This sounds great.
It also makes me wonder why I’m not replaying the first game. Will tide me over until Stellaris drops, anyway!
They’ve already split the team into a two project studio. Lyon, who retained the majority of the original Dishonored staff, are working on the sequel powered by id tech, while Austin, originally a satellite studio of around 25 employees, went through a massive hiring spree in early 2014 to work on Bethesda’s Cry Engine Prey reboot.
Edit: Stephen Russell is voicing Corvo. Arkane are like an LGS cover band!
I would agree completely that blink is awful if we were talking about Dishonored like it was a stealth game, but it kind of isn’t. The stealth mechanics are extremely clunky and based almost entirely around using super powers rather than sneaking. I did a pacifist playthrough my first time through Dishonored and it nearly killed the game for me, but playing as a supernatural killing machine flows a hell of a lot better. You’re still ridiculously overpowered, but you have more immediate danger when you’re using blink to close the distance to shank someone instead of blinking from hidey hole to hidey hole.
Whatever the case, most likely going to preorder this. Was iffy enough to wait on Dishonored 1 but I ended up loving it once I stopped trying to play it like Thief.
Yeah, I’m noticing over the last couple years that I don’t like stealth games anyway. Give me simple videogame stealth so I vaguely feel like I’m being sneaky in between the other awesome things I care more about.
Dishonored can be played as a stealth game and blink is great in it. Blink’s brilliance is that it obviates the truly annoying part of a stealth game-- namely, the waiting around.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed as Dishonored was really good.
Perfect.
I loved Dishonored, and there was nothing wrong with The Knife of Dunwall DLC, but I just couldn’t get into it. I think it’s because it felt like I was doing the same things all over again and that’s my chief concern with Dishonored 2. I’m hoping I can muster up the energy to play The Brigmore Witches on the off chance that I get a taste of that magic again before the sequel arrives.
Another thing that bugged me with Dishonored is that I didn’t want to just go around killing everyone but most of the fun toys and abilities were lethal. Made me appreciate the Dunwall Trials DLC because I could just go crazy with all that stuff. It’s similar to the boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a lot of people thought they sucked, and they kind of did, but as a non-lethal player it was awesome to finally be able to just let rip with all the lethal stuff I had in my inventory. Take that, boss!
Corvo will be voiced finally? Hell yes. And by Russell ? Double hell yes zomg.
The Expansion to original game was better than the original game and large part of why was Daud being a voiced protagonist.
That’s what I thought though I never beat the game. Basically, blink greatly shortened the time between “stealth enabled encounters”. So you might spend some early prep time studying patrol patterns and the like. But once you know them, the next section is over much faster because you’re blinking between encounters (as it were). In fact, if you want to do the Nth+1 encounter, you’ve probably got more options on the table thanks to blink. In this respect it was sort of like Arkham Asylum, only you’re far more enabled here with blink than with the pseudo stealth of that game (which, to be fair, is partly a reflection of the environs). I really appreciated it.
We love the Arkane guys.
Blink is awesome. Just using it in it’s basic ability is fine, but the damage you can cause with that and time stop…is frankly sublime. My first playthrough I didn’t use any of the time powers–boy did I miss out.
Game Informer recap:
Dishonored 2 Details
Visually the game pretty much looks like a more detailed version of the last game.
Before anyone asks, there’s no co-op, as they weren’t sure how to design that in.
The game runs on a modified version of idtech5 they’ve dubbed The Void Engine.
The game takes place 15 years after the original.
After the events of the first game, Corvo was concerned that at some point, people would attempt to assassinate Emily. As such, he spent said 15 years training her how to be a magical assassin like him whenever she wasn’t too busy being Empress.
The game starts out with you playing as Emily during a coup d’etat and having to escape.
Afterwards, you choose whether to play as Emily on her quest to reclaim her throne, or as Corvo with the same objective.
“When fans found out they could play Dishonored 2 from the perspective of Emily Kaldwin, they were overwhelmingly positive. “The response was stunning for us,” Smith says.”
