Arkane Dishonored 2 - Emily and Corvo's Serkonan Vacation

[Belegarsson]

Freaking love A Crack in The Slab but the timepiece device nomnomnomnomnomnom my framerate like freaking Pac-Man makes it actually a pain in the ass to play

 

[HoboForEternity]

Freaking love A Crack in The Slab but the timepiece device nomnomnomnomnomnom my framerate like freaking Pac-Man makes it actually a pain in the ass to play

oh yes, aside from jindosh lab, the game actually run at full 60 FpS to me, till i met that damn time piece. Dont know why it suck performance so much. I guess, the gpu is basically rendering 2 different spaces at the same time, also the cpu processing both the past and present NPC and script and stuff?

 

[Paul_cz]

Level design in Dishonored 2 is better than anything in Deus Ex or System Shock 2. Time to face the music.

 

[Falksi]

I hated Dishonoured 1. Is 2 different/improved enough to be worth a purchase?

 

[Zombra]

I hated Dishonoured 1. Is 2 different/improved enough to be worth a purchase?

If you hated the first one, this won't change your mind. It's the same game, with lots of cool new stuff, but the same game.

 

[DeepOcean]

I hated Dishonoured 1. Is 2 different/improved enough to be worth a purchase?

It is the first game with bigger maps and some new powers, if you hated Dishonored 1, you wont change your opinion.

 

[1451]

I attacked Paolo when he tried to extort money from a shopkeeper. Afterwards I killed and delivered the religious guy and he didn't attack me on sight. I discovered however, in his appartment a letter saying that he was attacked by me. Nice consequence system, arkane.

 

[Vibalist]

As a bonus, the guy who voices the penultimate villain plays Kingpin in the Netflix Daredevil, he's a joy to listen to.

I think this game suffers from the same issue as the first one, in that they have all these A-list actors voicing the characters, but you don't even notice because most of them are too bland. I didn't even realize this game had Rosario Dawson, Pedro Pascal, Sam Rockwell and Vincent D'Onofrio in it before I looked it up on IMDB. I mean, shit, these are good actors, and there's just nothing about the writing or direction that brings out any of their talent.

The only noticable voice has been that of Michael Madsen in Knife of Dunwall, because it's so recognizable. For the rest of these characters they might as well have used the untalented bunch that do the voices in every Bethesda game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm back to the thread, haven't read any reviews of the game. Let's see if I was right about any of these, who can confirm?

The fact that they acknowledge playing without powers (including blink) as a valid style, and give you a lore-justified option to turn them off completely, gives me hope for the sequel.

- Regarding the possibility to play Thief-style, I didn't see or hear anything to convince me that "flesh and iron" is more than a special mode you can enable, as in the mission design being equally well-adapted to this playstyle as it is to a violent playstyle.

When I heard "we added more verticality" in the interview, all this translated to for me was "we added more pipes".

I'm somewhat skeptical of Dishonored 2 providing stealth gameplay options that will be more than an afterthought. No bad feelings. but that's the way it seems to me.

Incloosive boatwoman confirmed. I was sort of anticipating this. Expect more out-of-place bullshit sprinkled through the narrative.

1. Does crouching still equal "100% silent mode"? Is it still impossible to cause enough noise to alert a guard even if you're moving right behind his back, on the loudest surface, as long as you are crouched?
2. Can the player use shadows to hide in, as opposed to being able to hide only behind obstacles?
3. Are the speeds of crouched and non-crouched movement unchanged from Dishonored? (judging from gameplay videos, yes)

 

[udm]

1. It is very valid. Even without powers, there are multiple ways to ghost.
2. See above.
3. More pipes and roofs are more traverse-able. Also, there seems to be more air control here. I recently went back to DH1: The Brigmore Witches and found the air control to be a lot less tight.
4. She's a recurring character. 'nuff said to avoild spoilers.
5.1. Yes. Which I didn't like. What's worse is that the sound design seems inconsistent. It seems louder when I'm 'stealthing' than when I'm jogging, for instance. This is my biggest complaint.
5.2. You could do that in Dishonored 1 already. Shadows only matter at a distance; closer up, enemies take longer to recognise you when you're in shadows. I would say that this would have been reasonable, were it not for the fact that you can barely see enemies when they're in the shadows themselves. This is my second biggest complaint.
5.3. Yup.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Then this continues to be a far inferior stealth game to Thief or even Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. I'll pass.

