Dishonored I & II

Dishonored

I have no idea why I started this two days before Trespasser comes out, BUT I DID. Buzz about Dishonored 2 put it on my radar because I was interested in Emily on sight.

I am extremely terrible at this game (hello casual setting, my old friend). I had no idea how reliant I’d become on HUD maps (or any kind of map, really) until now. But I love that I can try to avoid death as much as possible. Sometimes I can’t get around it, but I always try, and I thank the developers for sleeping darts.

I like that much of the exposition is delivered through overheard conversation, even if these conversations tend to be long-winded and ham-fisted. I don’t know why there are so many white dudes in this game. I think I have seen a grand total of two (scratch that, four) women so far, outside the royals.

It uses the Unreal 3 engine, same as Mass Effect, but you can’t pull back for a third-person perspective. For me, the first person takes a little getting used to ~~because it gives me Doom flashbacks~~. I only played about 5 minutes of Mirror’s Edge because I found the first POV disorienting. I might return to that one and try Thief after this. (I was going to say, “And Assassin’s Creed,” but somehow I don’t have those games in my Grand Old Steam Sale Pile and I honestly find that difficult to explain.)

Shitty Casual Gamer, Hates Games

I was ranting about Dishonored (don’t worry, you’ll get to hear all about it) and P joked that I should have a blog called Casual Difficulty Gamer and post walkthroughs like:

• Sneak up on Guard
• Accidentally hit wrong button and make a sound, drawing the guard’s attention
• Forget which button is attack

Anyway we tossed it back and forth and I ended up with Shitty Casual Gamer, Hates Games. Seems appropriate. I’m saving my Dishonored rant for when I finish the game, and it actually has nothing to do with the difficulty level, though I admit I will probably have to restart the Dunwall Tower mission due to sheer fuckuperry. After dying repeatedly, and finally “sneaking” into the tower itself, I finally decided fuggit and started shooting everyone in the face, and now I’m out of ammo (all kinds) so… yes. As I said. I’m a shitty casual gamer who hates games.

Dishonored Part II

So, Dishonored.

I would like this game better if it didn’t make a point of emphasizing how shitty mcGrimdark everything is as often as possible. The treatment of working class female characters is abysmal, they are experimented on, raped, murdered, and forced to wear dumb maid outfits. There is a scene in which the otherwise decent (?) Piero is caught spying on a woman while she bathes. The scene apparently exists so Korvo can either admonish the peeping tom or dismiss his actions. Piero leaves after this interaction, giving the player the opportunity to ALSO peek through the keyhole if they are so inclined. You have to recruit the guy who is experimenting on women in his lab (though you can feed him to rats during his interrogation).

Charming, right?

Once I ranted about this and got it out of my system I enjoyed the game more.

One of the positives of this game is each target has a nonlethal option, and some of them are significantly more challenging than assassination. The nonlethal options can be cruel. The Pendleton brothers have their tongues cut out and are forced to work in mines until death. Lady Boyle is handed over like chattel.

Ultimately, I feel like Dishonored encourages a chaotic playthrough. Avoiding death as much as possible resulted in a low-chaos final mission that was amazingly anticlimactic. I arrived at the lighthouse to find Admiral Havelock had poisoned the other conspirators. I shot him with a sleeping dart and… that was it. I read enough to know that a high-chaos ending is much more dramatic, with infighting among the conspirators as they barricade themselves in various parts of the lighthouse.

My low-chaos first PT on casual difficulty was challenging, even after I got the hang of the mechanics. I avoided assassinating any targets or killing any civilians, but there were deaths (I could never resist rewiring the Wall of Light to fry my enemies without a trace, if it hadn’t vaporized the bodies I wouldn’t have done it).

