[Ukjent]

I did if for a while when I was in the army, but then we started playing total war and ran out of sparetime.

[Aptorian]

Early reviews are looking favorable which makes me pleased. A livestream playing through a copy that broke the press embargo/street date was rumored to be very negative but I never watched it.

Giant Bomb gave it 4 out of 5 stars, mainly criticizing the story and repetitive dialogue:

http://www.giantbomb...-35850/reviews/

Rock Paper Shotgun really, really likes it:

http://www.rockpaper...ink-dishonored/

PC Gamer thinks it's an excellent PC port and gave it a 92 out of 100 and an editors choice award:

http://www.pcgamer.c...honored-review/

From what I've gathered looking around the main complaints revolve around constrictions in the gameworld and story when you try to go outside the plot or don't play within the boundaries they expect you to stay within, a pisspoor ending and repetitive elements. The gameplay and world building is how ever stellar which sounds great.

It really annoys me that I have to wait 4 days longer than the US to get these games.

[Slow Ben]

Looks awesome.

However, due to insufficient funds, this goes into the "wait 6 months till its half price" list.

Or, if its as disappointing as Rage, "wait 6 months till its $9.99" list.

[Mentalist]

Slow Ben, on 08 October 2012 - 04:49 PM, said:

Looks awesome.

However, due to insufficient funds, this goes into the "wait 6 months till its half price" list.

Or, if its as disappointing as Rage, "wait 6 months till its $9.99" list.

I think that will depend on what you are looking for.

it's not an FPS, though it could be played like one (crossbow is your sniper rifle, pistol is your shotgun). The point of the game, however, is that it's a lot like hitman--each mission is a puzzle, with multiple solutions, and no "set" way of doing things.

Also, the story is a lot like Half Life 2--it's mostly in the setting, and if you go through the game from point A to point B, you miss it.

I want this so much... but starting later today i'll be in Uni till December, confined to laptop gaming.
Thus, XCOM was preordered, this will wait till the Steam Xmass sale.

[Aptorian]

Yeah, I'm sort of iffy because of the ending. I already pre-purchased it, so I will play it, but story telling really is important to me. I absolutely loved RAGE to bits but the shitty story and awful ending completely soured the game for me and I haven't even looked at it since. From what I understand Dishonored is not that bad, the ending is apparently just disappointing... or something... I'm staying away from spoilers, but again, to reiterate, how can you spend hundreds of millions on a videogame and not pay some starving author 10,000 dollars to string together a proper narrative for you? How does the storyline not come up at some briefing where everybody had to read the manuscript and somebody voices an objection? ... videogames.

[Mentalist]

Aptorius, on 08 October 2012 - 06:15 PM, said:

Yeah, I'm sort of iffy because of the ending. I already pre-purchased it, so I will play it, but story telling really is important to me. I absolutely loved RAGE to bits but the shitty story and awful ending completely soured the game for me and I haven't even looked at it since. From what I understand Dishonored is not that bad, the ending is apparently just disappointing... or something... I'm staying away from spoilers, but again, to reiterate, how can you spend hundreds of millions on a videogame and not pay some starving author 10,000 dollars to string together a proper narrative for you? How does the storyline not come up at some briefing where everybody had to read the manuscript and somebody voices an objection? ... videogames.

Well, it's a revenge story, essentially. It can really only ever have 2 outcomes:

1) The protagonist gets his revenge and a) lives happily ever after b ) dies to slay his rival c)Finds himself empty inside as his vengeance consumed his humanity

or:

2) The protagonist gets his revenge, only to realise that: a) he was betrayed b ) he was misguided c) He helped create a greater evil.

I'm not too fussed about it. RPS will do a verdict in a few days, but so far their review (which i'd trust the most) described the ending as "least consistently impressive part of the game". Which isn't the end of the world in my book, as a ton of my favourite games did not have a satisfying ending (, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, System Shock 2, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, all of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games (bar the original), Deus Ex: IW+HR. with all of these, it's the exploration-driven gameplay that's amazing, not some final confrontation. (Original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a notable exception to the rule, because the entirety of the final area (including the secret section) is a major "oh shit!" race against the radiation clock, while trying to survive and figure out just what the hell you are looking for, and the frenetic pacing makes it work deliciously well)

EDIT: and there's already an article on RPS about length: http://www.rockpaper...honored-length/

short form: 6 hours if you play a shooter and follow the objectives marker unflinchingly. This will amount to seeing less than a quarter of the game's content.

Quote

f you want to rush around with a gun, shooting anything that moves, don’t buy Dishonored. It has put those things in there for you, and it offers slick, brutal, varied permutations on how to use them, but they are not its all. If you’re looking for 10+ hours of shooting men, or even stabbing men, you are well-served already and forever by games that do that, do it well, and do it for a long time. You and those like you are the victor of the great games race, and you have the spoils, many times over.