 

[Seaking4]

Well the sale convinced me to pull the trigger and buy this. I thought it was worth it. It really was just the first game with different missions (just with much worse performance). It's still easy even on the hardest difficulty but it did feel a tad harder than the first game. I'd say Jindosh's mansion and Stilton's mansion were the highlights. Especially the latter.

My one big complaint is that it was kind of boring how similar certain parts of the game were to the DLC from the first one. The final mission in particular is nearly identical to the final mission from the Brigmore Witches.

Now I'm just debating whether or not I should pick up the DLC.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I played through the first Dishonored and DLC - it was a very weak game from a stealth standpoint, but overall it had good atmosphere and the art direction was top notch. The world was interesting too, so I finished the game, something I don't do too often these days.

I started playing Dishonored 2 but the initial setup with Delilah coming back is so insultingly bad that it was actually hard to keep playing. The game is unreasonably demanding from a technical standpoint (it looks better than 1 but not by much honestly - a testament to how incredible the first game's art direction was and how effectively it covered up technical limitations) but I've read from good people here that it has cool levels later on.

I'm not expecting level design on the level of Bonehoard or The Sword, but it would be nice to actually see a game with well constructed levels for a change.

 

[Multidirectional]

Then this continues to be a far inferior stealth game to Thief or even Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. I'll pass.

Yeah it's shocking how a Deus Ex-like isn't as good at stealth as pure stealth games. You were seriously even entertaining the possibility of Dishonored 2 having stealth mechanics in the same vein as Thief or SC Chaos Theory?

 

[Gerrard]

I finally got around to playing the first game and holy fuck the graphics aged like shit.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think the art design carries Dishonored well beyond the technical limitations of its engine. I don't think it has aged (at least visually) badly at all.

 

[Gerrard]

It uses UE3, there are no "technical limitations of the engine", only of the developers.
It doesn't even have fucking ambient occlusion (or pretty much any graphic options to speak of for that matter) which even Boredomlands had 3 years earlier. That in combination with the color palette makes everything look flat. Also shadow resolution is a joke.

Oh yeah, and I forgot the part where the wheels on the bookcase hiding a secret room don't fucking move while it's turning

Great Deceiver What are you disagreeing with, exactly? Every thing I said here is a fact.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I disagree with the statement that there are no technical limitations to UE 3 - every engine has its own particular set of limitations.

I happen to like the color palette and don't think the game looks flat - in fact I appreciate the more traditional shading and texturing techniques applied in Dishonored compared to other normal-mapped shit you usually see in other games that run on the same engine. So, artistically, I also disagree with you.

Why are you getting triggered by a rating on an internet forum?

 

[Don Peste]

So, is it KKK that the first Dishonored and its DLCs were better in every way than this second installment, or is it too son?
Maybe because the first one had the element of surprise, but Dishonored 2 felt just like a poor sequel. Boring characters, boring story... Well, the Crown Killer was interesting, but that ended quick.
Were The Clockwork Mansion or A Crack in the Slab actually that great? Nothing really innovating about them... Gemini: Heroes Reborn is like Stilton's mansion made into a full game (a 3-hour long game, but...). Even this 2005 AGS game plays similar . I mean, those were two interesting levels, but no so much.

How would you sell Dishonored 2 to someone who liked Dishonored? It has more of everything? But does it? You get to play with Ninja Princess Peach?

 

[Vibalist]

The story in the first Dishonored was boring too, so this isn't so much a downgrade as a continuation of the same thing. Everything else is an improvement, poor optimization notwithstanding.

Clockwork Mansion and Crack In The Slab are overrated levels, but only because they're as good and not better than the rest of the levels, which are very, very well designed.

I would sell Dishonored 2 by saying exactly what you're saying. It has more of the same, only it's bigger and has even more options in terms of character builds and abilities. It's the Arkham City of the franchise.

 

[1451]

Dishonored 2 looks better not only because it's newer, but thanks to the change of the graphics engine. Unreal engine games look horribly samey.

 

[DeepOcean]

Dishonored 2 is as good if not better than Dishonored 1 in terms of level design, its biggest flaw is not innovating and expanding enough on the gameplay to justify it being labelled as a sequel, many people felt it more like an expansion for Dishonored 1 than a proper sequel. Corvo's powers are the same they were and Emily's powers just accomplish the very same things Corvo powers achieved but on different ways, there aren't enough changes to the formula here. This lack of innovation on the gameplay that could be seen on the trailers as you pretty much did the same stuff you did on the previous game but slightly better and the shitty marketing from Bethesda affected sales.