My high-chaos second PT on normal difficulty is a lot easier. Partly because I have a general idea of the maps, so I’m not completely blind, but also because it is so much easier to slit throats and be done with it, especially after acquiring the Shadow Kill perk, which means unaware victims disintegrate on death. A series of careful crossbolt head shots can clear a room, leaving no evidence behind. Most of the time I can’t charge into a situation guns-blazing (or in my case, sword-slinging-crossbow-wavin) but being able to lob a few grenades onto a cluster of guards on the street below makes life comparatively easy (and is fun, I’m sorry to say). My original intent was to be as bloodthirsty as possible (sans civilians), but there are a few scenarios where it’s easier to be stealthy, so I don’t go out of my way to kill people, but I am trying to collect as many runes and bone charms as possible.

I would like to attempt a third low-chaos ghost PT on hard, if I’m still up for it. I think I can manage no kills, but I doubt I can complete every level without being detected. One of the biggest hurdles for a no-kill playthrough is the fact that sleeping darts are capped at 10, whereas other types of ammunition can be upgraded all the way to 30. If I had 30 sleeping darts it would be a breeze.

The game provides non-detectable options for assassination and I have tried to locate these in my second PT. Like the non-lethals methods, hints are offered in ambient dialogue.

Overall, I think the core game is fun, obviously. The play control is good, the mechanics are good, and aesthetics and world are kind of neat. A competent writer could have done something better with this script. I headcanon Korvo as female, which actually works with some of the in-game dialogue because generally Korvo wears a mask. There’s something weirdly romantic about fem!Korvo scaling the rooftops, her lover’s magically-preserved still-beating heart strapped to her chest, occasionally taking the heart out to listen to the Empress whisper about the environs

Dishonored 2 Announcement

*crawls out of work hole, hair disheveled, beady eyes glinting*

HEY LISTEN UP ARKANE STUDIOS WITH UR FANCY “M-RATED AAA VIDEO GAMES” I AINT GONNA PREORDER CAUSE I DONT DO THat no more

*serious, quiet voice; steepled fingers*

Nevertheless, you have my attention and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Dishonored 2

I finally picked up Dishonored 2. I wasn’t quite in the mood for a stealth game but I went ahead and played a bit to make sure it worked since it has notoriously bad performance. It actually runs okay after driver updates, but it has the longest pre-load (????) and developer splash logo sequence ever.

I am very bad at this game. The first mission you have to get out of the city and as soon as I was outside I just ran like hell and jumped into the ocean. I prefer a pacifist run as much as possible, so my terribleness is somewhat mitigated by going to great lengths to avoid enemies.

Dishonored was a sausage party, but Dishonored 2 has a high ratio of female characters so far. I get the impression Corvo is playable just in case dudebros can’t handle having virtual tits, because this is actually Emily’s story. You have a female MC and her right-hand general is female, female main antagonist, female boatman, the second mission is about a lady doctor I have not met yet because I SNEEK GUD and there’s at least one other main female support character for the antagonist. I haven’t read anything about the game’s development and whatever goals they may have had but that’s too many lady bits to be a coincidence.

I like the game but the Dishonored world is gritty and dirty and it makes me moody.

Dishonored 2 II

It turns out that unpleasant feeling I get when I play Dishonored 2 is motion sickness. Messing with head bob and v-sync helps a bit but I haven’t fully resolved the problem.

Short version: Great game, and so far it’s been an improvement over the original in every way.

Long version: The game has some clever level design. Partway through a level like say, Clockwork Manor, I want to start over because I bumbled my way through it and now I can see so many elegant solutions, but I also don’t want to start over because initial discovery is such a magical thing in this game. To discover a vent and realize it goes exactly where you need to go is a special feeling.

The levels usually take a while to traverse and I am bad at remembering to save my game, but I’ve managed to get through half the game without any huge mistakes. The accidental body count is um, kinda low? Actually, 0 is low, so no, not really low at all. Once you hit four you’re a mass murderer according to the FBI and it’s definitely more than four. The game takes sword fights pretty seriously, a few hits takes a person down (including you) and I’m sorry to say I’ve cut off more arms than I care to remember.

I think the NPCs are smarter. The Overseers have been very persistent and perceptive and I’ve found getting spotted by even one of them can immediately complicate my stealth strategy. That being said, I once dropped into a room I thought was empty and began rummaging through the drawers only to realize there were two of them praying at an altar in the corner that hadn’t noticed me. So if their perception is lower when they’re praying, well, that’s a cool detail.

