Dishonored 2 - Nov 2016

Maybe I take back what I said about being ready for it to end. Finished Stilton Mansion (is that the name?) with the time tool. I was really thrown off when I first looked through it, and thought crap, this is going to be awful.

Instead it was one of the most creative levels of any game I’ve played. And it really did give me the feeling that I could play the level in any way I wanted, that they would reward my creativity. That’s my Gold award for an open world type game (and D2 is not an open world game, but rather a linear scripted game with a lot of options.)

How many people here play these without referring to any kind of guide or strat and tips page? I decided to try D2 this way, and I KNOW I am missing a ton (because after I finish a level I will look at a strat site and see that if I walked down some random back alley and jumped into some hole I never saw and then pushed something to the side and looked in a tiny window and then shot something in that room and then go back to where I was 20 minutes ago I could then go in somewhere and find a rune or blueprint.)

I’ve not really done much at all with bonecrafting. I suppose I’d need to gather a lot of those for it to be worthwhile because now it seems even with crafting one with 3 attributes it’s only adding a slight this or that.

As for runes, I miss a lot of them, but I don’t feel the need for more powers. Corvo low chaos, I mainly use Blink (duh) and Dark Vision (though that’s less useful by far, IMO, than it was in D1) and though I have the slow time power I just don’t use it much.

I played the demo for about an hour and decided I still wasn’t ready to come back to this series.

I don’t use guides. I’d rather miss content / items. There is a game occasionally where I can’t figure out how to progress if I don’t check a guide, so I’ll do so - but I don’t use one to 100% a game or anything.

Yeah, I’ve never used a guide for any game. If I get stuck in something linear I do google it.

Finished D2. I cheated and used a guide for the last mission in neutralizing Delilah, I’d have NEVER found her where she was without a guide telling me where to go (as in the non-clone location ).

I enjoyed D2 though I have to say the actual story felt a lot thinner than D1. It felt like it was a lot more focused on being clever with levels than unfolding a deep story. When I released Emily it just felt like oh yeah, gotta do that to end the mission (vs say the epic flood of emotion when I found Ciri in Witcher 3.)

Still i enjoyed it enough I’ve started Death of the Outsider which feels very different, at least in the very beginning.

You can kill / subdue the clones and keep going until you find the real one.

Yeah, I figured that was the default approach, eliminating the clones until you find her. What I would have never found without a guide is where to find her standing all by herself with no clones around and facing away and thus easily subdued.

I haven’t played as both characters, but the Emily storyline made me really wonder how they supported Corvo as a viewpoint character. It really feels like it’s meant to be played as Emily.

This is a game for agile, elegant people. I am a clumsy, stumbling danger to myself and others.

Although Death of the Outsider is really good, moving into a bunch of tunnels in the later game does move away from the richness that makes the setting special. Anyway, done - soon time for Prey!

Does death of the outsider go into the lore of the outside? Where he came from, who he really is? I am interested in that, but if its just a simple, someone is sick of him and you just go kill him, then not so much.

I think that’s really just in Dishonored 2. DoTO doesn’t give too much more about him, though there is more about the organisation that made him what he is. I probably skipped a bunch of written lore though.

I take back anything negative I might have previously said about this game. Sometimes it just so happens that you need to try a game multiple times before it grabs you. I’m now on 3rd mission and thoroughly enjoying myself. Level design is a lot better than in the first game, there are more available paths and it’s pretty easy to tell that they were made without blink in mind - paths almost feel like something out of Thief.

And oh my god I almost went nuts when I saw that the game has an ironman mode!!! I can’t wait to finish the first non-lethal/ghost run with Corvo so I can start over on ironman - I get the feeling it’s gonna be the ultimate immersive sim experience.

The quality of these types of games, like Dishonored or Hitman or Prey, is highly dependent of the quality of the level design itself. If you are in the third mission, you still haven’t seen anything. There is some truly excellent stuff later ;)

Wow, Clockwork Mansion is the work of a mad genius. With that I mean the level designer, not the character present in this level :)

Yeah @Bateau it was one of my favorite levels.

Also some free stuff for everyone!

Login with your Bethesda.net account? Their promotion of their own exclusive store begins :P

Oh shit. I just realized I had purchased Death of the Outsider but never actually fired it up. Guess I know what I’m starting now that I’m done with Red Dead 2 and Return of the Obra Dinn.

Man, this kinda bums me out. I liked Dishonored 1 and 2 a lot, so I pull Death of the Outsider off the backlog. I’m not really into it. I should be. I can’t put my finger on anything that is different enough from the first two to sour my opinion.

I sort feel like my brain is slowing down when it comes to mapping keyboard keys to functions. It shouldn’t be the case since the player only has one active ability and it’s driven by the middle mouse button. It’s not like I’m overloaded with concurrent options.

Not sure why I feel like I’m just trudging along instead of enjoying it.

I ended up sticking with Death of the Outsider, but focusing on the main mission. It was kind of freeing not worrying about finding all the bone charms, or fulfilling contracts. I’ve never had a lot of patience, but I think that what was falling short for me - the game is well made and fine, I just don’t have the patience - which seems to keep decreasing as I get older.

Instead of carefully scouting with the vision tool (which I did use sometimes) I usually just relied on the blink move to get behind cover, or escape if detected. I tended to thin out the enemies by knocking them out where I could, sometimes killing them if I was spotted. Again, knowing my patience was limited freed up my play style. I tend to feel like I should be all stealthy and non lethal, but I think I enjoy being sneaky and taking enemies out.