I missed the QA today,so I was wondering if they could answer some of these questions(or maybe the people here could answer it?):
You can still read it here. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x58ul/weare_harvey_and_raphael_cocreative_directors_of/?limit=500
First off,I wanted to say Bioshock was one of the best games I played,and I am always searching for games like that aka games with huge exploration and not just linear missions.
Well Bioshock was linear. The way it worked was you get to your objective and something happens from preventing you getting to it right at the last second. That way you need to go back to a specific spot and figure out to get around it. So it's a lot more confined than you think.
I am sure you played the new DX:HR right?If you notice, their "alternative" ways doesn't really have THAT much depth to it, and it's definitely not as vast as the previous games.
Yes that is true. It was criticized especially for that when compared to the original. Alec Meer said it best in the new preview of Dishonored he did for Rock Paper Shotgun:
Some things I find for myself, others I again need pointing out to me, as this game – or at least this level; time will tell – is not in the habit of making all its contents apparent. If every level has this many routes and secrets, it is exceptionally unlikely that I will find the majority of it in a single playthrough. While Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a natural if not entirely appropriate comparison, tends to swiftly and evidently splinter into blatant sneak route/violence route/hack route options, I found Dishonored was much more about figuring it out as I went along, assembling a quietly chaotic route through the level that likely encompassed only a fraction of it.
-Does Dishonored have a certain depth to it when finding the alternate paths and such? For example,can you go to another building,and jump from that window to the building you want to infiltrate?Or go by the sewers and figure the maze that is in there?
You can and you are rewarded for exploring.
-I understand blink is critical to the game,but if someone does not want to use it,can he still complete the missions just by old school stealth?
The game can be completed without gadgets or any supernatural abilities at all.
-Lastly,how long will it last?Does it have good sidequests(like DX:HR did) and not just fetch quests?
The official info is that the most direct approach is 12 hours. A stealth one would take almost double the time and if you explore and try to do everything you'll end up killing even more time. The game has huge replayability. It's not like HR where you can spec into hacking and get everything before the final level. You can't do this here because you need whale bone charms which you can get through exploring. The ratio between all the whale bone charms you need and the ones the game offers is something like 1.5:4 (something like that). This means that no matter if you explore to get everything you can't get everything in the game.
A bit of both. You have outstanding skills so sometimes you would be asked to do a trivial thing by non-trivial means. Overall the side quests in Dishonored aren't there to flesh out the characters just like in HR. They are there to flesh out the world of the game.