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Dishonored news/interviews/etc

L

Lancehead

Member
I'm not quite feeling the stealth in those videos. The character is just moving around in day light rapidly and getting pretty close to enemies. And the enemy view cones seem very limited for day light conditions. It's very much like Deus Ex HR - crouch and don't stare into the faces of enemies. Dishonored is not a dedicated stealth game but I've reservations on the stealth component.

The spirit essence replenishment is also similar to Deus Ex HR. Not sure how I feel about that; it could hamper certain play-styles as players might end up frequently waiting for replenishment.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Pretty much the same as the E3 demos, but still cool. I kinda wish every stealth game had the radio mechanic from MGS2+. I feel like a big part of stealth games is tension, and knocking every single enemy out just breaks it.
 
L

Lancehead

Member
I didn't know there's Bethesda Community Manager on GAF. He posted this in another thread:

nickbreckon said:
The HUD can be disabled or enabled on an element-by-element basis. Highlights, interactions, crosshair style/movement/opacity -- all of that and more can be tweaked. You can even adjust the amount of head-bob on a slider.

We'll be detailing this stuff relatively soon.
Click to expand...

Now that is wonderful to know. For myself I know I'd turn off the head bob and most of the HUD.
 
E

ezekial45

Banned
It's pretty awesome to know we are getting The Crossing after all...kind of.

I'm glad they didn't abandon all the work they put into it.
 
T

The Dutch Slayer

Member
zkylon said:
Very long and interesting article about Arkane's origins and Ralph and Harvey's history: http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...-bethesda-origin-crossing-deus-ex-arx-fatalis

I really like the header picture lol
Click to expand...
reading the rest later at lunch tomorrow but this was the thing I was looking for when I saw a piece on arkane studio.
The Crossing

It is 2007. Arkane is working in partnership with Valve to create a brand-new type of game. Colantonio calls it "crossplayer," a type of multiplayer game merging single-player aspects with the spontaneity of online play. Arkane tells Games for Windows magazine that it will be the end of AI programming.

The game is built on the Source engine. Valve is deeply involved. Valve's later release of Left 4 Dead will trumpet the possibilities of this kind of genre-crossing design, but Arkane's game will be something slightly different. It will be a narrative, single-player/multiplayer hybrid, in which your experience is driven by other players' actions.

It is an ambitious plan. And an expensive one. Colantonio needs $15 million to make the game. He's shopping it to all of the major publishers. He calls it The Crossing.

"I've met a lot of publishers lots of times for many games," Colantonio told Polygon. "So I know how to make the distinction between 'almost there' and 'not there at all' ... The Crossing was almost there many times."

One sticking point is the budget. All of the publishers Colantonio is talking to want more for their money than Arkane is willing to give. But beyond the cash, what's worrisome to the publishers is the innovation itself. They are concerned that they won't be able to market a game that is neither single-player nor multiplayer, even if it is actually both. They don't understand it, so they don't think gamers will, either.

Colantonio's response: They have built-in marketing. They have Valve. They have a team of former Bungie developers who'd made Halo. They have a technology no one else has, and an internal demo that is blowing people away. They don't need marketing; they just need cash.

"It was a very hard sell and it came very close," Colantonio said. "It came so close that we had a deal from a publisher — a certain publisher that I won't name — and their deal was really, really bad. They wanted to keep the IP even though we had developed everything ... the budget was not what we wanted, they wanted a PS3 version, and they wanted us to sign it in blood before we started."

The deal also contains a host of odd penalties. Colantonio has signed major deals with publishers. He knows what should and should not be in a contract. He knows that this contract is a piece of shit.

"When you know how deals function, there are so many ways to get fucked," he said. "Like, there are so many ways to get hurt in a deal. Not to go into details, but it was an ugly deal ... and every time we would discuss with them they would send a worse version of the deal. That was an awesome strategy on their part, like, 'We better sign it now otherwise it's going to get even worse.'"

Yet in spite of all the ways he could get fucked, Colantonio wants to sign this deal. After shipping Dark Messiah at Ubisoft's request, now he wants to side again with art. The team at Arkane has sweated blood on The Crossing, and they believe in the game. They want to make it, even if they lose money. Even if they lose the IP to the publisher. Even if it kills them.

Fate intervenes — EA calls. They want Arkane to help make LMNO, the experimental game project involving Doug Church, Randy Smith, and filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Even better, EA isn't screwing around. They'll pay monthly, and they'll pay well.

"It was a way more secure deal than the other one," Colantonio said. "The other deal was setting us up for failure with The Crossing, with a lot of suffering. But doing ... this other game ... was actually pretty fucking cool, too, because those were my heroes."

It's a heart-rending decision, but in the end it's really no decision at all: Sacrifice the company for The Crossing, or cash a check from EA to work with Spielberg. Colantonio makes the call.

"I called this other publisher and told them, and it was a very satisfying moment."

Two years later, EA is suffering from the global economic downturn and a contraction of the game industry. In an ironic twist, they pull the plug on LMNO to focus on safer bets.

Arkane loses The Crossing and the LMNO paycheck. The silver lining is what they have gained: The experience. The credentials. The extra time their hard decisions have given them to finally get back to making their own games. And of course, the demo.

"There's a ritual at Arkane," Colantonio said. "One of the questions that most people ask when they join us is, 'What of The Crossing? Does it exist?' So what we do is we wait until we have enough new employees and we do a play session where the full company plays it together so that they can see it."
Click to expand...
 
