the distances more or less.. which can be cheesed pretty much, just as an example. [If you factor in that those robots each took a whopping six head shots on harder difficulties to take down, that was some fantastic emergent moments of ingame tension right there].
Still, great great great game this. I'd argued before someplace that this feels like text adventure games of old, or the modern take on what they are trying to convey. Back in the 80s a good parser was the best you could do to create the illusion that anything was possible. Even though it was just an illusion, a decent parser reacted to everything (even the more juvenile stuff you typed in, being a kiddo :D ). It's the same here. Reading articles where the main designers argue they encourage the Arkanes to think in (Non-combat)
verbs, yes,
verbs, is no surprise to me. :)
icemann on 11/9/2017 at 14:58
The second last main mission was of particular fun playing as Corvo non lethal. Powers maxed for what I needed. All I'll say is that the roof of that place was filled with many "sleeping" guards and NPCs by the end of it. Knocked out the NPC's since they'd go alert mode if you got too close, so better to be safe than dead from guards being alerted.
The clock-work robots were easy to take out once you knew how. Though sometimes they'd go bonkers and kill a few guards, thus ruining my zero kills run, requiring a reload. I took exception with the final boss. She had it coming, and with that guard captain at the start of the game. He too deserved to go.
Playing with Stephen Russell's voice accompanying made the game feel very Thief-y. The closest we're likely to ever get to a proper new Thief game beyond the 3rd entry. Well I say proper, but throw in guns and robots and some advanced tech. Thief all the same though.
Jason Moyer on 11/9/2017 at 17:01
Quote Posted by icemann
and with that
guard captain at the start of the game. He too deserved to go.
His fate if you go non-lethal with him is so satisfying, though.
While I'm thinking of it, Death Of The Outsider is coming out friday.
Fafhrd on 11/9/2017 at 22:36
I heard it directly from his mouth when he was visiting the company I work at last year. His LinkedIn is super cagey, but it does say he's in the Greater Los Angeles Area, which is not where Valve is.
samIamsad on 14/9/2017 at 20:22
Seems the first reviews for Death Of The Outsider are starting to trickle in. I've just placed my pre-order after having just finished the main campaign once (Emily, low chaos). There's a lot of smaller reactivity chains that you don't notice until late, and even then only upon exploring a bit off the beaten path rather than follow that magic "go here do that marker" you may see them (which you put off anyway as it has always annoyed the heck out of you) :P. Neat stuff. Speaking about that magic marker, this game's goals can actually be completed without it. F'r instance, I narco-mined quite a few of opponents in a place packet with them, and at the end, almost the entire map was laid to "sleep". However, I'd almost forgotten about the main target. Looking at paintings of it and comparing its appearance to all the bodies around I was able to identify it pretty quickly. :) So much more rewarding.
There's a few interesting articles out there on that Crack In The Slab mission. No wonder it can bring even better hardware in some scenes to its knees... I mean games (Dishonored too) have stopped including proper "mirrors" ever since the scene complexity sky-rocketed from Unreal III era tech or thereabouts, and this is basically multiple places/planes rendered and represented to you at once. Whilst this "expansion" is officially touted as stand-alone, this is officially the second only ever "DLC" I've bought. The story DLC of the first one combined harkened back to the glory days of "proper" expansion packs. Even if this one won't be as lengthy, just a bit moar Dishonored 2 is going to be a pretty good thing to me. Plus Daud's cool.
What isn't cool is that pretty much any online shop spoils some of Dishonored 2's best kept story secrets only fully revealed towards the end of the campaign. Not sure how I'm going to approach it. The DLC of D1 I approached with that mind-set, what happens, happens (rather than reloading on occasion due to, DUH, spotted). I think that's ideally where such open designs should shine... if fuck happens, it's not game over, it demands second to second improvisation on your part. For the same reason I didn't reload on Prey when I got one of the game's main supporting characters killed also. I was being dumb, I've got to deal with it (the game acknowledged that right until the very end, also very rewarding). That's something I'd love to be explored more in the future. Go Arkane. :angel:
(
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-14-how-dishonored-2-hides-its-best-details-in-the-periphery)
(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_JKT2rHg50) heavy Crack In The Slab spoilers in both... I wasn't aware of that additional "plane" also!
Sulphur on 14/9/2017 at 20:39
I doubt you're gonna see many (if any) reviews for Death of the Outsider until next week. Beth's review policy these days is 'review it when it's out', instead of providing pre-release copies to the press.
Jason Moyer on 15/9/2017 at 02:28
Quote Posted by samIamsad
Speaking about that magic marker, this game's goals can actually be completed without it.
I've read that there was at least one objective in the first game that no one could do without the objective markers enabled, but I've done like 3 full playthroughs of the main game (and 2 through the Daud DLCs) and have never used them and don't recall having an issue.
One thing that was neat about having a voiced protagonist in DH2 was the way your personality changed depending on how you were playing, particularly the little quips you say when examining objects in the world. I thought that was a nice touch.