Dishonored 2 • Missing the Magic

I absolutely love Dishonored 2 but there's something about it that I've had an incredibly hard time putting the word since it launched as longtime viewers of this channel will know I try my absolute hardest to stay away from negativity here sometimes it will come up if I'm suggesting ways to make a game meet its full potential or talking about something that's satirizing something else but there's one other place where criticism shouldn't be avoided talking constructively about something that you love as much as I do love Dishonored 2 it could still be improved on and to ignore that fact would be completely counterintuitive this whole thing is going to turn into a recommendation by the end so bear with me if you're a fan Dishonored one is one of my favorite games of all time Dishonored isn't even my favorite Arkane Studios game but it's definitely one of the all-time best and just about every way you can measure a game's worth as much as Dishonored 2 is a worthy sequel to that game I just can't bring myself to say that same phrase about it I've been rolling the game around somewhere in my mind since it came out trying to figure out what the secret ingredient was that it was missing at first I blamed the admittedly awful optimization my first playthrough of this game was below 30fps and that's with the dynamic resolution basically pushing the game to pre widescreen levels of fidelity I'll try to recreate it here as best I can but my computer's gotten significant upgrades since then the first game had some anti-aliasing issues as it seems like basically every game does but other than that its visuals completely hold up and of course the game ran at a perfect 60fps without breaking a sweat even on my old terrible PC I even tried playing Dishonored 2 on my friend's ps4 and was actually shocked by the performance there and the standardized world of consoles it was basically just as bad as it was on my PC if not worse and while I did play through the entirety of the game a handful of times under those conditions a completely soured the experience for me especially in my combat playthroughs which is a core part of the first game success I'm sorry to get off-topic but I was looking at my footage for this video and I'm pretty sure I just blocked a bullet out of the air by throwing a grenade at it back to the video I associate Dishonored with lightning responsive controls that build on the immersion a lot of the enemies in Dishonored one requires some very fast reaction time and thinking to Parry their attacks encounter their tactics a low framerate completely ruins this by making everything seem slow and clunky however I've since played dishonored to in a myriad of ways with perfect 60 frames and those old memories of a clunky game that I could barely run have mostly been replaced with memories of a game that feels even smoother than the original while the performance of this game is pretty much inexcusable given how well pray 2017 ran on that same outdated system of mine that's a technical issue not a game design one and the pond replaying it and death of the outside are ad nauseam over the last week or two I'm convinced that my issue with Dishonored 2 runs deeper than the technical so while my initial impression was absolutely soured I've now experienced the game with visual fidelity and smoothness that's at least on par with Dishonored 1 even if I can't yet run 2 at Ultra and yet I still don't consider it even close to being as tightly designed as the first game this is the eventualities I was afraid of not only because it meant that even after I upgraded past the technical issues I still want to have more of the first games magic but because it meant that I would have to figure out just what this game did wrong it was a surprisingly tricky question because I do love the hell out of dishonour to the first and most obvious thing that's changed from dishonored wanted to is the visuals I don't mean the graphical fidelity or the art style I mean the thing that I praised Dishonored one for so heavily a few months ago the framing dishonored one is chock-full of moments where the visuals literally take my breath away and I have to put down my sword and admire the scenery for our moment even after 20 or more playthroughs not to retread old ground but this is a level design thing just as much as it is an art direction thing framing is incredibly important to good architecture which is incredibly important to good level design and given the magic of video games you can do all of the creative architectural framing in the world without any of the real-life limitations when I say this I'm not talking about the boat rides where the camera and its movement are controlled by the game rather than the player I'm talking about the opposite in architecture you want the path the observer is going to be traveling through to have good framing built right into them so that the observer is constantly struck with the feeling like they were meant to be there consider a hallway just a basic one like it's probably in your house always make for some very easy architectural framing that's sort of good by default a broader symmetry between the left and sides with a clear vanishing point with the finer details holding key differences between the two sides maybe some family pictures on the right wall or a thermostat as you walked down a hallway it's inherently aesthetically pleasing for a more complicated example consider two types of bars one where the actual Bartok runs parallel to the doorway and one where the bar top is perpendicular to the doorway and the parallel example there's a clear divide between you and the bartender you have to cross all of this space before you're close to the bartender and so there's a natural disconnect a divide between you two built into the architecture of the room in the other example you may want to chair on the far side of the bar but nonetheless you're close to the bar top from your entrance to the destination so camaraderie between you and the bartender is more likely to arise essentially what I'm talking about is feng shui with framing being one important aspect of that thanks Wade doesn't just apply to one room either it can apply to whole buildings or even whole cities this is one of the key things that dishonored one has that its sequel is lacking in Dishonored as a concept faces an interesting challenge here half-life 2 has some pretty nice architectural framing but it has an advantage in that it's a linear game the developers are more easily able to predict where the camera is going to be and adjust the placement of objects accordingly so that it's always clear where you should be going and it's always aesthetically pleasing dishonored games on the other hand are