Arkane Studios: Dishonored / Deus Ex / Thief - One of the gaming industry's most unfortunate victims.

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
ZMOT said:
reminds me of "game is called killing floor, the floor doesn't kill you/you're not killing the floor".


hold the fucking phone, that's basically the backstory of lamae after getting raped by molag bal to become the first vampire.
Click to expand...
Isn't Lamae still fucked because of how vampires work?
Autistic Orson Welles said:
He is and Prey's writing is phenomenal up until the retarded last five seconds. Five retarded seconds should not undo 30 hours of brilliance.
Click to expand...
I don't get this or hatred of the Chaos system. Your choices define you and actually do give you in-game bonuses. The meta is irrelevant, unless you deliberately went out of your way to kill everyone just to see if you could. All of them at the end not knowing what you were thinking and all the ways your actions an be interpreted shows they did care for what you did and why.

As for chaos, I'm not sure how you can expect to kill everyone and not have higher security in more important places or people look at you funny and behave erratically. No guards = no garrison against the weepers, which would spread the plague more than corpses you didn't ash could. It's against fun? Gives you more people to kill since that's what you like. You don't like being judged for your actions? Welcome to life, buddy. People are going to look at you a certain way for killing a hundred people even if they were horrible. Hell, they'll do it for how you style your hair.

I'm sure it's been brought up before but Spec-Ops: The Line is far more what people who hate the chaos system think it is and then some. Imagine providing no real options and still judging you for it. The writer unironically said the right move was to not play the game at all, bringing into question why you even bought the fucking thing.
Scarthew said:
Except that's not how the chaos system actually works or plays out. Chaos is supposed to be roughly summed up as more bodies=more plague and filth and crimes and unrest. The non-lethal option for the first target results in him being a weeper, more plague but it leads to no added chaos or rat spawns.

It's best not to think about it because the story is fairly cartoonish and the world is ok enough to be immersive but from a gameplay perspective this makes no sense. I should preface that nothing in these games is difficult regardless of difficulty because you're always playing with debug commands but if you want the "more difficult" route you need to play the "easier" way by killing everyone and failing stealth on purpose. There's no added guard presence or rat spawns or less loot etc. for players going mostly or completely non-lethal who would be the players seeking more challenge.

The difficulty scaling curve is reversed and confused. This works to show the narrative consequences of your actions and choices but again, the story is very childish, good guys, bad guys and a betrayal twist. So seeing more death and despair doesn't matter to me especially on repeat playthroughs. The game design has mixed up priorities and a lack of focus.
Click to expand...
here's something that really help you with that "hard" way to play
 
The Pulverizer said:
Are you referring to Bioshock 2? It's funny to me how Bioshock fans completely dismiss that game because it didn't have Rabbi Levine's golden touch.
Click to expand...
The prevailing narrative was that 2 was the 'bad' one because it had some niggling design issues and rehashed Rapture, which was bad because... It just was, okay? Until Levine decides to do that in the DLC for Infinite. Then it was okay.
 
Mega Black said:
The prevailing narrative was that 2 was the 'bad' one because it had some niggling design issues and rehashed Rapture, which was bad because... It just was, okay? Until Levine decides to do that in the DLC for Infinite. Then it was okay.
Click to expand...
You see, the problem is that 2 resembled an actual videogame. This made that game inferior to the ramblings of a failed filmmaker.
 
God of Nothing said:
As for chaos, I'm not sure how you can expect to kill everyone and not have higher security in more important places or people look at you funny and behave erratically. No guards = no garrison against the weepers, which would spread the plague more than corpses you didn't ash could. It's against fun? Gives you more people to kill since that's what you like. You don't like being judged for your actions? Welcome to life, buddy. People are going to look at you a certain way for killing a hundred people even if they were horrible. Hell, they'll do it for how you style your hair.
Click to expand...
I doesn't matter how you try to justify it. At the end of the day the game gives you 80 tools to kill, 1 tool to sneak, and punishes you for using the tools to kill.

A good game would have correlated the fun shit with the intended gameplay path instead of wacking you with a newspaper for using the tools it gives you.
 
The Pulverizer said:
You see, the problem is that 2 resembled an actual videogame. This made that game inferior to the ramblings of a failed filmmaker.
Click to expand...
Right of course, it had fun ideas and no delusions of grandeur and was thus inferior to the sequel where Levine made us walk down hallways and murder guys while getting a retard's interpretation of the many worlds theory shoved down our throats.
 
