I also love how one of the optional contracts in mission 3 is “don’t even choke anyone out, stay totally undetected” and then one of the optional contracts in mission 4 is “kill every single person you see”
no prior instalment has done anywhere near as much to encourage variety in your playstyle
it took me until halfway through the game to realize that you can put displace markers down while using foresight but I still think the limited power selection is brilliant
Sounds similar to Metal Gear Solid V, where the gameplay and toolset was larger enough than the old stealth game that they really needed to invert the narrative conceit for stealth play and play up being a bad guy. It’s interesting that a considered morality can be a bad constraint for players.
The “chaotic neutral Rosario Dawson on one last job” framing certainly helps here, yeah. It’s just very gratifying for them to have finally gotten it all right. Many of the reviews are mentioning how there’s nothing that really matches the spectacle of the clockwork mansion but I honestly never found that level particularly interesting to play even if it was impressive enough in its engine rigging.
still cannot get over how much previously OK-ish mechanics now feel perfectly utilized. the little rat-sized grates you could move through in prior games provided you’d invested in the proper talents, which acted like little more than zelda doors, are now traversable only by foresight – you can see what’s on the other side of them but can’t necessarily get through. way better!
finished it, around 7 hours, having done like 80-plus percent of all the optional stuff.
I won’t pretend the writing is on par with observer/nier/torment this year but it is absolutely the only time that dishonored has even gotten close to a real satisfying ending, and that they balanced that on the most annoying and underdeveloped character in the series is a real achievement!
it’s still a klepto-collectible messy stealth game but the extent to which it’s both a greatest hits reel and a patch on all previously significant flaws really can’t be overstated
I will say that despite the first game having boasted about having the art director from half life 2, most of the dramatic beats in this are still way too derivative of half life 2, a thirteen year old videogame.
it also still has the problem of being too easy if you savescum and there being no reason not to savescum. but y’know.
You don’t have to savescum if you kill everyone
u know billie <3’s butchering agents of the oppressive state > : |
I also love – and it only just occurred to me after finishing – how there are almost no bloodflies at all in this one! it’s like arkane decided after prey “you know what, for once, let’s not have a core enemy type that’s relentlessly annoying in a game that’s not actually about shooting or endurance.”
the last mission is maybe a little bit underwhelming (it would’ve been a good fit for, and a welcome reuse of, the realtime link to the past dark world mirror from the one level in the last game, and it’s hard to reconcile its absence other than as a development constraint, given that it was already implemented), but I think it’s made up for by having actual forward motion in the plot for a change
one last point of praise: this was the first game in the series where I could toggle off objective markers (which I believe is just a single toggle in the menu for the first time) and have no difficulty getting to the various objectives based purely on the information the game gave me.
I was so disappointed by the first yakuza
it took until zero for me to forgive nagoshi
Oh hey, it’s our Valley Village studio before I worked there. Looks like we had a G3 Mac out in the open down there in the control room… the fan must have been pretty noisy.
asexual videogame characters:
legendary assassin daud
legendary assassin agent 47
is it possible to love and hate a game genre at the same time
I Really Love stealth action games but Dishonored deals in a level of abstraction I just cant seem to ever get my head around. I know like all thigns in life I am probably o blame but my cut lil assassin gal keeps getting spotted in situations I am reasonably certain I should not get spotted in and also I guess why cant every game have visual indicators like the first mgs
why cant every game have soliton radar
why cant life have soliton radar
it does
so… it’s not abstract enough for you
just tired of guards spotting me behind bushes or when barely poking around corners or something because they just happened to see me from 100ft away poking out of something slightly
I find that levels in these games with more inorganic architecture and less trees and shit tend to be easier to hide in
In the first game it was a good bit easier to not get spotted but they changed it in the sequel by making the enemies able to spot you/hear you from further away and such. Aside from just tuning down the difficulty I’d suggest always crouch walking and making more aggressive use of the lean keys to peek around things.
Or just go full Murder-Junkie.
they have all three of these + dlc for £20 on steam right now
is this a good call if i wasn’t feeling prey at all