Dishonored sets itself up for failure by discouraging high chaos play.

[SDG]

I just beat the game for the first time, running through the entire game as a pacifist, never killing anyone. This was partly because I typically enjoy no-kill playthroughs in stealth games like Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, and Deus Ex. A major factor, though, was the fact that the game explicity tells you that there are negative consequences for killing people. After each mission, the game even tallies how many people you've killed and how much chaos you've caused. From the feedback system and the information given, it felt like the game was slapping my hand for every enemy I killed. So, I made the seemingly obvious choice to never kill people, and went on a strict pacifist run. Halfway through the game, however, I realized that I wasn't having very much fun.

For a pacifist run, I slowly realized that you only had two options in dealing with enemies: sneak behind them and choke them, or use sleeping darts. Other methods are to ignore them or reload your quicksave whenever you get spotted. So, the formula is the exact same throughout the whole game: choke enemies, hide bodies, sleep-dart them if necessary, quickload over and over whenever you get spotted (because there's no real non-lethal way to deal with enemies head-on, besides limited sleeping darts), rinse and repeat. This results in an extremely limited style of gameplay that's tedious, repetitive, and overall, -not fun-.

Despite this lack of fun, I kept my fingers crossed in hopes that the game would pick up the pace and get better, but nope. After I beat the game, my ultimate reaction was an overwhelming "meh."

For a game that got 9/10 ratings overall and has been named as one of the best games of the year by so many people, I thought that I was missing something. Most people would probably have just moved on and stated the game was overrated, but I was curious. I wanted to know, what went wrong? Was it me or the game? So, I looked up some gameplay videos of how other people played the game, and I found a bunch of videos of killstreaks and other gameplay montages. And my god, the way they played looked amazingly fun.

You're actually getting into sword duels!? You can sneakily assassinate people with springrazor traps!? You can blow up grenades in mid-air by stopping time and shooting them!?! You can airblast people into walls of light!?!? YOU CAN WALK PEOPLE INTO THEIR OWN BULLETS!? My mind was blown, and I felt like I played the entire game the wrong way. I had no idea you could do any of this stuff, and I was amazed at how you could combine your powers in so many different ways and deal with enemies in whatever way you wanted.

This amazing set of tools that allows for so much creativity in -killing- your enemies is only available if you're not playing on the intent of getting low chaos. In fact, I'm pretty sure the game is meant to be played with high-chaos. Problem is, the game pretty much tells you, "Hey, don't kill people! Bad stuff happens!" right from the start. In this way, the game sets itself up for failure by telling the player to not even use their entire arsenal, to not experiment and be creative in the way you deal with your enemies. You're encouraged to limit yourself to choking enemies and sleeping darts. That's what happened to me, at least, and I definitely didn't have as much fun as I should have.

I'm replaying the game now, killing enemies, and I'm having a blast. Now I can actually use the other 90% of the arsenal the game gives me. I can quickly sneak up on an enemy from any direction and execute them with a single sword strike (the game even has different animations for different execution angles!), I can take out enemies with headshots from regular crossbow bolts, I can blow away groups of enemies with grenades (who knew that body parts actually became dismembered like that?), and I can even use spring razors to set up traps. I CAN USE SPRING RAZORS! They're so damn fun to use! Especially when you have the shadow kill ability. Your enemies simply vanish in a tornado of razor blades.

I wish someone had warned me about this sooner. Either that, or I wish that the game would encourage more high-chaos play, or include more options for low-chaos play.




TLDR: Don't play the game on pacifist mode. It's nowhere near as fun as just killing everyone using your entire arsenal of weapons, gadgets, and powers.

[MarcR0SS]

hmmmmm i pass the game fast with moderated chaos, now i am finishing on this stealth no chaos at all and no kills at all but reading your review made me think that i wasted the 2 times i'm finishing the game now.... Wow you can do all of that? I'm so starting this game again and making use of all this creative stuff you talk above! I never ever used a trap, a granade or even the guns (well yes, on the duel you have to face), i was just on darts all time x'D

[suboptimal]

On my first playthrough I got low chaos. I spared normal city watch, civvies and weepers, but I killed just about every overseer. Once I learned the overseers were torturing people, I took the gloves off with them. But I also made as many "nice" choices as I could in regards to other choices.