The game starts and ends in Dunwall, but the rest of the game takes place in Karnaca, which is inspired by Mediterranean European countries and is the birthplace of Corvo. Karnaca is also where the majority of the game takes place.
There’s a bunch of stuff about their art design process in here. Let’s just suffice it to say that if you liked how the first game looked and how the universe was, you should be satisfied here.
Anton Sokolov is back.
The plot setup for how missions works sounds pretty similar. There’s some public figure doing bad things and you get information/help from other characters to help in your goal of taking them down.
The guards are a lot smarter this time and can also do things like vault around and scale objects to chase you.
Emily has a new set of powers. Far Reach is this giant hand grappling hook thing that pulls you around. It’s like blink, except you actually physically move across spaces, so guards can notice you. Far Reach can also be used as a weapon by swinging around environment objects.
The game is a lot more vertical so these movement abilities are especially important.
You can do non-lethal aerial takedowns.
Missions have various options for completion and progression throughout, much like the previous game.
You can use guards as human shields.
Non-lethal/stealth options have been expanded quite a bit to be more up to par with the amount of lethal options.
Another one of Emily’s abilities is Mesmerize, which stuns multiple guards temporarily.
You can puts guards into beds to avoid suspicion.
There’s a bunch of difficulty sliders for things like how visible you are in cover.
There’s quick saving/quick load in all versions of the game now along with checkpoints so you don’t risk losing much progress at any given time.
Coy non-comment about mods. Please download Bethesda.net™.
Another of Emily’s powers is Domino. You link up to four guards together, and then whatever happens to one guard, happens to the rest. For example, if you link four guards, and then lead one into a stun mine, all four are stunned.
Emily also has the Shadow Walk ability which lets her slink into shadows and squeeze into tight places.
Your base of operations is a boat.
Batman Detective Vision returns.
Both Emily and Corvo have a pistol, sword, and crossbow, but they look different. Also they have different end game upgrades to the items.
Corvo has the same powers as the last game, but they’re upgraded and expanded.
Corvo is voiced by Garrett from Thief because Harvey and Raf like Thief and this game has obviously ate its lunch.
Corvo’s Bend Time ability can now also fast forward time.
Corvo’s possession ability can now be chained between creatures.
The abilities now unlock in a tree.
Corvo’s blink can assassinate someone through a glass window starting at level 1.
The mansion from the trailer is an interlocking puzzle level where you pull levers and open new areas and all sorts of stuff like that.
The clockwork soldiers are now wood instead of porcelain, though it’s nice looking wood.
They’re trying to make the ending and morality systems less bad this time.
Sounds amazing.
So on board.
I hope the two main characters have intermeshing stories, taking somewhat different paths, rather than simply being different assortments of powers and voice acting. Given the (no hyperbole) masterpiece that was Dishonored 1, I have great faith in these developers.
Yeah, I was wondering how far they’d go. What they’re doing is already above average. Usually we get the same character with a big enough skill tree or approach to the game that you can play it multiple times with different styles.
On the other hand, they could close off a few paths and give each character a unique way to solve certain story missions. That’s at least realistic.
It looks like Arkane Austin’s Prey reboot will be announced on June 12th.
http://www.gamesradar.com/looks-like-prey-2-might-be-announced-at-e3-heres-everything-we-know/
Talk about dragging a long dead corpse from the gaming grave.
I’m really curious to see how that turns out. I remember thinking the Human Head made “vertical slice” of Prey 2 they showed at PAX 2011 with the space marshal and the open-world bounty hunting looked amazing.
I really don’t know why they bothered to resurrect that IP. There has never been a great Prey game, and it’s a silly amerindian faux-spiritual shooter setting.
Since rumors have put it more in the System Shock type of area, I’m really hoping Techland might some day do something along the lines of what was shown at that E3 presentation you mentioned. After Dying Light I am convinced they could really do it justice.