Zero Punctuation: Dishonored

[StriderShinryu]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for calling out the garbage "silent protagonist who actually does have a determined personality/existence" approach for what it is.. garbage. And extra marks for actually mentioning Freeman in the discussion of how silly that approach really is.

 

[llyrnion]

I believe the problem is not so much the killing vs. not-killing, but rather the reasoning behind it. In Thief, you don't kill because that is "unprofessional". The best thief is the one that doesn't stoop down to killing, and if you want to be the best (i.e., play on Expert), you don't kill anyone (and then you have the guys that ghost all the missions. That's pretty awesome. I've never had the patience or skill for that).

Whereas using the player's lethality as a reward/punishment mechanic is kinda meh...

 

[Balkan]

I think that the case is the same as half life's , you decide your level of immersion .
The characters are quite interesting if you decide to talk to them ,listen to the whispers of the heart or examine their notes . Also they hint why Corvo is a bodyguard to the Empress .

 

[Gunjester]

I rather have a silent protagonist that someone who never shuts up, I always end up hating about 80% of voiced protagonists.

Ever considered that's because 80% of voiced protagonists suck or are samey?
There are protagonists who's presence and voices I've thoroughly enjoyed having with me. A silent protagonist is a character that lets you fill in the blanks and feel like you're in the story, a silent protagonist with conversation options stresses this more but a voice protagonist feels less like me in the shoes of this character taking the journey and more me taking the journey with this character. Like they're more companions than me. I like both to tell the truth.

 

[jehk]

The key to making a silent protagonist work is giving the player tons of options to choose from even if the majority of those options have little to no effect on the game. It allows the player to create the character they want. Corvo didn't have that. I will agree this silent protagonist sucks. I'd say the same about Half Life to best honest.

 

[TheMich88]

Didn't expect him to be so disappointed with it.

Well, I better try it for myself before judging.

It's true, I thought he would have liked it. A lot. Unfortunately I haven't played it and I won't be able to for a while, but after watching Harvey Smith, Raphael Colantonio and all the others declare and express all the undiluted passion, thought, talent and effort to make Dishonored, seeing all that "unrewarded" by Yahtzee (that I respect very very much, he's also the one who introduced me to Thief) leaves me kind of... empty.

Disappointed.

Sad.

 

[dyre]

I agree that it's too short, and the main characters were a tad bland (I thought Emily was alright though. Also, I like how she changes depending on your actions), but I actually thought the guards were pretty well characterized, with solid dialogue throughout the game. They're pretty human, with different views on politics, differing amounts of empathy for plague victims, and even different opinions of Corvo depending on whether he's been massacring them or mostly letting them live. In any case, I don't think the blandness of the characters matters too much to the game. None of them were really important enough that their bland personalities harmed the game, which is quite excellent at its core mechanics.

I didn't mind the binary choice aspect, but the urge to reload the game when caught instead of outsmarting the guards did get pretty annoying. The devs ought to patch out the "getting caught increases chaos" thing, and also add more stuns (plenty of ways to murder guards, only a few to knock them out, which is strange considering the game seems to want the player to knock them out).

 

[Lykosia_v1legacy]

And unlike Yahtzee, I strived for the no-kill achievment from beginning to end, and almost thought I made it. I never killed anyone on the missions, I disposed of all my targets nonlethaly, and I even shot that duelist guy with a sleep dart in the noggin'. But when I finished, I didn't get the achievment.

And then it hit me. I had killed two individuals. In fact, it was the first two individuals I encountered in the whole game. It was in the tutorial, and the game basically said "waste their asses".

I felt pretty drained after that...

Those guys don't count. I got the clean hands achievement easily.

Spoiler

Key thing is not to help Granny nor Slackjaw in the sewers. Just steal the key and run. If you help either one, you end up killing the other.

Edit: I disagree with Yathzee. Dishonored is the best stealth game of this gen. The moral system makes sense, because if you kill guards there is less guards to deal with the weepers, bandits and rats. I played Dishonored through twice. First killing everyone and spending hours to find all the different ways to kill someone. I spent 5 hours alone with the first assassinations, because I wanted to see how many different ways there were to kill the guy. Second I used stealth and it was fun experience as well. I tried to avoid guards as much as I could.

I've almost 40 hours spent with the game, so I think that was 40 euros well spent.

 

[In Search of Username]

You were expecting personality in a game published by Bethesda? Come on, now. And yeah, silent protagonists are fucking stupid. Maybe I'm just terrible at projecting myself on the character, but I honestly always think of silent protagonists as having absolutely no personality at all.

Silent protagonists are a reflection of the person playing them. If your silent protagonists has no personality...

Yeah but they aren't are they? I can't think 'what would *I* do in this situation?' because there is no way I can empathise with someone who runs around stabbing people and using his magical powers in a steampunk world. That is not a situation I will ever be in. But maybe if the character had some kind of personality of their own I could at least understand their motivations.

 

[daxterx2005]

Pope Magnificent the first or Slitpipes McGee...choices choices.