But yes, your combat opportunities become limited when you try to play nice. You don't get to enjoy the open variations of combat anywhere near as much.

It would be great to be able to play as an overall "nice" guy, but also get more combat opportunities.

Hopefully they learn and provide even more options and variations in play-style in the sequel.

[SDG]

Originally posted by capata:

You do realize you can play the game more than once right? I believe this is why there are multiple achievements for completing the game in different ways. There are also multiple endings. Not to mention the whole world changes depending on how you play and who you do and don't kill. Maybe you should pay more atteniton to the details.

Of course there are different endings for high/low chaos; the game even points it out to you during the introductory levels. If you read my entire post you'd have seen my paragraph where I said I'm replaying the game as a non-pacifist.

The point is that since the game encourages players to not kill enemies, it pushes them onto the path of doing a pacifist run, which is not nearly as fun as playing the game non-pacifist. This first playthrough of the game leaves players with a boring first impression limited to the non-lethal tactics of chokes and sleeping darts, when there's a whole world of other tactics, which are much more enjoyable to play with, that the player has missed.

Video game reviewer Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation runs into the same issue with the game as me as outlined in his video review: by pushing players to achieve low-chaos, Dishonored results in an extremely mediocre gameplay experience, but replaying the game to achieve high-chaos creates a much more enjoyable gameplay experience.
Skip to around 3:28 in this video review.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6445-Dishonored

If the game were more neutral in allowing players to choose their path, or if the game offered as many choices for low-chaos as it does for high-chaos, this wouldn't be an issue. The game as it stands creates a very stagnant gameplay experience for low-chaos players, versus an exciting gameplay experience that rewards your creativity for high-chaos players.

Again, this is only for the first impression of the game. When I first finished the game on low-chaos, I was ready to call it quits and never play the game again because it had been so boring. Replaying the game now, it's undeniably a lot more fun and rewarding to play on medium to high-chaos. The issue is that the game pushes players towards the boring gameplay path of low-chaos to begin with.

[knownasnoi]

I have to agree with you in terms of gameplay experience. As a player, it's a lot more fun to do the high chaos playthrough, since the game itself offers so many cool gadgets and powers to /kill/ people. But maybe the game chose to encourage us to choose the low chaos playthrough for the sake of the story (or maybe, the morale?). We have to agree with the logic of 'you kill someone, bad things are gonna happen' (although when I decided to play again in killing spree mode, it's not /that/ bad), and 'if you held back, you'll get the happily ever after fairy tale ending'.
I think I get their reason for encouraging non-lethal.
But I think they should just "remove" the sentence at the first help screen in the prison, I think it goes like 'non-lethal approach will have more benefits blah blah' it really affected our perception in 'killing' on the very first move. Just let us player decide with our own logic and experience, I don't really like how the game itself warned us at the veeery beginning.

[Klaas Piemel]

SDG: I agree that killing everyone is more fun than being a pacifist. But you are so wrong when you say that the game says it is bad to kill much people the game just says with high chaos: "ow you gonna do the badass way alright!" and with low chaos: "hmm interesting choice and because it's more boring you get achievements for this" that' all

[Chinotto boi]

the game DOES encourage high caos play, infact having high caos means more guards hence more slaughtering :)

[DUB]

At first, when I was reading your text I was in shock, you did not understand the philosophy of the game, it doesn't tell you to not kill anyone, it only warns you about how the future will be (dark or not) depending on your actions (high / mid / low chaos).

I have realized that this game might be a bit complicated to young people, that dont have much experience. I've seen a few kids/teenagers with "bizarre" conclusions and thoughts about Dishonored, they are clearly confused and not playing the game correctly.

You have to be a grown up to have the minimum experience and knowledge expected to understand many ideas/messages passed on these kind of games. That's why kids get stuck on missions or play the game to fast, because they simply are not playing it correctly, then they start complaining and asking for help, or even saying the game sucks. Well I don't have any advices for these kids, since this game is +18, and that's why most of them simply don't understand what's going on, they simply don't have enought experience yet.

