Arkane Dishonored 2 - Emily and Corvo's Serkonan Vacation

[JDR13]

Serious question: Is Death of the Outsider worth getting?

I liked the first game, and I just picked up Dishonored 2. I heard DotO is really short though. Is it strongly connected to the overall story, or is it more its own thing?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

The story in Death of the Outsider is pretty dumb. I wouldn’t say it’s that short; 5 levels compared to the base game’s 9. 2 of the levels are great, 2 are pretty good, and 1 is pretty bad. The new powers are fun to play around with for a little bit, but nothing game changing. I did find it marginally more difficult than the base game.

 

[Curratum]

I'm on the last mission of DotO and it's good fun, worth it on sale.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Welp, he's yet to make an overly woke game.

There are people, seen as recently as the previous page of this thread, who think Dishonored 2 is a "too woke" game. I think they're massive crybabies, but it is what it is I guess.

I found the perfect review for you.

55,545 views on a 3 year old video

 

[Child of Malkav]

Serious question: Is Death of the Outsider worth getting?

I liked the first game, and I just picked up Dishonored 2. I heard DotO is really short though. Is it strongly connected to the overall story, or is it more its own thing?

It takes place 6 months after D2 from the perspective of Billie as she searches for Daud. It is short. Three new powers. No chaos system. Infinite mana or Void energy as it's called. A few new places. Lore. Pretty good.
The premise is dumb. Although it reminds me of that leak about D2 a long time ago. Some source said that the title was D2 Darkness of Tyvia and that the main objective was to annihilate the Outsider. My guess is that the game was also supposed to take place in Tyvia as you find many references to it in D2 and Doto.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is Dishonored worth buying?

 

[DalekFlay]

No chaos system.

Good thing.

 

[RaptorRex888]

Good thing.

Why?

 

[Wunderbar]

Good thing.

Why?

it punishes you for picking actiony playstyle.

 

[RaptorRex888]

Good thing.

Why?

it punishes you for picking actiony playstyle.

Punishes you how? A different ending slide and some people making comments about how you're a crazed psychopath (which you are) if you go around killing guards by the droves?

 

[DalekFlay]

Good thing.

Why?

It's like the "paragon/renegade" thing in Mass Effect, too binary and simplistic. What if I knocked out all the guards but killed the gang members, would I be a "bad guy" then? I just think it should be up to the player what the "evil" route is rather than an algorithm having the boat dude tell you at the end, which results in the ending cutscene being wildly one way or the other. I haven't played DotO yet but I hear it more reacts to specific actions, rather than a black and white chart, which I think sounds much better.

 

[TheChickenKing]

I have mixed feelings on the Chaos system. On one hand, I think it generally makes sense and I like the reactivity. On the other hand, it heavily punishes players for doing just about anything besides "crouch walk every where and choke everyone out". Even the developers didn't seem super interested in this play style given how most of the powers are built around killing people and causing chaos.

 

[RaptorRex888]

I keep seeing the word "punished" being used - a different final map, different ending slide and different NPC dialogue is not "punishment". On high chaos the game even gives you more guards to kill since it recognises you're doing an action route, so if anything it rewards and encourages your playstyle. It's not perfect and it definitely is quite arbitrary - unable to account for certain things (how is killing weepers a bad thing?) but getting upset the game gave you the """bad""" ending because you murdered dozens if not hundreds of people rather than a pat on the head like most other games is not being punished.

 

[TheChickenKing]

I keep seeing the word "punished" being used - a different final map, different ending slide and different NPC dialogue is not "punishment". On high chaos the game even gives you more guards to kill since it recognises you're doing an action route, so if anything it rewards and encourages your playstyle. It's not perfect and it definitely is quite arbitrary - unable to account for certain things (how is killing weepers a bad thing?) but getting upset the game gave you the """bad""" ending because you murdered dozens if not hundreds of people rather than a pat on the head like most other games is not being punished.

I'd respectfully disagree. Perhaps punish isn't the right word, but the bad endings to the Dishonored games are so negative that they're most certainly strong "disincentive". Adding more enemies and whatnot to an action route is awesome, and I really appreciate that addition, but making it so that the only way to see the canon ending is to play a very stale playstyle is rather crummy. I could see that being more acceptable if there were more non-lethal options that were simply more difficult, but I found playing more aggressively in the Dishonored games to be very difficult (if not even more so than stealth) and therefore it was challenging to enjoy when I knew that I was barrelling towards "life sucks and then you die" before the credits rolled.

I'd chalk this up to the general struggle between gameplay and narrative, but I think it also comes down to Arkane's design philosophy. Going for perfect scores in a Hitman game is a really good time because it means playing the game in the most correct way possible - simply walking past everyone as the target lies dead from an "accident". Dishonored does not have a correct way to play... except that the narrative designers say that it does. Normally I'm a colossal storyfag, but I found this to be really frustrating and an active hindrance on my ability to enjoy the Dishonored games. As with any such thing, your mileage may very and this is all very subjective, but I absolutely felt punished anytime I wanted to do anything but crouch walk up to a guy, chokehold him, and so on.

 

[DalekFlay]

I didn't use the word punish, but yeah... it has a black and white morality system that yells at you for playing the game the way it overwhelmingly seems designed to be played. And I don't even mean "action route" I mean killing versus not, using cool powers versus not, etc. As someone else said low chaos encourages you to knock everyone out from behind holding 'f' which limits the game severely.

 

[RaptorRex888]

I understand everything you're both saying, and most of it is true. I guess my subjective opinion colours my thoughts on this as I actually enjoy being a boring crouch-strangle-man in Dishonored. I do appreciate what Arkane was trying to accomplish with the system however, and that's why I defend it despite its obvious flaws. In theory with the chaos system they tried to implement something a little more nuanced than a simple black/white morality system, practically however it didn't work out because ultimately it comes down to that conflict between narrative and gameplay you mentioned.

I still applaud that Arkane tried to accurately (as best they could) portray what would happen if a single crazy maniac with magic powers were to murder dozens of people - the city would fall to chaos and your daughter who idolises you would learn the lesson that killing to get what you want is the right thing to do.

I'm only speaking about the first game, still haven't finished 2.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm only speaking about the first game, still haven't finished 2.

It's pretty much the same. I only played through it once but I got high chaos because I killed people stealthy like and I got the "you were a very bad lady!" ending. I do like ghost or no-killing runs in these games and have finished Dishonored 1 that way, but not for my first playthrough.

 

[Curratum]

Did a zero-kill, no-powers run on my first go through Dish 2. It's amazing how much more of the levels you see and how much better you get to know the layouts and the nooks and crannies when you're doing no powers, especially on a first run where you have no idea what the levels are like.

On that note, I jokingly tweeted Harvey Smith about a Sawyeresque triple crown achievement - no kills, no powers and full ghost, but I sure as fuck am not doing that without a fancy chievo that I can display on my profile later.

 

[JarlFrank]

Did a no-kill no-spot run for my first time in both games, then went for the maximum kill everyone run on my second.

Dishonored 2 I played somewhat recently, and the nuances between being a stealthy non-lethal player and being a murderhobo are pretty nice. Not very pronounced but nice. Emily's comments when playing as a murderhobo get progressively more psychopathic as the game goes on.

Overall the differences are less pronounced than in D1, it's overall more subtle. The fact that your protagonist isn't silent but actually comments on stuff makes it better.

Of course some elements are still kinda retarded. Like there's this guardswoman with her lesbian lover on a rooftop, in low chaos they talk about fleeing the city together, on high chaos the guardswoman gets angry at the other woman and throws her off the roof.
This aspect of chaos, where it changes the behavior of common people, is kinda illogical. People don't suddenly change their personality just because some mysterious assassin is going around killing people or refrains from killing people. Sure, people tend to be more tense when a mass murderer is around, but it shouldn't be that radical of a personality change.

 

[Infinitron]

This aspect of chaos, where it changes the behavior of common people, is kinda illogical. People don't suddenly change their personality just because some mysterious assassin is going around killing people or refrains from killing people. Sure, people tend to be more tense when a mass murderer is around, but it shouldn't be that radical of a personality change.

Isn't the idea that your behavior is having a reality-warping effect via The Outsider's influence?

 

[what am i doing]

Isn't the idea that your behavior is having a reality-warping effect via The Outsider's influence?

I was under the impression (based to some degree on loading screen text) that it was reasoned, the more dead bodies you leave lying around, the worse the rat plague will get (or in 2, the worse the bloodlfly infestation will get), and this in turn caused people to behave worse as conditions grow more desperate, demand for resources like medicine rises without corresponding increase in supply, everyone gets more cut-throat to survive, etc. But I always found this kind of flimsy because for the size/population of a Victorian city, the body count you can leave over the course of the game should be statistically insignificant and have no bearing on the overall spread of the plague / infestation.

Myself, I do enjoy a non-lethal playthrough, but I don't much like the idea of being "rewarded" for it. If I want to spare an NPC, or all of the NPCs, then I just want the freedom to do that, not a pat on the head. I don't need a different ending or a screen at the end congratulating me for not killing anyone, I already know I got through without killing anyone. In a way having the game recognize that with an alternate ending makes it feel a little more "gamey" and takes away from the satisfaction of completing the game without killing.

Anyways, I think the chaos mechanic is sort of ok in principle but I would have preferred if it was more subtle and mostly just amounted to more enemies being present / security being higher the more waves you make in earlier missions.

 

[DalekFlay]

Did a zero-kill, no-powers run on my first go through Dish 2. It's amazing how much more of the levels you see and how much better you get to know the layouts and the nooks and crannies when you're doing no powers, especially on a first run where you have no idea what the levels are like.

It's definitely a different experience, and I enjoy ghost type challenges a lot. I don't usually care about achievements but the ghost and no powers ones for Dishonored and the recent Deus Ex games are cool to know I "achieved." I've just never cared much for non-lethal stuff. I like playing Dirty Harry types, or whatever. I like killing the bad guys. Not killing guards makes sense of course, and reminds me of the Thief games where I definitely didn't kill much, but the gang members? The witches? Going out of my way not to kill them just feels false to me, and ruins MEH IMMERZION.

 

[RaptorRex888]

You can kill your targets as well as a few people before getting high chaos.

 

[vortex]

 

[sputtering fart balloon]

I always thought the "Dishonored punishes you for x" criticism was weird. Do you feel punished when you read a book and the protagonist dies in a fire? Nothing happens to you. It's just the edgy ending, made for you to observe if you choose to. Projecting to such a degree that you feel your video game man's fate in a story is a direct assault against you as a person is creepy.