The devs wanted to give the player total and utter freedom in the locations they've made. thus, the world isn't vast but it is DEEP, all about exploration to get your money's worth.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 08 October 2012 - 07:02 PM

[POOPOO MCBUMFACE]

Aptorius, on 08 October 2012 - 06:15 PM, said:

Yeah, I'm sort of iffy because of the ending. I already pre-purchased it, so I will play it, but story telling really is important to me. I absolutely loved RAGE to bits but the shitty story and awful ending completely soured the game for me and I haven't even looked at it since. From what I understand Dishonored is not that bad, the ending is apparently just disappointing... or something... I'm staying away from spoilers, but again, to reiterate, how can you spend hundreds of millions on a videogame and not pay some starving author 10,000 dollars to string together a proper narrative for you? How does the storyline not come up at some briefing where everybody had to read the manuscript and somebody voices an objection? ... videogames.

It's a matter of budgeting. Studies have repeatedly shown that less than a quarter of players will bother to finish any given game; not because they dislike it, but they just... don't finish games. Making a good, memorable ending is an important point in making a movie, because pretty much everyone's going to see it and it's going to stick with them when they leave. In games, it's just a low, low priority, because it's simply not really worth it.

Bad endings/final bosses/whatever are a huge negative to me, so this makes me sad

[Silencer]

I don't think budgets are quite allocated that specifically. And the people responsible for the story are not going to be happy to just throw out a crap ending all the time, either. The simple fact of the matter is that endings are HARD to do right. Giving payoff is more difficult than setting up a good story, and having a proper resolution is not always the best thing, either. It's especially hard in games where the character can influence events throughout; you then not only have to work out the impact these changes have on the outcome of the story (and possibly allow for interesting combinations) but you essentially have to write multiple 'good' endings - not necessarily good for the player, but internally consistent, emotionally satisfying (in some form, be it positive or negative) and not rushed. Doing just one or two endings that fit those criteria is hard enough, as evinced by many, many poor or clichéd or typical/cookie-cutter endings throughout all of entertainment - doing an 'original' ending is even harder - and all this then needs to take into mind that it has to happen within a game engine on a console while being performed by voice actors, animated, and rendered.

Note I include "sticking within the game mechanics" and such within 'internally consistent'. That's probably one of the biggest let-downs in most endgame content, honestly.

While I agree that there is probably in some or even many cases pressure from above to get things wrapped up, and that prioritization likely would shaft a good ending before much of the early game content (which will likely have been worked on LONGER than the end-game stuff anyway, due to likely being drafted earlier, etc) it's more to do with that very fact that earlier content will have been in development longer rather than any outright edict. Moreover, if studios are going to be so short-sighted as to assume "people won't play this far, let's not do a good job on it to save money", then they're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If all games have rushed/bad endings, people aren't going to bother playing them, eventually. Then what? Devs just stop working at the middle of a game? Yeah, right. End of the day, polish will suffer long before base content, even without people actually being told to screw the ending, 'cuz nobody plays those anyway.

Heck, if game developers still believe that endings are not important after the ME3 fiasco, they're living in a very strange world indeed. Developer confidence has more to do with future sales than most anything else, after all.

[Aptorian]

Been playing this all evening. It's fucking great. Feels more like bioshock with magic powers than Deus Ex but I really like it. I'm probably playing the game all wrong and as such I still haven't finished the first mission. I'm stealthing around, sneaking behind people and stealing everything in site and then afterwards I kill everybody and everything. Which is sort of like stealing your pie and killing it at the same time. I am supposed to either pick a stealth approach or all out mayhem but I get confused. I want to play the game like it is intended, being all sneaky, but it's so much easier just destroying everyone.

I don't think I'll bother trying to get the low chaos ending which I assume will mean this game ends in blood and tears and the rats swarming over the city and eating everybody. Which seems fitting really.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 12 October 2012 - 06:24 PM

[Traveller]

I managed to play a bit earlier before I had to go to work. Not got too far yet, but so far it reminds me of an updated, assassin version of Thief 3.

I started off being stealthy, but the kill-everybody route is so much fun that a bleak ending doesn't seem so bad.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Just finished. I did mostly sneaky but then

Spoiler

after Corvo gets betrayed

I just went on a killing spree for the last couple of missions (still ended up with the low chaos ending, though).

I thought that was an incredibly entertaining game—I don't think I'll start a new play-through just yet but I will be repeating the missions just to find out the different ways of doing them.

[Traveller]

I just liked finding out at the end of the first level that there is a 'ghost' / unseen achievement. Made me want to go right back to do it again.

Loving it so far, the level design and missions still really remind me of Thief, but with a ton of new tools and skills at your disposal. It's dead satisfying when you find the best way to complete a mission without being caught or even noticed.

