Dishonored

Do you mind if I post this here? I'm so excited for this game (I've played it and will answer questions if you got them) and got to share:


I interviewed Rafael Colantonio, co-creative director on Dishonored about: Non-lethal gameplay, Analog AI, Viktor Antonov, if Dishonored has multiple endings and a leveling system, targeting limbs, Neo-Victorian Steampunk, possessing a fish and sliding under tables.

It seems to me designing the controls for a game like Dishonored would be incredibly difficult. On one hand you want to make the game accessible to those who are new to the genre and interested in the game. On the other hand you have the core audience who’ve been playing these types of games for a very long time, and you certainly don’t want them to feel like they’re making unnecessary concessions. How on Earth are you guys approaching this?

Oh that’s a very very smart and insightful question, and it lies at the heart of our challenge really. The game has a lot of depth and it’s very hardcore by nature, but at the same time we don’t want it to be inaccessible. So we’re constantly putting a lot of effort into making sure the mechanics [are playable] for anyone, without losing the depth this type of game needs. You know, depth and accessibility are not enemies. It is possible to make games that have depth and are accessible. What you don’t want is complexity. So there’s a lot of effort on our part to make the right tutorial and expose the right options to the player at all times.
So yes, to answer the question, it’s a very difficult challenge and we don’t believe we’re betraying the hardcore while bringing it to the masses.
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]http://eat-games.tumblr.com/post/26640168745/interview-rafael-colantonio-dishonored


Hope you like it!
 
Preload on steam is active now, if anyone has bought it already... Actually it went live like a day ago already I think.

Incidentally, XCom preload is on now as well.
 
Grall said:
Goldeneye had good stealth gameplay in the early missions; you could evade certain enemies if you wanted or you could just gun most/everyone down if you wanted... I don't recall if you actually failed any misisons if you were detected though, it was so damn long ago since I played that game.

I feel that's the best way to do stealth; optional, rather than forced upon the player. It was super irritating playing through the Village map of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, having to save every 10 steps in case some damn enemy spotted your heel sticking out from behind a corner or something and raised the alarm.

Too bad all the stealth gameplay went out the window in Goldeneye later on in the game. It's like the devs ran out of time or something and instead just made roughly half the game into a standard first-person shooter.
Click to expand...

I thought the "stealth" level in return to Wolfenstein was fun, it was made the silly way but it's unforgiving, I didn't quicksave. It's only one level. I thought the point was to make it in one run (after many tries). It was good for me, a player used to pure shooters who never really played stealth games.
Anyway the level in Norway where you start near a submarine prop gave me more trouble.
 
Grall said:
Preload on steam is active now, if anyone has bought it already... Actually it went live like a day ago already I think.

Incidentally, XCom preload is on now as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up on XCom preload. Want that sucker to be ready when the day comes. :) Even if the game was massively dumbed down compared to the original. At least from what I can tell from the Demo.
 
I put a few hours in. It's sort of Half Life 2 meets Bioshock meets Dark Messiah. In fact I hear Dark Messiah sound effects occasionally. It plays as a fairly open experience with a hub you set out on missions from.

Visually it is PS360. Low poly objects and some mediocre textures. But they've used the semi cell shaded style that is all the rage these days and it works with the scene complexity. The city is visually impressive and developed. There is also a lot of attention to detail in the locations so there's opportunity to immerse yourself. The setting is certainly rather original.

Melee is simpler than in Dark Messiah and unfortunately they did not do the full body model so you are a head with arms.

NPC conversations have been basic so far. There are NPC stores. You can upgrade your stuff and buy ammo and items. Magic is interesting but I've only scratched the surface.

There are lots of nice game options. You can turn off all of the hand holding. FoV is adjustable. Mouse works well and I can map all my buttons. FXAA and MLAA are the only official AA options but of course since it's UE3 you can force MSAA and SSAA.
 
Not available from steam in the u.k until the 12th

edit: play.com have it now and its cheaper
Double win save money and not give money to valve....

edit 2: misread the steam price its the same but still a win..
 
