Zero Punctuation: Dishonored

Tireseas_v1legacy

Plop plop plop
Sep 28, 2009
2,419
0
0
leviadragon99 said:
Sooo... mixed overall then.
Pretty much. I played completely through it once so far and got what I think is the middle ending. It does offer some challenge, especially if you go for the no-kill run, but the non-regenerating mana system really hamstrings a lot of potential.
 

Astro

New member
Feb 15, 2012
64
0
0
I knew Yahtzee wouldn't love Dishonored but I'm surprised that he liked it as much as he did. He mentioned that the game gets a bit easy towards the end, and I guess that's more up to which skills he picked, but the game is too easy from the start of the second mission if you pick Blink and Dark Vision to upgrade first - your bread and butter abilities. The stealth isn't up to much once you've figured out the guards can't look up and you can instantly be 'up' pretty much anywhere at no cost to your mana after you wait three seconds. The non-lethal assassinations also all feel incredibly token and gimmicky given the narrative, what's required to pull them off, and how easy the regular assassinations are. It's cluttered and as he mentioned it struggles to find a rhythm. A lot of the writing is either a mishandled version of Thief, Half-Life 2 and Bioshock and pretty much anything original to Dishonored is just bad. The world feels empty, there's too much telling and not enough showing, exploration for the sake of learning about the world goes against Corvo as a character, etc.

I really didn't think this game was anything special, it doesn't even come close to Thief or Hitman and I'm surprised people are saying it's the best stealth game in 10+ years, even Thief 3 was better, (and ahem, Blood Money).
 

chi7891

New member
Jul 9, 2012
1
0
0
I also expected a more positive review. I thought the game was excellent - one of the best I've played in a long time.
 

robinkom

New member
Jan 8, 2009
655
0
0
As an American, I always enjoy Yahtzee's jabs at our construed English. It was Noah Webster that removed the "u" from words like dishonoured when he wrote the first American Dictionary... it's his fault, blame it on him. ;)
 

C117

New member
Aug 14, 2009
1,331
0
0
I do agree that it feels a tad bit odd to give the player a good ending or a bad ending depending on how many people they killed throughout the game. Especially since said game gives the murder path a freaking TON of ways to get rid of someone, but the pacifist path gives you exactly two: sleep darts, and a forceful neckhugging. Neither of which is especially useful once guards do inevitably catch a glimpse of your incredibly suspiciouslooking halloween mask.

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...

Overall though, I enjoyed Dishonored. It was challenging and interesting enough to make me play through to the end, even if I probably won't play it again in quite some time. Guess I'm very easy to please.
 

thisbymaster

New member
Sep 10, 2008
373
0
0
The environment gave me a Half-life 2 feel. The game play felt slow until you upgraded your abilities. I tried to start off with the non-lethal approach but that was boring so I just found myself killing everyone. But everyplace they gave me a chance to do the non-lethal I did, even when everyone else died. All of the plot turns were easy to see at the very beginning. "Your going to die, your going to die, etc etc." I really felt that so many times we should have been given a chances to say something. I think there are some bugs that should be fixed, like if you rewire a light wall and a guard walks through it somehow everyone thinks it was you even when no one saw you do it. Maybe allow for corvo to put on the uniform of one of the guards?
 

The Last Melon

New member
Mar 19, 2012
113
0
0
I literally threw my arms up into the air when I read "Why are you all so bad at spelling 'honour'". AMEN BROTHER TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
 

Metalrocks

New member
Jan 15, 2009
2,406
0
0
havent finished it yet since i got the game few days ago but i do enjoy it so far. my first play through is stealth. killed few guards at the beginning but i dont care because the awareness is still low. but stealth is really good and i enjoy it a lot.
but my second play through will be killing everything.
 

BrionJames

New member
Jul 8, 2009
540
0
0
The morality thing did kind of irritate me. When the trailers first popped up on the internet, it shows all kind of stabby fun. Then the game came out and told me that it was "dark" for me to kill anyone. Fuck that, I understand that they were trying to point out the dangers of wrath and vengeance, but wasn't that what the game's premise is based on. Plus, by not having Corvo talk, we don't know if he actually wants revenge or is just some Jason Vorhees psychopath who lost his mind after his lover was killed in front of him. I did like this game, but it definitely needs some work. For now I guess I'll just have to stick with some good 'old fashioned Metal Gear Solid for my stealth needs.
 

disgruntledgamer

New member
Mar 6, 2012
905
0
0
OuendanCyrus said:
I rather have a silent protagonist that someone who never shuts up, I always end up hating about 80% of voiced protagonists.
A protagonists with a Bad voice actor and script is going to be worse than a silent protagonist, but a Good voice actor with a good script or even a mediocre script will out shine a silent protagonist 6 ways from Sunday.

The trick is getting that Good voice actor and script.
 

romanator0

New member
Jun 3, 2011
183
0
0
NameIsRobertPaulson said:
Binary moral choice goes up there with QTEs and anything from Japan not named Silent Hill in the things Yahtzee hates. That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for the developers. Guess they might actually need to innovate.
Well he likes Shadow of the Colossus and that's Japanese.

