Title says it all really. Not necessarily a complaint thread, more of a "I would have done this differently" thread.

Use spoiler tags where appropriate as well please, since we haven't all finished the game.

I'll start;

I would have given the Overseers distinctive voices, something really cold and harsh to match the masks; if you do your reading you know the Overseers are brought up in a harsh environment. So giving them generic voices seemed like a bit of an anti-climix to me.

I would have worked more on the "area" of voices. There are several times when it sounds like to person is right behind me, when I know for a fact that I'm alone on the ledge and he's down the street a ways....or inside the room, behind a closed door, yet he's mumbling like he's next to me.

Not a "big" issue since it makes me be extra aware...but still, a little annoying.

I would get rid of the gun mechanics for enemies. Seriously it is the stupidist design for enemy attacks I have ever seen. You charge them they shoot you, you try to slide they still shoot you, you get close and attack they either do this ridiculous dodge or they shoot you. And on top of all this the game generally throws multiple of them at you at once making it impossible to keep track of them all. They are by far one of the cheapest enemies I have ever encountered in a game.

Also the music box guys. They nullify your powers, wear bullet proof masks, their accordian sized music boxes are bullet proof, and their abilities push you backwards and hurt you. To many annoying aspects at one time.

Those are things that make the game difficult yes but I wouldn't change that; to me it makes sense if when you take on four guys you get overwhelmed because someone's also shooting you. It's an incentive to use a stealthy approach. Also, I thought the music box guys were a very interesting and clever design that force you to think on your feet if you come against them.

Nothing.

Change - nothing
Improve - everything

Wait what? The music actually nullifies your abilities? I've read about that in the in-game books, but never actually noticed. I could blink behind the jukebox guys and strangle them just fine...

As long as they are not playing or you are outside their effective range, you can use your powers just fine. The music empties your mana pool (it will be back when the music stops or you move out of range)

probably only the graphics BUT this is the only game i play that this type of graphics really fits, but i wouldnt mind to see some Crysis like Graphics (even if you dont like the game you have to admit that crysis has some Amazing Graphics)

I actually like the graphic very much. It has color, what I really miss in games today, and the watercolor style of the textures together with the exaggerated proportions of the characters give the game a very unique and painterly look. In fact there was this room with a picture hanging on one side and an open window on the other and on first glance I thought both were pictures...wouldn't want to have the same photorealism-striving art style as in all the other games...

Cant understand the gun complaint. Easy to dodge and enemies seem to prefer shooting their allies in the back more than you lol.

Improve? Hmm...

I would give the player the option to join callista
More RPG-like conversation options to talk with some NPCs.
I feel having runes and charms lategame is useless due to the game ending soon anyway. I would fefinitely wish the game was 2-3 levels longer with charms and runes stopping atleast 2 levels in advance to the ending. Getting upgrades both in the rune/charm and weapons/armor department both seem meaningless that close to the end.

Longer ending cinematics going more through the individual fates of the characters you met. The ending grants some closure but still tonns of questions about "What happened to THAT guy/gal" and so on.

Bigger variety of enemies and enemy balance when it comes to numbers. It is pretty stupid that the city watch have more officers than regular soldiers.

Add current level stats to the pause menu. Not even as a selectable option, but something that just displays, every time you pause. So every time you go to manually save the game, your kills and detections are right there for you to view. It would be really nice, for those of us tediously struggling to get the Ghost and Clean Hands achievements, if we could see those stats at any given time instead of having to wait until we finish the level and then have to go back and replay it if we messed up and left a body someplace where a ratswarm spawned when we weren't looking, or were seen and didn't realize it. When you're being slow and cautious to avoid being seen or killing anyone, it can take a good hour or two or three to finish a single level, only to learn that oops! Somebody died and it counted against you, so you have to go back and do the WHOLE THING AGAIN. Being able to see your stats anytime will also help people who are getting phantom kills or detections that they can't figure out where or how or why they're happening, by letting them narrow it down to exactly when and where in the multiple-hour-long level is it happening.


Also want to add that I love the gun mechanics and don't think they should change at all. It's kinda comical that because a guy who has a gun will shoot you with it if you rush him is "cheap". It's a fact of life. If someone has a gun, and you try to kill them, they're going to shoot you with it. Every chance they get. But because you can't just blindly charge them head on and slaughter them like lambs, they're "cheap"? Bwahahahahahahah, yet if they all just attacked you one at a time, while others stood around watching and waiting their turn, and/or they couldn't aim worth a damn, then the combat would be "too easy and unrealistic". Gamer kids crack me up. XD

A little more runes. Im on the part where you kill Lord Regent and I only have 3 powers. I have been getting them in MOST levels.

