Dishonored II

[PaulH]

Music sounds like a bad Eurovision entry but yeah the game looks great, really enjoyed the first one

[dux]

I thought the music was good.

[Puddy]

It was okay, but nowhere near this:

 Yumyum!

[-HP-]

 

[Sentura]

The environments look great and interesting, I feel like I want to explore the world. But the gameplay feels very overpowered and gimmicky. From a purely technical player point of view there is never a need for the player to use any of the complex abilities, it seems they only exist to show off instead of acting like tools intended for players to use in different situations. In the end, after the initial buzz over trying out a new ability fades, it just becomes a tool that can do the exact same thing many if not all the other abilities can do.

I'm also not entirely sure what to make of the Corvo skillset. I hated the blink in the original Dishonored because every time I used it, it felt like I was breaking the game. It took me out of the game, and made the gameplay stale and boring. I tried playing without it, but there are just too many situations where it was necessary to use in order to overcome a challenge quietly. I sometimes ended up attempting to break the AI instead, just to try a different approach. A shame it doesn't look like much has changed for this new iteration.

Edited June 14, 2016 by Sentura

[El Moroes]

Glad to see you are interested by our game  

[Sentura]

Ah cmon man, you're making me look bad for giving valid feedback

[Thrik]

I do like the look of this a lot, but then I loved the original so that's no surprise. I get what you're saying Sentura about the powers but honestly I think you could apply that criticism to virtually any game that provides an open-ended approach to the gameplay. I'd say that it's a fairly necessary side-effect of not designing in a 'rock, paper, scissors' type way where problem A requires weapon/ability B.

Indeed, in most games you just get a big arsenal of weapons and I personally end up using a few favourites most of the time as per my preferred playing style. I found that I did the same thing in Dishonored — rarely using many of the powers — and in similar gameplay types such as Metal Gear Solid 5 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. For example in MGS5 you have many options for absolutely decimating an area using brute force, but many people will use the various more time-consuming but thrilling stealth options.

Maybe in some ways it's just not your type of game, and you prefer ones with a more controlled approach to the obstacles you encounter where each puzzle has a very specific solution. I saw you say similar stuff about the new Deus Ex too yet both these games' gameplay look superb to me.  

[Sentura]

I think you're right in thinking that many games have this kind of approach, but that doesn't mean it is a good approach. Popular opinion should not dictate whether something is inherently good or bad, as I'm sure you would agree. More so when you consider that there are still many open questions/problems that still haven't been solved in game design and the games industry as a whole.

I'd wager the reason these kinds of approaches are still used is because novelty matters more to people who play games than game depth does, and given that most players may only play the first 20 minutes to 1 hour of your game, you can use these gimmicks to your advantage as a wow factor early in the game, at the cost of making them less useful later on, when you will (hopefully) have engrossed players into the story and world so much that they don't notice or care.

And of course there is always going to be an "arsenal" of abilities at the player's disposal, but in my experience what makes an ability system great is that each ability should not overlap with other abilities in their use, and that they should not break the game by conventional use. I have the following arguments for this:

The argument for the former is that players will always use the path of least resistance, so if an ability is complex to use (in terms of setup time, timing, placement etc.), but has the same effect as an ability that is simple to use, then players will favor the simpler ability more. That makes the other ability gimmicky at best, and redundant at worst. The player should not use an ability once and then forget about it because the game emphasizes too many new abilities or just does not provide enough situations where setting up an ability is "worth it" for the player.

The argument for the latter is that abilities can allow you to break the game experience by either overpowering the player to the point where the challenges in the game become trivial, or by allowing players to avoid gameplay challenges altogether. In these situations, it's very easy to break flow/immersion and therefore make the player's experience worse while at the same time forcing players to use these abilities to progress the game following their "playstyle."

I think you're also right that in many ways it's not my type of game. I like the core loop experience of these types, but it feels like they are adding too much clutter/gimmicks/Michael Bay obscuring the core of what could otherwise be a great game. Maybe it's because it's 2016 and people think the genre should evolve in terms of the tools at a player's disposal. I personally think that games should evolve the gameplay challenges first before evolving the tools.

I think this video explains these kinds of issues much better than I can, so feel free to watch (Thief series are by no means perfect games, but they do have some very, very good design):

 

Edited June 21, 2016 by Sentura

[Thrik]

Yeah I do agree with some of what you're saying.

Overlapping functionality and over-complicated functionality do often cause me to just ignore some features, although part of me also likes the sheer novelty of — for example in Metal Gear Solid — being able to use different items such as empty magazines, balloons, making a noise, etc to achieve the same effect of distracting an enemy for a while. There are subtle but meaningful distinctions to how exactly you use these, but they do largely produce the same result.

I think a really important factor is that like you say the player isn't excessively powerful to the point of the game being devoid of challenge. I think that Dishonored did a really good job of keeping the game tricky despite the load of powers at my disposal largely because of the stealth element. Many powers would expose my position, so I had to sparingly use the less conspicuous stuff to creep around. If I was spotted, that's when the big guns would come out. That's actually how I played Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid too.

I guess that a lot of it comes down to self-impose player discipline. It's my personal experience and observation of others that even though you can just run and gun through games like the aforementioned, it's a much more satisfying and enjoyable experience to use stealth but when shit hits the fan segue into the more action-packed approach rather than just dying/giving up as older stealth games tended to enforce. Uncharted 2–4 actually use this formula to great effect.

I do enjoy seeing games playing around with these questions, along with how to keep games engaging in terms of storyline and progression in a world of increasingly open environments — something that can very easily cause a game to quickly grow boring once the initial rush of exploring the world wears off.

[BJA]

Some concepts, really beautiful art style. 

http://www.iamag.co/features/the-art-of-dishonored-2/

[ElectroSheep]

Out new gameplay trailer is out !

 

[El Moroes]

What is this game ?

[Vaya]

damn you guys like blowing up bodies

[grapen]

Loved the first, really looking forward to this. I need to know if that guard ever got his own squad after what happened that night!

 

;-)