[Aptorian]

I just finished the game. I will with hold my final verdict of the game until I've had time to think some more on it, but right now I think I am siding with one journalists take on the game. Dishonored couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a stealth game or an action game and so it never really excelled at any of those two categories and ends up a spectacular mess. A fun mess, but frustrating none the less. Oh and the story was awful and impressive in its utter lack of ambition.

Spoiler

The game wants you to play with stealth in mind and scolds you for killing things, yet your non-lethal abilities are few and the lethal abilities are plenty. There's something very unbalanced about the way the gameplay evolved to me. All the way through the game I was so conflicted. I tried to be as stealthy as possible but I couldn't help killing everyone I saw. It felt frustrating finishing each mission with no alarms, no discoveries, no bodies found, all the side objectives completed, alternative assassination solution and the game still makes you feel like you did bad because you got a high chaos ranking.

I would have preferred if there was more than the binary approach to the games story. I would have like several different "philosophies" with the high and low chaos rankings being just two of several gameplay styles. Maybe with the Outsider being an arbitrator of the many outcomes of the future based on your actions.

Speaking of the Outsider, seems as though the Outsider was only in the game as an excuse to give Corvo magic abilities. Why even bother, why not just say that one of the inventor guys invented Super Whale Serum that gives you Assassin Whale Powers? I came to resent every encounter with the Outsider because it was so horribly random and pointless. A mysterious god like figure in a leather jacket, sporting a bad hair cut that never does anything and doesn't move the plot forward? How do you get a job as a writer for videogames? Do you blackmail somebody? Does your dad in the industry get you the job when you aren't even able to hold down a job at 7/11? *sigh*

[drinksinbars]

i didnt think it was unbalanced, stealth was remarkably easy and i had low chaos in every mission without really trying. the use of blink 2 agility 2 and the one where enemies turn to ash when stealth killed made it very easy was my biggest complaint. there were some ai issues, and the fact you dont cast shadows pissed me off for some reason, but overall the game made me want a mod to play as waylander, cause that was as close as it felt to being in a futuristic waylander novel in a game since playing thief all those years ago.

[Aptorian]

Wait. You had a low chaos level even though you killed people? I mean, maybe it was because I killed absolutely everything, but I made sure to never be seen, raise any alarms or leave bodies out in the open. Strange.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Chaos is basically how many people you kill. If you kill everyone in sight, you'll get high chaos but if you only kill a handful of people, you're chaos will be low.

On my first play through I only killed my marks and the odd guard that spotted me and wanted a fight. And guards who were ganging up on innocent people. And weepers. I killed the weepers. Anyway, I generally got a low chaos rating for those missions.

For the last two or three missions, though, I killed all the assassins I could (except daud -- I thought sparing him was a better achievement, then regretted it when the outsider pointed out that I had an odd sense of justice). I don't know what my rating was for individual missions but I still played the low chaos ending.

The only thing that I don't like about the game is that they badly slacked on the way you replay missions. I didn't want to load a previous save, I wanted to replay missions with my endgame-corvo and the fact that they don't let you is shit.

[POOPOO MCBUMFACE]

[Traveller]

I'm not enjoying this as much as I thought I would.

I like the setting, it kind of reminds me of something out of a China Meiville novel, but the people look crappy, the scenery is all flat and textureless, and zipping about taking people out with one button press is getting a tad repetitive, and is way too easy.

I agree that is is a weird mix. I liked 'Thief 3' because you really needed the stealth - if you got caught, you usually had to run or you were dead. Also the Garrett voice-over, the option of a third-person view and hand-wriiten notes and mission objectives gave it way more character and depth - Corvo is mute and faceless, and lacks any presence. Also, having the option to sneak, but then being offered a load of offensive weapons and skills at the same time takes away any real challenge... I feel like I'm playing a game with a cheat mode on, which makes it less fun.

When I rescued Emily, I was just working out how to get her out and back to the boat, and... oh. you don't even have to, she did it herself. So I plodded (sorry, blinked) back there on my own, encountering nothing on the way.

I'll keep with it, but there's some Dark Souls dlc out now which will be very hard to resist if this doesn't get better soon.

[Aptorian]

One of my big problems with the game is the lack of challenging opponents. Even the Tall boys are killed ridiculously easy. Just blink up and stab them. I would have liked it more if there were "machine gun" type baddies that would spray you to death in seconds, armored brutes that couldn't just be shot from a distance but had to be whittled down, mages that could throw elements at you, more challenging "magical people". There's not much variation in your opponents or their weaknesses which means that you don't need to use any strategy or change your approach.

[Traveller]

Yeah, you never walk into a room and get taken out so quick you just get a chance to say wtf was that?

I thought the light barrier was supposed to be a challenge, but no, you just.. take out the battery on the wall? Right next to it.

With dark sight, which shows every hidden item, and the heart, which shows everything else, gifted to you at the start of the game, it doesn't even give you the incentive to explore.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 27 October 2012 - 08:23 AM