L

Lancehead

Member
"I would go to a meeting, and there would be people who were interested in how many numbers the Wing Commander series could move, and I would be like, 'You don't understand. This game is not a shooter. It's different at a deep level.' And marketing wanted it to be Doom, but it wasn't. It was this strange thing that we loved so much," Smith said.
Click to expand...

I'm glad Bethesda is not quite like this. Even the marketing is doing Dishonored justice.
 
Lactose_Intolerant

Lactose_Intolerant

Member
I don't like the markers telling you where all your targets are. The cone of vision is pretty bad too as it has already been mentioned. Stealth is too easy from the looks of it, granted they were playing on normal too.

Everything else besides them using a controller for the demo looked good.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Lactose_Intolerant said:
I don't like the markers telling you where all your targets are. The cone of vision is pretty bad too as it has already been mentioned. Stealth is too easy from the looks of it, granted they were playing on normal too.

Everything else besides them using a controller for the demo looked good.
Click to expand...
.
The HUD can be disabled or enabled on an element-by-element basis. Highlights, interactions, crosshair style/movement/opacity -- all of that and more can be tweaked. You can even adjust the amount of head-bob on a slider.

We'll be detailing this stuff relatively soon.
Click to expand...
 
D

Derrick01

Banned
The RPS preview sounds like they really want to like it but they just didn't have enough time to really test out the strengths of the game. Here's a quote at the very end of the article

In the narrow world of stealth games, both Dishonored and DXHR have – or had – the potential to breach the dusty vault of all-time greatness, and remain there for the foreseeable future. But I believe it’s Dishonored, rather than DXHR, which will come closest to being one of those games that the deeper past of gaming promised us: the future pointed to by Thief and Deus Ex. It could be the kind of game that so much else that went before seemed to suggest was inevitable, and yet never seemed to happen. But I haven’t played enough.

I just don’t know if it’s there yet.
Click to expand...

They also talked quite a bit about how the 360 (consoles in general since ps3 has even less RAM) is holding this game back.
 
L

Lancehead

Member
Anyone wondering if the game can be completed without killing anyone or without using any powers or by ghosting much like in Thief games, here's the answers:

Vipul Manchala ‏@VipulManchala
@Harvey1966 Regarding Dishonored: Can the game be completed without purchasing/using any powers at all? Can the game be "ghosted"?

Harvey Smith ‏@Harvey1966
@VipulManchala Everyone has stealth and combat abilities, access to gear, and one power, Blink. Otherwise, yes.
Click to expand...

https://twitter.com/Harvey1966/status/222751777915801602

Harvey Smith ‏@Harvey1966
@VipulManchala Do you define ghosted as "never seen?" If so, yes.(Aside from an intro.)

Vipul Manchala‏@VipulManchala
@Harvey1966 Not seen/heard, no kills/KO's/injury, no property damage, no power/weapon usage. Similar to what can be done in Thief games.

Harvey Smith ‏@Harvey1966
@VipulManchala You can go that far, vis-a-vis ghost. But I think we only reward for "no one saw you."

Harvey Smith ‏@Harvey1966
@VipulManchala In addition to rewarding for no kills and other things similar.
Click to expand...

https://twitter.com/VipulManchala/status/222762745525833729
 
S

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
so much new info, I'll reformat OP on the weekend.

I want to transform it into OT when the game is released.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Lancehead255 said:
Anyone wondering if the game can be completed without killing anyone or without using any powers or by ghosting much like in Thief games, here's the answers:

https://twitter.com/Harvey1966/status/222751777915801602

https://twitter.com/VipulManchala/status/222762745525833729
Click to expand...
That's great, I never do these things, but I always feel like I should toy around with what's possible a little more. Might give it a try with Dishonored.

subversus said:
so much new info, I'll reformat OP on the weekend.

I want to transform it into OT when the game is released.
Click to expand...
Nice to have you back, dude, glad you weren't gone for long.
 
D

Derrick01

Banned
I figured Blink was a mandatory power but I already knew you could do a no kill run even on targets. Hopefully staying unseen without powers is very challenging. I don't plan on using that see through walls with cones of vision ability.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Just thought about it, but this could mean that there are no boss fights in the game, or at least not the DX:HR-kind.

The bliss!
 
D

Derrick01

Banned
zkylon said:
Just thought about it, but this could mean that there are no boss fights in the game, or at least not the DX:HR-kind.

The bliss!
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. Deus Ex Missing Link has a final boss but they don't cheap out with conventional game cliches and make him have 300% more health than a normal guy or anything like that. You can actually sneak up on him (it's tough though, the room he's in has tons of guards, cameras, turrets etc) and one shot kill/knock out him like any other enemy.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Derrick01 said:
Not necessarily. Deus Ex Missing Link has a final boss but they don't cheap out with conventional game cliches and make him have 300% more health than a normal guy or anything like that. You can actually sneak up on him (it's tough though, the room he's in has tons of guards, cameras, turrets etc) and one shot kill/knock out him like any other enemy.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I was gonna mention the DLC as a very competent way of doing bosses in a stealth game but couldn't remember its name :p
 
M

Mister0079

Member
Can't wait for this game, this is the only game I have faith in nearing the end of this year. Maybe Sleeping Dogs and Far Cry 3 as well, but we'll see.
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
The more I see and read, the more interested I get.
Though i'm still not excited enough to consider buying it Day 1.
I guess we'll see in the coming months.
 
S

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
edited in OP, will reformat this Sunday.

every game should have this

7562103516_7022f79aff_o.jpg
Click to expand...
 
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