Dishonoured: Killing when you have an option not to.

[Loonyyy]

What makes this game totally blow Deus Ex: HR out of the water is the Stealth.

In HR, Stealth was the only option and the best option. Stealth gave you the most EXP, stealth augments were OP, and doing anything but stealth was less EXP and the gun fighting was pretty bad.

In Dishonered, not only is stealth great, but some if not most of the time, it was not the best course of action to take in situations. And the go kill all gameplay is fantastic as well so both sides were equally enjoyable to play.

I totally agree with this and come to the opposite conclusion.

Deus Ex, or my other favoured comparison for Dishonored, Hitman, have a definite Stealth focus. It's the right way to do things, and other options tend to be less effective. But that for me encourages stealth. Whereas in Dishonored, the lack of tension involved in stealth lowers the impact for me. There's no consequence to my play if I get caught, so I stopped bothering with the stealth/pacifist run and started killing all the guards in the most imaginative ways I could find. Without being spotted of course, I am a professional. I think I would have preferred it if there was a definite advantage to stealth as opposed to the High/Low chaos result, which I couldn't care less about. Still a good game though.

 

[Burst6]

I went nonviolent on all of them. When i have the option i always go for that. It's very tricky. If you're caught you can't fight back at all unless you use up all your sleep darts.

Eventually i found a cool trick with blink. If you teleport behind the enemy as they're attacking you, they lose you and you can do a sleeper hold on them. I once had about 6 assassins come after me at once and i managed to knock out 5 of them this way. the 6th one killed me though.

 

[kyogen]

Interestingly enough I've seen that conversation play out two ways, the one that you described (on a low chaos run) and on my high chaos/murder/death run I got a different scene:

That's good to hear. Thanks! I'm about to start a high chaos run now that I finally finished the low chaos/very hard thing. It was great, but I'd like to play a very different game now. It sounds like I'll get it. More humanity all around vs. less humanity all around. Should be fun.

 

[LobsterFeng]

I try my best to avoid killing but I usually end up anyway because I suck at sneaking.

 

[Longstreet]

I just finished my Kill-almost-everything playthrough (chocked out some if i felt like it, very rarely) Spared the first assassination guy's life because i thought

Spoiler

Exile was worse than death

Anyway it was still high chaos.

Now to my point. Doing the low chaos run now, and i dont see any difference (yes the ending scene will be different i know) But still tallboy's in the same places, still watchtowers in the same places still walls of lights in the same places.

Just got back to the

Spoiler

Assassin HQ

so there might be a difference for there on out. But i am doubtfull

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I was pretty fucking pissed at the Empresses' death so I murdered literally everybody I saw, like fuck was anybody protecting the Lord Regent going to survive. By the end I was so pissed off at everyone for being a colossal dick to me I murdered Samuel when he docked for the last assassination. When Slackjaw gave me the nonlethal/easier method for getting rid of the twins I flat out refused, I just wanted to take their lives away from them myself.

On my pacifist run I felt so much better after neutralising a target than when I just flat out slit their throat, which was really weird. I loved the instant cathartic rush after jamming a sword into my target but knowing they were fucked for life was much more lasting.

Also... CAN WE STOP WITH THE FUCKING SPOILERS!!!??? THE GAME JUST CAME OUT FOR FUCKS SAKE!

You probably shouldn't be in a Dishonoured thread if you haven't played it and want to keep the spoilers to a minimum. That's just common sense.

 

[Vorpalrabbit]

I went through the first game as mostly pacifist/stealth and upon reaching Act 3, I had decided that 1) I've played through this too long to start killing everything at this point even though Emily is probably the only redeemable person in the story and 2) Once this run is done I'm starting a new game and there will be a reckoning.

Thoroughly enjoyed killing everything walked into my path; I didn't even use the stealth button the entire play through.

 

[ImperialSunlight]

Well, they are guards. They knew what they were signing up for. Plus, anyone that protects such a massive dick as the Lord Regent is just part of the problem.So yes, I do generally kill them. I also killed every pompous, privileged nobleman in that party later on.

 

[KeSlGamer]

I kind of wish there was a melee option for when you do get detected. I find I run out of sleep darts pretty fast, but then again, I think that would make the whole "no killing" run a lot easier.

I did end up killing people in my playthrough, mostly out of sheer panic when I did get caught or alerted. Also, a lot of the fun in this game comes from creative ways of killing people too, so there is that.

 

[kyuzo3567]

...do I get extra exp for them? I'm actually playing Kingdoms of Amalur right now and... I gotta say, I kill people in a room way across the way from this quest item in the dungeon. As long as I get 100xp+ for each kill, everything everywhere dies.

Doesn't work that way, You don't level up in the game, you just have the chance to find Bone Charms (which give bonuses) and Runes to buy/upgrade powers.... So kill everyone or kill no one, it doesn't matter to anything besides the ending

OT: everyone should note that before starting a new game with a certain play style in mind, plan out what powers you want... you only get 333 runes in the game (and one more if you go really evil with Granny Rags) but you'd need ~54 runes to max out every power

 

[meatsplash]

I have to do this to everyone I meet now. I never even noticed it because I was always playing with the volume pretty low.

 

[Agayek]

I have been playing dishonoured a lil bit and I have found myself wanting to avoid killing as much as possible. It is not because of the promise of a better ending but more because; if I was actually there doing this stuff, I wouldn't want to kill guards who are just doing their jobs. The overseers I saw differently however I was happy to kill them. In the first assassination there was the one bit where the guard is talking to a maid, then they mention they will be married: from then on my view on the enemies (city watch guards especially) was that they don't deserve to die just for existing. To me they were no longer just generic bad guys, but people.