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I have one advice for advanced/expert players:

Want to feel what this game really has to offer? Forget normal mode. Play on HARD, and don't leave anyone alive (spare only civilians). That's how I played my first time and I have to say: Dishonored is easily one of the best games I ever played (and I am a BIG fan of stealh, assassin, creative games). Ive seen people saying they took 8-12 hours more or less to complete the story, well I took more than 30 hours on hard mode, got High Chaos in the end and almost completed every extra parallel mission there is (safe combinations, sokolov paintings, runes, bones and etc). Now that i have the real assassin experience and consider myself the real "Corvo", i will play the game again on VERY HARD and find the few things i missed the first time.

I hope i made myself clear.

ANMAL

[Klaas Piemel]

I'm 16 now and I played the game on hard twice (took me 12 hours and 10 hours first with much secrets second with not many secrets/side quests) and I'm now doing very hard and it appears that I'm going to do that also in around 11 hours but I agree that is very fun I don't agree that 18+ understands the game better than teenagers

[DUB]

I didn't write all that based on nothing. I've seen many kids/teenagers having trouble while playing Dishonored. Im not saying that ALL teenagers won't understand the game, or won't play correctly, obviously many of them will play the game fine and have alot of fun, the point is that it's clear that this game expects a certain experience level from the players that want to absorb everything Dishonored has to offer.

[Klaas Piemel]

that's true I myself play alot of games so I'm experienced and I have the "know how" of games alot of teenagers/kids aren't like me

[w.]

MONSTER

[Gimralt]

Originally posted by ANMAL:

At first, when I was reading your text I was in shock, you did not understand the philosophy of the game, it doesn't tell you to not kill anyone, it only warns you about how the future will be (dark or not) depending on your actions (high / mid / low chaos).

I have realized that this game might be a bit complicated to young people, that dont have much experience. I've seen a few kids/teenagers with "bizarre" conclusions and thoughts about Dishonored, they are clearly confused and not playing the game correctly.


ANMAL

What utter nonsense is this post? Animal has clearly no idea what he´s talking about. "The philosophy of the game"? Please! Dishonored has no philosophy. Don´t use terms you know nothing about. And the "game might be a bit complicated to young people, that don´t have much experience"? You must be joking. You obviously missed the point that there´s no balance between the hard way (kill ´em all) and the soft way (kill only if inevitable).
The easy way (kill, kill, kill) is the more funny and more variable way to play - in other words exactly the way most kiddies love to play (and be very experienced to do so) anyway. In your opinion is stupid-killing-all the correct way to play. You can play games like Duke Nukem, Doom etc. if you like it. The story is quite predictable, the end dull and inappropriate. You seem to consider yourself demanding but you´re as modest as the game itself. Please do not accuse other gamers for legitimate criticizing a mediocre game that has been pushed much to high.

[DUB]

you clearly didn't understand what i meant, and i wont try to explain again..
i respect your opinion, feel free to think what you want..

[DUB]

i meant no disrespect in anway.. im just giving my opinion and saying what i think ;)

[Klaas Piemel]

Originally posted by o_gimm:

Originally posted by ANMAL:

At first, when I was reading your text I was in shock, you did not understand the philosophy of the game, it doesn't tell you to not kill anyone, it only warns you about how the future will be (dark or not) depending on your actions (high / mid / low chaos).

I have realized that this game might be a bit complicated to young people, that dont have much experience. I've seen a few kids/teenagers with "bizarre" conclusions and thoughts about Dishonored, they are clearly confused and not playing the game correctly.


ANMAL

What utter nonsense is this post? Animal has clearly no idea what he´s talking about. "The philosophy of the game"? Please! Dishonored has no philosophy. Don´t use terms you know nothing about. And the "game might be a bit complicated to young people, that don´t have much experience"? You must be joking. You obviously missed the point that there´s no balance between the hard way (kill ´em all) and the soft way (kill only if inevitable).
The easy way (kill, kill, kill) is the more funny and more variable way to play - in other words exactly the way most kiddies love to play (and be very experienced to do so) anyway. In your opinion is stupid-killing-all the correct way to play. You can play games like Duke Nukem, Doom etc. if you like it. The story is quite predictable, the end dull and inappropriate. You seem to consider yourself demanding but you´re as modest as the game itself. Please do not accuse other gamers for legitimate criticizing a mediocre game that has been pushed much to high.

ow yes it sounds beatiful... from a kid whose grammar is as bad as my ass