 

[TRex22]

its quite funny, i Just finished Dishonored for the first time. There are actually 4 endings. All pretty much the same except you die at the end (sorrry spoilers) basically in all 4 endings (youtube) you die of old age WTF? Its a video game, why the f*** would I care if the character dies like 40 yrs later after the story ended, its not like the sims where the player controls the asshole for his entire lifespan. Anyway the core mechanics are fun for like 3 missions and then it all gets kind of monotonous. The level design is good but at times confusing. I got lost at several points. They wanted to make an open world feel but not a sandbox game so its all like play GTA with no harlets. Basically I agree with Yahtzee which I do always do with his reviews.

One last thing. (sorry perhaps some minor spoilers) At the end the one NPC (he was so generic he was not really a character) told me how disappointed in what I became (a serial killer) and that I should go f*** myself. He then shot a flare so everyone knew where I was. WTF? This is a STEALTH game that screws you if you are amoral. The killing animations are much more entertaining than the non-violent ones. Its really the only reason I killed almost everyone except a few targets (the non-violent option wa a worse fate for them tehee hee).

Finally thats my two rands worth.
Sorry for the long post. Just had been thinking about what made the game disappointing for me from all the hype I had read before - and had to get it off my chest before my examinations start.
It is a good game but I am really unhappy with how right at the end there is this shift. Myabe its because my game kept loading too quickly and I could not read the loading screen, but I felt the game was against me and not my friend trying to give me some entertainment and maybe some message on society or what ever. Instead it insulted me.

 

[LostintheWick]

I love how the anthropomorphic game coughs up a cat head...
...
I'm still giggling. Idk why

 

[sageoftruth]

One thing that raised an eyebrow for me was his complaint about the characters being bleep bloopy but with expressive faces. I kind of felt the opposite. I felt that their voices had character, but their faces just didn't change, especially Emily. She's supposed to adore you, but her face never changes from, well, neutral. I don't think they got more than one expression each. It was some serious uncanny valley material when the characters' voices were implying strong emotions but they faces stayed neutral.

Still, I strongly recommend the game. It was designed so you can pick from a variety of strategies and even choose between being a stealthy assassin, or an unstoppable dervish of death, depending on your upgrade choices.

The moral choices also seem to fit, since Corvo is a character who feels torn between his desire for revenge and his loyalty to the empire. The guards are loyal to whoever runs the empire, so every guard who tries to stop you is a potential future ally. On the other hand, he's pissed because they're all blaming him for a crime he didn't commit. My point is, playing as violent Corvo or pacifist Corvo felt in-character either way.

 

[Rad Party God]

With my current playthrough of Thief Gold (and later 2 and 2X), I can confirm Yhatzee's sentiment about it, not about the giant boner that can slap everyone in a single room, but that it's easily one of the games with the most huge boner levels I've ever seen in any game.

Although Garret deffinitely isn't silent, although very quiet (being a thief and all that), he does speak and he has a great personality and that coming from a game from '98, where Quake 2, Half-Life and Unreal, heck, even System Shock 2 ('99, I know) were released and all had silent protagonists.

Personally, I'm still very interested in Dishonored only for being Thief meets Bioshock, I don't mind silent protagonists (even if Yahtzee says otherwise, I don't agree with 85% of what he says anyways) and I don't mind different endings.

 

[UM536]

I'm disappointed. I wanted to see a review of x-com since he mentioned the FPS in that E-3 and at least at harder difficulties it's kinda like a tactical survival horror.

 

[TRex22]

Its not the fact that there are multiple endings but that there are not enough endings and the ones there are, are generic, boring and linear in everyway. For such a hyped up game, it does not meet expectations.

 

[jehk]

Yeah but they aren't are they? I can't think 'what would *I* do in this situation?' because there is no way I can empathise with someone who runs around stabbing people and using his magical powers in a steampunk world. That is not a situation I will ever be in. But maybe if the character had some kind of personality of their own I could at least understand their motivations.

Sorry quoting for me is messed up at work. Hopefully you see this...

I'll agree with you for this particular silent protagonist. Silent protagonists in general is a different story.

 

[charliesbass]

Slender review for a Halloween special?

 

[TRex22]

[/quote]
I think you missed the point: (stealth) you work hard and resist temptation to doom the city, so you do good. (killing) You slaughter everyone like a psyco and you feel fun and joy in various ways to kill a person, but at the same time you doom the city, so you do bad by, well, being bad. It's like that point Yahtzee brought in Spec Ops: when the killing is fun but you should feel ashamed.[/quote]
In spec-ops I did feel bad. This game annoyed me. The characters were generic and evil. If you read some of the stuff ingame, you see how awful the overseers are. The whole game felt like everyone was evil or sick and crazy. I know your actions affect the world but honestly the game did not make me care. I used stealth to kill everyone, not that I am socipathic or psychopathic, it was my revenge to the game. Also the game's logo was "Revenge solves everything" not the same message which the game tried and failed to portray to the player

 

[Mr.Squishy]

You were expecting personality in a game published by Bethesda? Come on, now.

I do have to say that I agree and am being quite verbose in doing so to avoid another terrifying run-in with the mods. Albeit, Fallout 3 and NV at least had one or two characters I could kind of remember...if I concentrate very hard...okay, I give up, the only one I can think of is Moira Brown, and that's one out of how many characters populating two separate wastelands?
Bethesda and Bioware/Obsidian/both of the aforementioned should team up sometime...