I wished they expanded the gameplay, like you possessing a captain and have him giving orders to soldiers or your possessing a fly and using it to infect a body then you could control a swarm of flies to distract enemies to other positions, maybe you could possess a fly guardian and travelled with him through the map killing civilians and infecting their bodies until you had a big fly swarm to take the guards. Maybe you could summon, as Emily, the same dogs Delilah summons.Maybe that device where you could manipulate time, you could use it on the entire game instead of just one level.

I was worried after watching the trailers before launching that the game wouldn't expand the gameplay as the same marketing points used were the same marketing points used for Dishonored 1, I was uninterested to say the least, I had my fill with Dishonored 1 and wasn't interested into doing the very same things, many people thought that way. It is similar to the situation of Thief 1 and Thief 2, both are great games but very similar. I would argue that even there, Thief made better use of its setting than Dishonored 2 did, even if Thief 2 was almost the same thing as Thief 1, the atmosphere, Garret charisma and the whole pagans vs crazy mechanists was intereting enough.

First time I tried to play Dishonored 2 I was kinda disgusted by the intro too and had an awful first impression, it was very amateurish, they use a character that only the people that played the DLC would have any idea who she was as a villain and worse, the coup was so laughable, you don't go on the streets of the capital city with murderbots and just walk all the way to the throne room. I know they try to justify that with the chief of the guard being a traitor but for fucks sake, nobody did a background check on the guy? Where are the supporters of Emily? How can you be Empress for years and the only people that you count as allies are your father and some secretary? Does Arkane know how a monarchy work? Someone can't just appear out of nowhere, get rid of the Empress and expect that everyone would accept it. Things descended on civil war for less serious dynastic challenges on history.

The story takes a even deeper dive later with the Crownkiller thing, when I discover who he was, I couldn't stop laughing with the amount of contrivances the story was using.

I know this was to justify why you as Emily have to go to Sarkonos as that is an absolute illogical thing to do but they could have changed some small things. The coup should be orchestrated by the elite on Dunwall and the Duke could have been a prominent figure on the coup instead of that bizarre crownkiller thing. Delilah should present herself to you right away as your aunt and as someone that wants to help you, she knows things that can help you and is trying to slowly seduce you trying to exploit the fact that your mother died and she was your aunt. This would allow the writers to properly introduce her and have someone that is actually important for Emily instead of unknown black lady that was on the right time and on the right place that somehow bothers with the whole coup thing for some reason and a Sokolov that gone from guy doing immoral research on live people to suddenly care that much about Emily to the point of risking himself.

Delilah would tell you who to kill to erode the Duke base of support on Serkonos and help you and eventually attract him to Serkonos for killing him. The city should be a hub with secondary missions and the main missions on their own maps that you could access through travelling through the city, depending on your actions, Serkonos would change and the hub area would be filled with more and more blood flies and guards if you gone high chaos. Delilah would always stimulate you to take the murderous, revenge road as she has her own plans and wants as much chaos as possible.

She should show her true colors later but, anyway, Dishonored 2 does a piss poor attempt into making use of its setting and the gameplay isn't better enough than it already was on Dishonored so it is a weak sequel. Only people that loved Dishonored 1 or that are desperate for stealth games should bother.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yeah it's shocking how a Deus Ex-like isn't as good at stealth as pure stealth games. You were seriously even entertaining the possibility of Dishonored 2 having stealth mechanics in the same vein as Thief or SC Chaos Theory?

I've never heard the game being called a "Deus Ex-like". What I have heard is name-dropping of the first two Thief games. I was willing to hold Dishonored 2 to a high standard, which I guess is astonishing?

 

[Multidirectional]

I've never heard the game being called a "Deus Ex-like". What I have heard is name-dropping of the first two Thief games. I was willing to hold Dishonored 2 to a high standard, which I guess is astonishing?

So you somehow managed to miss everything about Dishonored 1 for few years? Pretty impressive, yeah.

I think the art design carries Dishonored well beyond the technical limitations of its engine. I don't think it has aged (at least visually) badly at all.

I played Dishonored 1 expansions not that long ago, I think it still looks nice for the most part, except very low res shadows and bad antialiasing. Thankfully as Nvidia user I can hack in sparse grid supersampling, which smoothes out almost everything perfectly. Nothing to be done about shadows though.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So you somehow managed to miss everything about Dishonored 1 for few years? Pretty impressive, yeah

Wrong. I have played it, nearly to the end. But I chose not to take the devs' word about how the second game will have better stealth. And I was right. As a stealth game it retains the retarded children-tier difficulty.