Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Thought I'd start a new thread on this specifically because it's a different subject from emergent gameplay.
So in theory it's similar but more complex than the original game.
More at source.
I understand that some didn't like the Chaos system in the original game, I however was and still am a big fan of it. The actions of the player have a direct impact on the way they're perceived by different characters in the world. It also allowed you to shape the type of person that Corvo was, was he a dude who decided to take his anger out on everyone who decided to get in his way even the innocent who were unaware of the truth or did he stay humble and decide to enact revenge in other ways, some more devious than death. It's a really neat concept that makes the actions of the player mean more than they would otherwise. I think Dishonored really nails it mainly because the things that happen as a result of the player's action actually make sense. Compared to other games with binary reaction systems that have evil plotlines that don't actually make sense under scrutiny.
We have more endgames that are based on branches based on your actions in the world, like who you supported or didn’t support, or killed or didn’t kill, and then we have optimistic or cynical versions of each of those depending on chaos.
So chaos factors in that way. It also factors in how many blood flies infestations there are across the city, how thick the Grand Guard is in some places, some voice lines here and there. Also the tonal reaction of the protagonists, Corvo (Steven Russell) and Emily ( – their lines sometimes change based on that. We track three different states of chaos: low chaos, high chaos and very high chaos. We dynamically allocate, at the start of each mission, a morality to the characters around you; most of them are what you would call guilty and they’re worth a certain amount of chaos.
A smaller set are sympathetic and they’re worth more chaos. Another small set aremurderous and they’re worth less chaos – some people just need killing. It’s a more nuanced approach, in response to players feedback, and yet at the same time we hold on to our values just saying “if you don’t murder everyone in the streets, you’re less disruptive to the world”.
The ending uses a permutation system, so there are several different pieces of the ending that play and each one of those have, like, in some cases two states, in some cases five states, in others maybe a couple more than that. And then all of them have high/low chaos permutations, and in a couple of spots very high chaos permutations.
So in theory it's similar but more complex than the original game.
More at source.
I understand that some didn't like the Chaos system in the original game, I however was and still am a big fan of it. The actions of the player have a direct impact on the way they're perceived by different characters in the world. It also allowed you to shape the type of person that Corvo was, was he a dude who decided to take his anger out on everyone who decided to get in his way even the innocent who were unaware of the truth or did he stay humble and decide to enact revenge in other ways, some more devious than death. It's a really neat concept that makes the actions of the player mean more than they would otherwise. I think Dishonored really nails it mainly because the things that happen as a result of the player's action actually make sense. Compared to other games with binary reaction systems that have evil plotlines that don't actually make sense under scrutiny.