I put in just half an hour this morning when it unlocked on steam. So I am in the middle of the very first escape mission. What I have been impressed with is the attention to detail shown in the teaser - the guard on the balcony that overlooks the ship you arrived on has a specific line to say. This is a guard who isn't on the main path at all and I suspect many will ignore. The engineers working on the water lock mechanism have things to say that similarly aren't important but build the world and what is going on.

You can talk to the fellow prisoners and I wonder if one, who mentions slackjaw as a name, might lead to game changes later. Hopefully it does.

Heck the introduction has an optional mission with Emily.

It is a really impressive amount of detail work that many games sadly lack these days.

Be interesting to see if that continues through the game but the Rock, Paper, Shotgun reviews strongly suggest that it does.

Also playing on Very Hard is fun. Died thrice just trying to escape the prison and I have barely begun...

Speaking of dieing you can kill yourself in the introduction too. The game will let you fling yourself off balconies. So pleased to not hit an invisible wall there.
 
Yeah they put thought into everything. It's Elder Scrolls ish in the detail. Like their other games.
 
swaaye said:
I wonder why they delayed it for the UK.
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Delayed?

It's been scheduled for the 12th in euroland for some stupid reason and people in the US have already finished the game. Stupid DRM shit. I hate it when companies can put stranglehold on when people can actually play a game they've already paid for and is sitting on their harddrives...
 
The game definitely brings some "Thief" vibe in the overall design and some gameplay tactics, but I still can't feel the stealth approach being well enough encouraged. Speaking of design style, it's not the "purest" form of steampunk setting -- too much electrification in there. :LOL:

Graphics wise, I was forced to enable SSAA in the games' driver profile. Too much fine details and strong specular/shader aliasing are definitely getting in the way of appreciation of the otherwise nice visuals. The available post-process AA options in the game aren't enough, at least for me.

p.s.:

Speaking of Thief --
 
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Grall said:
Delayed?

It's been scheduled for the 12th in euroland for some stupid reason and people in the US have already finished the game. Stupid DRM shit. I hate it when companies can put stranglehold on when people can actually play a game they've already paid for and is sitting on their harddrives...
Click to expand...

It has absolutely nothing to do with DRM.

US retailers release new media (movies, games, music) on Tuesdays.
Euro retailers release new media on Fridays.

It really is as simple as that.

So if you release during the same week, then Europe gets product "unlocked" for sales on Friday while the US gets product "unlocked" for sale on Tuesdays.

No conspiracies, no DRM, no weird things going on.

Regards,
SB
 
Who gives a shit if someone else has already finished the game or not? How does that detract from your enjoyment of a game?
 
Fun little experimentation - I spent a few hours playing this on my 512MB 3870 at 1680x1050. I finished an entire mission. It runs pretty well on max settings with no AA, but vsync must be off or there's a severe frame rate hit. D3DOverrider with triple buffering does not help. I think the 512MB VRAM is causing problems as I also see the engine swapping low rez textures in and out at times.

Forcing just 2x MSAA results in ~5 fps. FXAA didn't seem to hit it very hard but frankly I'd rather have aliasing than blur and barely effective AA.

BTW, I remapped the mouse so that left click is swing sword and right click is block. I have one of my thumb buttons as magic/gun shoot and another as zoom. Works better than the stock setup for me.
 
3870 should be a good bit more capable than a console GPU so that seems normal. I'd expect my old old 8800GT to run it very well like it does most games.

I suppose 512MB is still give or take about twice the VRAM available on a console.
 
homerdog said:
I suppose 512MB is still give or take about twice the VRAM available on a console.
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Yeah but I think in console world they can more efficiently use their available RAM so that 512MB might not be as great as it comparatively seems.

I see lots of console games without vsync though for whatever reason.
 
The game took me 20 hours to beat. I was thorough in my exploration until the last mission where I almost ran straight to the end. Overall I think it's a great game although I wish there had been more complexity to the combat (see their prior games). There is some replay value here because of the consequences related to your behavior during the game. Plus it's just a really interesting setting to see.

There are some amazing maps in the game. Don't let the whining about texture quality worry you because the scenery will occasionally blow your mind. Also, the reason it is reminiscent of Half Life 2 is because Half Life 2 art director Viktor Antonov was part of the team.

I think I have to go beat Dark Messiah again now...
 
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