Gotta agree with Yahtzee on the length of the game though. For a game that's only single-player it's just too damn short for $60. And the game does seem a bit half-baked when it comes to some of it's mechanics like only having sleep darts and strangling people for non-lethal take downs, why not allow the player to club guards for a quicker take down but have it make some noise. Being forced to have the dagger in the right hand when it's almost completely useless for a non-lethal playthrough and also why not have more melee weapons for fighting that working differently.
 

CrazyGirl17

I am a banana!
Sep 11, 2009
5,141
0
0
I'm kinda with Yahtzee, I'm tired of silent protagonists. Not that there aren't plenty of good games with silent protagonists, but I'd prefer the main character to have some y=type of personality!

Also, I feel moral choice systems can be used to different game ends, but game developers are probably just lazy.
 
Feb 22, 2009
715
0
0
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.

Also, the image of Noam Chomsky jumping all over the furniture and assassinating people made my day.
 

Yahtzee Croshaw

New member
Aug 8, 2007
11,049
0
0
RJ 17 said:
Yahtzee's review is pretty much right in line with everything that my friends had said about the game. Pretty fun, but eeeehhhhhhhhh.....

The biggest complaint was that it was too short and that the endings weren't really much to write home about. I had been considering getting the game but after hearing from friends that had played it (one even said that his local GameStop had something like 30 used copies for sale only 4 days after the game came out) I've been thinking it's probably more along the lines of something you rent, knock out in a weekend, enjoy the experience, but then it's time to move on.

Seems like Yahtzee would agree with that notion.
I see, since I'm not in USA, and we don't have much of a used re-sell, it's hard to measure that. It's interesting to analyze that idea though, how long it takes and how many are re-sold.

I guess it's not my cup of tea then, I purchase only to keep, and it appears dishonored is not exactly a keeper.
 

TheIronRuler

New member
Mar 18, 2011
4,283
0
0
Sure, praise HL2 as the second coming of christ, but talk about how silent protagonists are bad.

You couldn't find anything bad to say, did you?
 

SonOfMethuselah

New member
Oct 9, 2012
360
0
0
I'm enjoying Dishonored (I'll leave the 'u' out, because it's the title of a work, but I am not happy about it) so far, but I hear what Yahtzee's saying. I mean, personally, the only reason I reload when I get caught is because I'm trying for a pacifist-ghost run-through for trophy purposes. Not that I'm a trophy whore or anything, but because I actually wanted to see how difficult that made the game.

But there's nothing particularly engaging about the characters. The Loyalists in particular are about as characterized as a cardboard cutout. It's like they put so much effort into creating the world as a whole that they forgot to populate it until the last minute, and then had to rush through it.

Considering Arkane has only developed three games including this one, (and disregarding the art work they did on Bioshock 2), it's definitely not a bad attempt. I'd like to see it get a sequel, if only so that I can explore the world again with a more interesting population.

Also, I have no opinion one way or the other about silent protagonists, but I found it weird that they gave Corvo so much back story, and then didn't give him a voice. Probably a casualty of the moral choice thing.
 

maximalist566

New member
Jan 10, 2012
70
0
0
What shall we do with a drunken Yahtzee?
What shall we do with a drunken Yahtzee?
What shall we do with a drunken Yahtzee?
Earl-aye in the morning?

Feed him to the hungry Jim for dinner,
Feed him to the hungry Jim for dinner,
Feed him to the hungry Jim for dinner,
Earl-aye in the morning



Yahtzee is too harsh but has a point, as always.
 

jehk

New member
Mar 5, 2012
384
0
0
In Search of Username said:
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...
 

1nfinite_Cros5

New member
Mar 31, 2010
249
0
0
I was under the impression that Yahtzee would like this more than he said he did before I saw the review. I'm trying to work out a formula of things included in games that Yahtzee may like. I knew Dishonored had many similarities to Thief predicted that Yahtzee would bring it up in his review, but I was just under the impression that he would like the game as well.

Ah well. Guess I'll pick this up anyways sometime down the road.
 

SnakeoilSage

New member
Sep 20, 2011
1,211
0
0
Can't say I'm really surprised; it's not like Yahtzee hasn't spent most of his career working the shaft of Thief 2 or Silent Hill 2 every chance he gets, to the point where it's getting kind of embarrassing, like a grizzled old grandfather we have to visit every week who instead of continuing a conversation starts it up all over again regardless of what the topic was. Sort of like Romney! Ba-dum-tish.

That being said he does have a bit of a point this time. Summoning up armies of rats to kill things is fine but the length and depth of the story and the game itself is pretty poor. Like someone cut out the Thieves Guild quests from Skyrim and just made a game about that, only without all the recyclable side-quests and special loot hunting cut out.

That being said it is an above average game; with time, polish and a solid development team the impending sequel could be really good. Remember guys; Yahtzee only sort of liked Thief, but he REALLY likes Thief 2. He won't bloody shut up about it.