Do others find this; that they don't just run around killing everyone. It is also how I see corvo's character, he doesn't seem like a blood thirsty socio path, so killing undiscriminatly pulls me from the immersion, as I don't believe he, as a character, would be doing that.

This is pretty much how I interpret/play Dishonored. I'm not gonna kill guards who are just doing their jobs, but I'm not gonna spare a guard that's in the middle of extorting a civilian or whatever.

Case in point, there's been a grand total of 6 deaths in the first 2 missions, 2 guards that were mugging a woman, 3 targets, and a civilian prostitute that I couldn't avoid killing without triggering an alarm.

 

[Therumancer]

I have mixed opinions. I agree with not killing when you don't have a reason to do so as a general principle, BUT when it comes to a game like "Dishonored" I think the way a lethal or non-lethal approach is tied to the eventual ending and how good/upbeat it is sort of defeats the purpose. Basically what Dishonored does is wave all these great toys in front of you, but then tells you that your going to pretty much be punished for playing with them. This is one of the reasons why I haven't played too much of it, when I realized this was the gimmick it kind of struck me as "meh" because I want a good ending, but at the same time if someone creates a sandbox game where your encouraged to do things like freeze time and then place blade shooting mines, I kind of want to be able to use those options.


It's one of those things where I think morality clashes with the game design.


Speaking entirely for myself, if I had designed "Dishonored" I would have had the take over of the bad guys be a little more complete, and set up a "Three Muskateers" or "Robin Hood" type scenario where the guards loyal to the previous empress were either framed and executed, exiled, or otherwise sent the borders to fight a war where they were otherwise occupied, leaving those loyal to the conspiritors (who would all be thugs and bastards) behind so you could be saving people by doing away with them.... and then pretty much nixed the entire morality thing.

Some would say that I'm missing the point, but that's not quite the case, I do indeed "get it" and what the developers were trying to say and do, but to be honest I think it kind of ruined the fun of this paticular escapist fantasy. I had visions of D'artaneon meets The Count Of Monte Cristo, and instead they basically wanted to turn it into "Steampunk Batman" except where Batman has useless gadgets he can't use without karmic backlash "because it's wrong". Batman already has his own game, and it worked because the entire thing was designed around being non-lethal, they didn't give Batman 46 differant ways to entertainingly kill the bad guys and then say "yeah, this is all there, and quite entertaining, but dare use it and you'll be punished".

They should probably rename Dishonored "Sleep Darts & Sleeper Holds... The Game". Instead of "Revenge Solves Everything" it should be "Revenge can be okay, as long as your not mean about it". Replacing the clockwork masked, ultra-lethal looking assasin with Jerry Sienfeld wearing the "poofy shirt" might also help more adequetly reflect how they reward you for playing.

 

[Zetsubou-Sama]

I did a Ghost/Clean Hands playthrough and enjoyed the hell out of it.

The only outcome I disliked was that the non-lethal resolution for one of the quests was to hand over the target to a big 'fan'. That just seemed weird to me since every other target is much less morally grey in outcomes for going non-lethal.

Other than that, stealing a man's pride by taking his pouch gave me much more satisfaction than killing him outright.

And, blink is op, no matter how many abilities I had or charms or nice little upgrades 99% of what I did revolved around blinking and dark vision. I used Stop Time and Possession once each.

 

[Reaper195]

A HA! Someone who finally spells it how it's been spelt for the last half millennium!


It depends on my mood. Sometimes I want to sneak around and completely ghost a level, no one knowing I was there except my now dead targets. And then they did not see what stabbed them from behind. Other times, I just run forward with sword and gun and Rambo the place up. Other times I like to mix it up. Sneak around, kill one guard, wait in an area filled with more guards until they all look away from one spot with no bodies, quickly blink in, drop body and blink out. Watch. God damn...this game is incredibly good. We need more like this. And it's not allowed to have a sequel. Maybe a 'spiritual successor'.

This game also prooves we don't need a new generation of consoles to make an original game. It just takes a bit of thought and not "LAAWWWWL! MOAR SEQUAAAAAAAAAAALS!"

 

[Radoh]

Well, I did everything that I could to minimise the deaths I left in my wake for as long as possible, until I got to what I assume was the last stretch of the game after

Spoiler

That obvious and wholly inevitable betrayal. I just find the whole affair to be completely unnecessary and it made me so mad that I just started shooting every assassin I see.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

Heh, I'm playing a curious-and-partially-competent-assassin game at the moment. I'm generally taking the path of least resistance - sneak everywhere and try to choke people unconscious and stow the body, but if I stuff it up, then I kill them. And if the alarm goes off or people are alerted nearby, I kill them too. Which led to a real cluster-f$%k of a situation in the High Overseer level - I poisoned him first just out of curiosity, but then the other guy set off the alarm and I 'had' to kill everything that moved. I've also commandeered a 'rocket turret' out of curiousity as well to see it at work and tried out the mines. Basically 'chaotic stupid' since I play games to have fun and the path of least resistance while I try things out is my first run-through choice.

 

[JWRosser]

Well, after I escaped from the prison, I looked at the achievements and saw that there was one for not killing anyone....which I had failed...big time.

So I thought that, for this playthrough, I might as well be a dick, and just kill everyone. Literally everyone.

On my next I will be trying for the no-killing and no-detection achievements. Then after that (if I do another) I think that I will only kill when necessary. But yeah, at the moment I'm just a horrible person.

 

[didiusm]

I've been playing the same way as OP. I've been fairly ruthless when it comes to killing overseers and thugs, but I've been trying to avoid killing guards and civilians. Just makes me feel better I suppose...