Um... your problem isn't a problem. How to tell you why, though? Er... screw it, this is the only way. I'll be vague, but it's still a

Hands down, the length of the game. The pacing through the story is too fast (your first REAL mission is essentially a chapter boss mission). Relying on the gamer being a completionist who will hunt down every rune and bone to make the game longer is NOT an effective means of adding gameplay value. I completed the game, with side quests I found out about, in ~10 hours. I was a little surprised when other people posted pretty much the same play-through times, and was edging on disbelief, or at least maybe being a little critical of their play style. BUT, I did NOT run through the game at all. I played Corvo as angry and vengeful, but not stupid. Thus, I stealthed through a lot of the missions, but did not hesitate to kill any who got in my way. After the first climix, I became incensed, and took out every last person in my way to the ending. Still, I approached with stealth and guile. Ten hours. That's it. That is, for me, less than half a game.

BESIDES the fact that "bang for your buck" stinks ($6/hour? Ouch.), replay value is not very good at all. Same missions, same character, same handful of powers. But it's worse than that. The entire premise of the game is "play as you will", with a hearty encouragment towards playing a good guy who stealths through with minimal to no kills (based on the endings). Yet, the pacing of the story/levels/missions is one that encourages FPS play. It's fast and frenetic, with too much happening too quickly. IOW, the pacing doesn't fit the game at all and would be more suited to a game that was designed with MP in mind (which the levels do seem to be), with a relying on MP to be the focus. Why they did this, I have no idea. Many of the areas/maps are "re-usable", and, indeed, are recycled for future missions. So the only reasoning I can think of is that they ran out of story ideas. My ultimate feeling is that I purchased a paperback novel with 300pp only to discover that the last 200pp are blank.

So, overall, I can't really give Dishonored better than a 66%, D-. Don't get me wrong, EVERYTHING else about the game is amazing. BUT, this one flaw is a VERY major flaw. So much so that, despite the greatness of all other aspects of the game, I would never recommend it to anyone other than a hard-core action/adventure buff.

Simply adding in-between missions (doubling mission count), lead-ins to "chapter boss" missions, and replacing some runes (bone charms are fine on side quests) to be more easily discoverable without having to go off in the exact opoosite direction of your mission intent would, IMO, fix this game up to near 100%. As it is, though, it will fall through the cracks as just another adventure game, CnP of every past adventure game. This is a shame, because otherwise, Dishonered IS something really special.

Not so many hints. I even consider some of the notes you find too blatant.

That is actually something I personally really liked...taking out mid-bosses and other mooks before I can target an important character is an overused trope..

Agreed. There is nothing wrong with Dishonored. If they were ever to make a sequel all they would need to do is improve what they already have and add a bit more of everything.

Which would be fine, but for the fact that the lead-in "trope" is simply deleted, with no other content to take its place. So basically, half to two thirds of the game up to that mission is simply "not there". And that continues then, throughout the entire game, leading to the feel of "less than half a game". In all honesty, it feels a lot like Brink, just with a FAR, FAR better SP story and play. Just as short though, leading to the obligatory shrug after the end. That's it? And there's not even MP? (Which I abhor, BTW.) Where's the rest of the game? I honestly expected the "ending" to be a second false-climix. Alas, it was not.

Given the context of the game, what would have had them fill it with as a lead-in to the "bosses"? I thought it fit their story rather well. It's not like you were in a foreign land where intelligence-gathering missions were required. The whole game takes place in your own back yard as it were, your own city. You know the key players, and where to find them. Beyond simple scouting and reconnaissance, which can easily be dismissed as having been handled for you by a few low level agents (which is exactly what they did), what exactly would Corvo have been doing aside from going directly after the people who betrayed him? I get what you're saying about it throwing you straight after the important characters with nothing leading up to it, but given the context, doesn't it fit? If you were a man such as him, in a situation such as his... is that not exactly what you would have done? I honestly can't think of anything they could have used for lead-ins that wouldn't have felt transparent and hollow and obviously just filler to make the game longer.

If you ask me, you're far too consumed with the idea that the value of the game is in the time it takes you to complete it. Movies that are less than 2 hours cost 20-30 bucks depending on the format you choose to buy them in. How's 10-15 dollars an hour strike you? By comparison video games are a bargain, and besides... while, granted, teens still make up a good portion of the market, video gaming is very much an advlt hobby. advlts with jobs, with other hobbies, and basically with lives outside of video games, who play for maybe 2-3 hours a day at most, if even that, do not have the time to committ to a 20+ hour game like a highschool kid does who does nothing but sit down and blast away 8 hours a day or more. We still play though, and we want games we can finish in a reasonable amount of time. I expect to be able to finish most any game I play, reasonably, within either 1 week of casual play, or 1 weekend of buckling down and devoting the entire weekend to just the game if it interests me enough to blow a weekend on it. If it takes longer than that than frankly, that's way more of my life than just one game deserves. There are other games I want to play, not to mention other things I want to do. And most advlt gamers are this way. Our time is valuable and we'll only give so much of it to just one game before we've had enough of it. Games like Skyrim for example are for hermits who do absolutely nothing with their time but play video games. So no, a game you can finish in ten hours if you skip exploration and item hunting is right around where it should be, IMO.