Mega Black said:
Levine made us walk down hallways and murder guys while getting a retard's interpretation of the many worlds theory shoved down our throats.
Click to expand...
The best parts about the first game (visuals and gunfights) didn't involve Levine at all, yet Levine is rewarded for the game's success.

I do strongly suggest that everyone reads his wikipedia page. His career is plagued with failure.
Irrational Games was rebranded as Ghost Story Games, founded by 12 of the former Irrational members with Levine remaining as president and creative director. In January 2022, the studio's game was reported to be in development hell, with employees blaming Levine for a lack of leadership in producing a vaguely pitched game that Levine described as a "narrative LEGO" in which every player would have a unique experience.
Click to expand...

So his recent endeavors have been a failure, but what about his career in Hollywood?
In June 2013, Levine had been confirmed to be writing the script for a new film version of the dystopian science fiction novel Logan's Run. However, he was later dropped from the project.
Click to expand...
In April 2016, Levine stated he was working with Interlude to write and produce the pilot episode for an interactive, live-action series based on The Twilight Zone, which will be published by CBS. However as of January 2022, nothing has come to fruition. In 2017, Levine described the project as "in flux."
Click to expand...

His great achievements only get like two to three sentences.
 
Oilspill Battery said:
I doesn't matter how you try to justify it. At the end of the day the game gives you 80 tools to kill, 1 tool to sneak, and punishes you for using the tools to kill.

A good game would have correlated the fun shit with the intended gameplay path instead of wacking you with a newspaper for using the tools it gives you.
Click to expand...
That's what I like about Death Loop. It resets to status quo every day so do whatever you want, go guns blazing and grab that thing you're after and hope that you get out alive. After some time and familiarity with the levels you will eventually sneak, hop and teleport around without being seen to get the thing you're after. Just because it is faster and easier that way. Say what you will about the game(but don't mention Prey), this kind of gameplay loop for this type of game was a good idea.
 
Oilspill Battery said:
The game gives you the bad ending if you use the fun tools.
Click to expand...
Nah. You get the bad ending by letting Emily fall to her death. The outcome is bleaker than the one where you went out of your way to be Jesus AntiChrist, but it's by no means the bad ending. Emily realizes she has to be like you to make sure nothing like the conspiracy or her mother happens again, and she is remembered as a harsh albeit necessary empress who did what had to be done in an unprecedented period of unrest.

I honestly don't like the good ending as much. It's too saccharine, but that's to be expected after going out of your way to spare everyone. The cure being exclusive to it is probably the worst bit since Sokolov and the other one make friends regardless of chaos level.
 
God of Nothing said:
I honestly don't like the good ending as much. It's too saccharine, but that's to be expected after going out of your way to spare everyone. The cure being exclusive to it is probably the worst bit since Sokolov and the other one make friends regardless of chaos level.
Click to expand...
It's possible to get the good ending even if you kill every target & ally.

There the plague is solved by it literally fucking off and the scene with Sokolov & Joplin is just empty with no Weepers.

 
Last edited:
God of Nothing said:
Nah. You get the bad ending by letting Emily fall to her death. The outcome is bleaker than the one where you went out of your way to be Jesus AntiChrist, but it's by no means the bad ending. Emily realizes she has to be like you to make sure nothing like the conspiracy or her mother happens again, and she is remembered as a harsh albeit necessary empress who did what had to be done in an unprecedented period of unrest.

I honestly don't like the good ending as much. It's too saccharine, but that's to be expected after going out of your way to spare everyone. The cure being exclusive to it is probably the worst bit since Sokolov and the other one make friends regardless of chaos level.
Click to expand...
That's a cool headcannon but we both know the writers aren't remotely clever enough do something that subtle.

There's a jesus ending filled with sunshine and rainbows and an antichrist ending with plague and misery, and if you try to have fun, that's the one you get.

They should have either removed chaos alltoogether and balanced the game to where combat is actually insanely hard and risky or gave you enough tools and abilities to make stealth fun.

Deus ex accomplishes this just fine. I never felt like I was missing out on the fun by playing nonlethal stealth in it, because for every nanoblade launcher you also get a tesla stunner, and I never felt like I was arbitrarily gimping myself by stealthing because combat was both faster and easier.

The second game ATTEMPTED to somewhat fix this but at the end of the day, the sword is still permenantly bound to left click.

Dishonored when placed next to deus ex is a good example of why balance is important even in singleplayer games. Resource management and risk reward are what immersive sims are all about and dishonored completely lacks it. You never feel "at risk" of losing because you can always break out the sword.

I will say it is pretty funny for a game where you aren't supposed to kill anyone that your left click is ALWAYS bound to the most lethal weapon in your arsenal.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom