[PC] [PS4] [ONE] Dishonored 2

[christian]

http://www.dishonored.com/

dh2.JPG (49.83 KiB) Viewed 2651 times

Announce trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnsDyv-TtJg

[christian]

Dishonored 2 Is The Thief Successor We Deserve - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/1 ... -preorder/

Corvo, voiceless in the first game, speaks this time around. His voice is provided by actor Stephen Russell, who you’re most likely to know as the voice actor for Garrett in the first three Thief games. He’s not the only reason Dishonored 2 feels like the true Thief successor I’ve wanted since Deadly Shadows (TWELVE YEARS AGO), but his voice certainly helps to take me back. There’s something of the gothic, grim mischievousness of Thief’s nameless City in Dishonored 2 as well though. Machine cults, mechanical menaces, class warfare and ancient horrors scratching at the edges of reality.

Pretty weak argument if you ask me. I was willing to give Arkane the benefit of the doubt with the first Dishonored, but this is a series that has far more in common with BioShock than it ever did Thief, despite whatever the developers might say. Even the new Hitman is a better Thief successor than Dishonored.

[christian]

The game opens with an optional tutorial, which gave me some hope that it wouldn't begin with a throwaway mission. Oh well. At least it was a mini-assassination. It's good to see that they've cleared out even more of the stupid UI. It's weird that you can now choke out a guard after parrying his sword strike. I'll have to play more to see how that ends up working out.

I'm a little shocked by how bad the level design and enemy AI is right now. I got caught as the lean's no longer as powerful and enemy's are more perceptive. But all I had to do was run upstairs and jump out the window to confuse them. Pretty easy to pick them off after that. I goofed by chocking out a guy too early, and his friend caught sight of it and came running at us with his sword and swung and killed his friend that I was holding. lol there goes my achievement. But I didn't want to reload. Soon after clearing the area, I became completely lost. And in such a small space too. Granted, it's the first level, and not even the first proper one. But even with the chatty avatar, I still had no idea what the game was trying to get me to do before leaving. Turns out, you have to kill some random dude. Who knew? I know I mentioned that it was a mini-assassination above, but this is never made clear. What is clear, is that you need to escape and meet up with someone. And that you've got no time to waste. What's even more exceptionally unclear, and completely out of the blue, hidden away in the journal, is how to perform the non-lethal assassination -- carrying that random dude's body into a safe room. Why do I have to do that, instead of just leaving him passed out in the other room? Isn't it enough that he's unconscious and no longer blocking my escape? Apparently not. Would have been nice for Emily to say something. She has a lot to say about all the various odds and ends littered across the place, but nothing to say about that or even the multitude of dead bodies of what were, I assume, her friends. Or at least acquaintances.

Also, there sure are a lot of clocks scattered around, just waiting for me to set an alarm to distract whoever's within listening range. Feels weird.

[christian]

It's good to see Arkane return to rendering first-person bodies. Their absence in the last game contributed to its primitive feel.

[christian]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... stcount=13

Also, not Dishonored 2, but in Dishonored's first real mission, there was a character you had to knockout and leave in a safe place, but there was only one spot the game would recognize as safe, and if you had objective markers off, there was no real way to know. unless that particular dumpster was mentioned earlier in the briefing.

lol I remember that. I'd thought I'd dropped him off somewhere completely safe, only to return to the Hound Pits Pub and be told that he was dead, even being accused of doing nothing to save him. Looks like Arkane made the same mistake again.

[christian]

Arkane really overcompensated with the avatar monologues. It works when it sounds like an internal thought, but it far more often sounds like I'm being personally addressed as a player. Dumb.

[christian]

I should mention a few positives. Character models are mostly excellent now. And I like that noise distractions have become more viable. Technically you could throw bottles and stuff in the first game, but it was never really something that helped or worked all that reliably.

[christian]

I think it's funny that there's a Life is Strange journal in the game.

[christian]

So I replayed the beginning, just to see if I missed something, which I did because I stupidly got spotted (enemy perception is very good so far!), and what happens is you're supposed to follow this guy as he checks out the safe room himself. Once he's all alone in there, you can strike. Earlier he drops a subtle hint in which he says that he hopes he doesn't get locked in there. It doesn't follow though that Emily then needs to lock him in there. It would have been cool if it allowed you to leave him, lock him up, or kill him, with different results for each. Like a Deus Ex.

The game has so much potential to branch off into all these wonderful directions, oh it pains me so much to see it fall short.

[christian]

So this guy who's checking out the safe room walks right by the room in which he locked me up, and the door is wide open. Guess the promise of all that gold's blinded him. What are the others' excuses?