No replay value? What the hell are you smoking

No the game does not rely on people huntin down runes and bone charms for length as the game gives you an item to speed up that process. The length comes from the missions and the side missions which based on your time you ignored most of.

As for replay being same missions yes but you can play them completely differently. Go in a different way, take a different route through the area, use your powers differently, stealth vs aggressive, lethal vs non lethal. mix of the four.

Regarding same batch of powers try leveling different abilities. Ever consider that. The game doesn't have enough runes for everything so it is impossible for you to be incapable of using a different character build on a second or even third run. Or even go for the mostly blood and steel achievement and use only blink. This in itself adds more replayability. First run you blinked over obstacles, on your next try using possessions to sneak around, or none of the above and find ways through without using blink. There are plenty of different ways to handle every situation. Not to mention the changes to the levels based on factors like sidequests you have done and chaos level.

As for reused maps there was one section of city that was reused. Count it 1. And it was only used for the 2nd and 3rd missions (and only a portion of those missions at that not the entire mission.

As for being fast and frentic that is only if you made it so. On my second playthrough it was fast and frentic because I chose to go in aggressively. My first it was mid range because I was sneaking as much as possible while getting caught sporadically occaisionally speeding it up. If you play full on ghost non-lethal then it won't be frentic at all.

If you are only getting and average of $6 an hour then it is your own fault. I have made two runs so far together totalling around 25-30 hours during neither of which did I search out all the runes or bone charms. And within those two runs I haven't even touched the low chaos side of the spectrum. I am easily looking at around 2 more runs (non lethal low chaos, and lethal low chaos) which based on my stats so far will easily put me in the range of 50-60 hours of content not including any future runs I decide to do when I occaisionally come back to the game.

The issue here isn't difficulty. It is cheap enemy design. Difficulty challenges you but still gives you a fair chance. Cheap just has the enemies be unnecessarily overpowered and by extension frustrating.

The game should not use that as an incentive for stealth. The point of the game is play your way. That means the game should work reasonable as stealth, action, and no power use (action or stealth) which are the main methods of going through the game. Yet its design doesn't accomidate well for that. If you want to play action then music box guys are borderline invincible. Gun guys are just unnecessaily obnoxious since even with the bone charms they hardly ever miss even if you are moving and if you try to attack them they matrix dodge half the attacks and block most of the others. And if you want to play action without powers good damn luck because tall boys are pretty much impossible to deal with along with being ridiculously accurate.

Good game design provides challenge without being cheap. Gun enemies, tall boys, and music box guys are not challenging. They are overpowered and cheap. Enemies need to be reasonably suited to all play styles not an incentive to force you into a specific one. If they wanted to incentivise players to play stealthily they should have just made a stealth game. They didn't. They made a play your way game and should be expected to design enemies like mindedly.

.... they have guns. You're a human being. A well trained human being, sure, but if Bruce Lee tried to attack three guys with guns with nothing but his fists, he would still get shot. Guess what happens when humans get shot? Be glad Corvo can take more than one bullet and not only live, but keep fighting. That's already being unrealistic in the name of being "fair".

If you ask me this is actually one of the most balanced games I've seen in terms of making Corvo a badass without making him unrealistically overpowered. You go head to head with one guy, your odds are good. Even if he's better armed than you are, you're probably gonna own him and eat his lunch. Two guys, you can probably still handle yourself just fine. 3 guys, things are getting tricky now. Odds are you're still going to win in the end, but you're gonna get hurt doing it, probably need an elixir or two. Add guns or firebottles and things are really getting messy now. All of this is perfectly fair and reasonable - even a skilled martial artist can't fight that many people at once by themselves. What do you want them to do, fight you one at a time while the others watch and wait their turn? Have really horrible aim? Make Corvo able to dodge bullets, or get shot and just shrug it off (more than he already does I mean)? Would that be "fair" enough for you?

At least one more non lethal takedown (from above specially).

First, I've been playing games since before SSI's time, original Goldbox BEFORE they were Goldbox, etc. That should give you some idea as to my age. 2-3 hours a pop means you've finished a game in a week or less. To me, that is not acceptable for any game of any genre and is definitely below the somewhat standard 20 (or so) hours of most new (non-MP) releases for the "full campaign". What would they "fill" with? Well, there are definitely things they COULD have done. One of the GLARING things missing is the possibility of investigating the plague, its origins, the weepers, and how to resolve it. There's not a single mission (other than one side mission early on which involves infecting rather than curing) that I can recall that actually dealt with the plague directly. That could easily have added another 5-10 hours. Another thing, motivation. WHY? There's no real *good* explanation, rationale, for explaining why the beginning happened in the first place. And then the end, well, that could EASILY have been three separate missions. There's tons of potential for "filler" that is substantial, not *just* filler. As it is, the lack of extended play time does, yes, seem like reading the cliff notes to a novel rather than the novel itself.