Stealth in Dishonored svcks.
svcks svcks svcks svcks svcks. It's kind of awful.
And I love stealth games. I've played and replayed Hitman Bloodmoney, and Thief 2, and Splinter Cell 1 and 3, and happilly went through Deus Ex 3 totally stealthy.
And I now realize I pretty much ruined parts of Dishonored for myself by trying to play through it like the stealth games above. There were non lethal options. I was practically told I would get a "bad" ending if I didn't go stealthy. So I did until the third to last mission.
And I was getting bored of it. It was easy and tiresome, and I hadn't killed a single person, on purpose anyway (What is it with being so easy to accidentally kill guys?).
And then on the third to last mission I decided, screw it, I'm just getting this game over with. I started blinking around like a mad man, not caring what alarms I set off or who saw me. I choked out or sleep darted half the guards I saw, and just ignored the rest as I ran past them with blink and bend time. I choked out the target himself after breaking into his room just shot around five guards in a row with sleep darts, and bolted out the front door with blink after the non lethal takedown option was done.
It was so, soooooo much better. This is coming from someone who's hoping to all heck that Assassin's Creed 3 is stealthy and had pre-ordered Hitman Absolution.
So don't play this game stealthy if you want the best experience, at least in my opinion. And to Harvey Smith and all the designers, if you're going to make a sequel/spiritual sequel, don't imply there's a right way to play the game. And don't imply that there's a way to play the game that you haven't actually designed for. I've missed so much potential fun in this game because you implied there was a great way to play it that didn't actually exist.
I respect you for your good taste in games, very good in fact, but even that very personal monologue we didn't really get an explanation as to why the "stealth is bad". So can you please give a more detailed explanation to it perhaps?
It's funny that you mentioned Human Revolution as well, because that game's stealth was god awful. The AI was completely clueless, easy to read and very very systematic, augmentations made you into a ghost and you can play the game just by walking. Now, that last part would be actually a selling point for me, if the level design and challenge of that aspect was well made and sadly it isn't.
Let's get a few things out of the way, enough with the "good" and "bad" endings garbage. Why the [censored] do you people care so much about such a meaningless system. I have a buddy who plays games with "choices" all the time and you know what he says about choice in video games?
I play as I see fit and as if though I am actually there. If the game acknowledges that, then it's well designed. I am not too worried about the ending because most games don't have well made endings depending on the choices you made throughout the game. With that said, I still love games that make it difficult to choose an action based on the situation and that reward you for making A choice, and not THE choice that determines if your gameplay gets easier because you performed a "good action" according to the game.
Thankfully Dishonored actually does the choices and consequences thing well. However, the non-lethal playthrough lacks variety. That is a fact and it is a shame for those who played games like Deus Ex and miss that variety here. It still doesn't mean that playing stealthily isn't enjoyable, a lot of people enjoyed it. Sure the AI isn't perfect and the game design is unfair to the stealth player in some rare occasions, but it is still there and still very functional and enjoyable.
What the action playthrough is is thrilling. It's simple to understand and do depending on the situation and it is meaningless for the most part. My first playthrough was exactly a High Chaos one where I basically shouted "COME AT ME BROS!!!" and murdered everyone senselessly. And that's what it is, it is a brainless, murder everyone simulator and you deserve the "oh so bad ending where everything is grim" for it.
I don't want to start a moral discussion because they are meaningless as well and very subjective, but playing chaotically is pure idiocy. If you murder anyone but the key targets then you SHOULD be called an idiot for it like in Thief. You got seen and people learned more about you? IDIOT! You killed some innocent guards who's jobs are to follow orders even if they don't make sense to them? IDIOT!
Spoiler Too bad the game never calls you that until the last level.
So to sum up,
NO, the stealth aspect does not svck, it is you who did not enjoy it. It is simple and lacking depth but it is still very solid and rewarding.
NO, enough with the dumb endings discussions. You are not forced into anything, you are forcing and deluding yourself into getting the "good" ending and that's not the game's fault. The game's fault is that it doesn't balance the lethal and non-lethal aspects and therefore the advantage in gameplay goes to the lethal side. And getting detected doesn't raise Chaos, killing does, and if it does it's fairly insignificant, so you don't have to play Ghost all the time.
I want to congratulate you on actually figuring out that you don't need to force yourself to enjoy a game. Far better than the other people who were too dim to think of that.
» Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:28 am 