One of my gripes with the first game was the non-lethal target removal options were often cruel, in some instances almost sadistically so. The targets tended to be really horrible people and I suspected this was done so players wouldn’t feel cheated out of vengeance by taking the non-lethal route. Dishonored 2 provides sympathetic and unsympathetic targets and so far the non-lethal options have been appropriate and poetic. The most I can say in a non-spoiler post is if the target has a resource that they use for ill-gain, that resource is taken away to neutralize the target. There was one level where I appeared to have two choices that were bad for the area, and civilian ambient dialogue confirmed this. It just didn’t feel right. So I kept digging around and, yep, there’s a third solution. Bit of a PITA, but if you want it done right… The choices in this game are a lot more nuanced.

The game keeps dropping hints that spared targets will have a impact on the endgame. Think of the leadership-vacuum that occurs when high-level military personnel are purged after a takeover. These people have turned on Emily Kaldwin for various reasons, not all necessarily sinister. Given the nature of the antagonist, I would not be surprised to find some future targets were pressured or otherwise forced to move against Kaldwin. It might be satisfying to gut them all, but where does that leave Dunwall when its over?

Dishonored 2 III

I finished Dishonored 2. It’s a great sequel. It has clever level design and some of my actions in-game affected the game world in a way I didn’t anticipate. I’m a little underwhelmed by the ending, which is a brief epilogue that doesn’t resolve much, leaving things open for the third game.

Like, the ending was maybe a minute and the ending credits were closer to 10 minutes? That’s how it felt, anyway. I think we should have at least gotten an individual slide for each target based on whether they lived or died. I think there are about 4 titles you can get at the end, I got Emily the Just (non-lethal) and Emily the Clever (apparently I was ghostly enough).

There is a plus game feature that allows you to retain your runes and unlocks all the powers for purchase, which is cool. As with the first game, I immediately wanted to do a high chaos run, and then a few hours later… kinda didn’t. Partly because 30+ hours is already a lot of quality time with roofs, and partly because I’m not super interested in fucking everything up, which is what the high chaos run ostensibly does. I like discovery a lot, so I enjoy finding new places I missed the first go around, but there are sections of the game that I don’t enjoy retreading. I prefer interiors and don’t like the open areas and rooftops as much.

I did pretty ok on my mostly-pacifist run until I got back to Dunwall Tower. We’ve seen a lot of brutality throughout the game, but the thing that finally did me after seeing all the carnage in the streets and lawn was that the witches murdered the staff. Maids and butlers, the people that worked in the pump room. So I killed over 20 of them and it wasn’t enough to mess up my low chaos rating which I appreciated.

The non-lethal way to dispose of Delilah kinda sucks, because by imprisoning her in a fantasy world of her own making you have essentially rewarded her for everything she’s done. So while I felt like in some way I owed her, because of what Jessamine did to her, this was really not what I had in mind.

I liked the Outsider’s reveal that Delilah originally (and perhaps still) wanted things to be better, but as she achieved the power to make it her vision became twisted. She was definitely an interesting antagonist.

I watched the high chaos ending on YouTube. I had no idea you could kill Sokolov and Meg (apparently this makes you Emily the Butcher) but doing so just means you don’t get a slide for them. You can also fail to resurrect your family member from stone. I’m not sure if this is just high chaos or requires a specific act.

The cheevs in this game are downright crazy. Like, take out Jindosh without him even knowing you’re there? He lives in a SMART HOUSE he freakin knows how much I weigh jfc

Rarest cheev: “Cast Possession once, chaining between human, hound, rat, fish, and bloodfly” Yeah ok u guys keep tellin urself that.

Something I found interesting is 25% of players beat the game with Emily and 17% beat it with Corvo. I think the fact that the game starts from Emily’s POV probably helps. 80% actually play it, and it’s hard to tell by the cheevs but I’m gonna say 30% beat it at least once.