comprised of several small open worlds that cover a handful of city blocks apiece and the camera could be anywhere at any time when designing levels in the game like this you have to make sure that the same things look appealing from dozens of different angles and through what I can only imagine was an absolutely grueling process of prototyping hundreds of iterations the dishonored one developers eventually managed that with almost perfect consistency no matter where you are in Dishonored the shot is beautiful and that must have taken an ungodly amount of work I have to reiterate again that I love Dishonored - but it just feels like they didn't put in that same attention to detail don't get me wrong Dishonored 2 has some beautiful scenes in it but almost all of these come from the composition of the skyboxes rather than that of the actual playable areas when in reality they should be working in tandem as they did in Dishonored one the biggest exception of this rule would be in the second last level of the game the grand palace this right here is exactly what I wanted from dishonor to and any game that carries the classic thief lineage the first area of this level I could take er leave but this second section is pure gold and it puts exactly the type of thing shui I was talking about to work this mansion is built as an extension of the island that it rests on and it runs directly into the sea to the point where some parts of it are flooded in the high tide it runs parallel to the sunset and has blocking that was clearly very tightly considered and it works in tandem with the Sky box as I said earlier the advantage of a hallway is knowing exactly where the camera is going to be and thusly it's easier to put things in aesthetically pleasing locations their introduction of the Grand Palace follows this exact same philosophy as to get there you have to pass this long linear bridge in order to arrive thusly the palace is placed in a way that looks best from this angle and points out a few areas of interest to get you thinking about how best to infiltrate this place before you even arrive putting the bridge here is a work of genius and the design of the bridge itself cannot the same thing said about it the second of the tertiary loops that dishonored is built around is gaining the high ground every gameplay system and every well-designed game is built on a primary loop in a series of these tertiary loops this of course changes based on the type of playthrough you want to do but in dishonored the primary loop is generally to progress while avoiding detection secondary loop steel things and do general recon gathering information either from listening in on conversations or reading in-game literature and learning the lay of the land I've been hearing strange noises from the end of the hallway it's probably coming from the torturers rooms he's a walking freak show just stay clear of it everyone does third loop get the high ground so that you can more easily handle those first two priorities when crossing this bridge you don't really have to worry about those first two priorities as you're not likely to get spotted and there's nothing to steal greed or over here so we can focus on the third priority climbing to the high ground to get the lay of the land so how does this simple bridge take advantage of that amenity well as I said the purpose of this bridge is to frame the upcoming palace and since the player is hardwired to seek high ground by this point in the game the higher up you get on the bridge the prettier and more tactically revealing your view of this place gets this is an incredibly minor detail only about 1% of your time in this level is spent on this bridge but it completely colors the way that you're going to view this palace once you're finally there doing the actual infiltration this is without a doubt my favorite area in the game and the way that this bridge frames your upcoming infiltration of the palace has a big part to do with that this is a standout example of visual framing and level design but there are a few more the streets of dunwall leading up to your infiltration of dunwall Tower at the end of the game do a fantastic job of signposting your threats and keeping things pretty while showcasing the destruction that des lilas qu is led to and because of that graceful use of framing this section of Street feels more like the original dishonored than anything else in the sequel contrast this with the Adam Irons - in the third mission the good doctor sure the carriage ride up to this place is pretty with some great moody lighting fitting for the scariest mission in the game but none of that is organic and given the on Rails nature of this view it doesn't really live up to its potential there's not much in frame here other than this blocky square adam eyre Institue and the moon contrast this with the introduction to the boyle estate in Dishonored one they took advantage of the predetermined camera location to deliver an absolutely stunning visual of this crooked tower with a huge moon in the background and silhouettes of a few weepers being killed by a tall boy absolutely beautiful but anyways back to the actual design of this level this is one of the more fun levels in the game when it comes to playing it with a few of these exciting high up roofs to take advantage of Emily's far reach ability making for some very fun navigation up top however from a visual standpoint this level is completely unintuitive and just plain boring to look at all four levels of this place look more or less the same without any visual flair whatsoever and from a feng shui connecting to gameplay perspective there's practically no indication at all that certain rooms are more important than others I mean this route to the left of the entrance hall that leads to the dining room is incredibly useful especially if you don't have the high jump ability yet but I didn't even realize that these two rooms connected until my nope hours played thoroughly because this entire half of the room is completely shrouded on shadows and there's nothing whatsoever indicating that there's anything up on this half of the room or anything to draw your eye to that half of the room in the first place I love this game and again I think that this is a generally fun level but it's boring visually and counterintuitive with its signposting of important routes this is unfortunately more in line with the rest of the experience than the Grand Palace or those ruined streets of dunwall I mentioned earlier the clockwork mansion can have some of the same things said about it even with all of its visual flair making it a fairly pretty level there just isn't much to go on in terms of signposting which routes are important if you're playing with no HUD which you absolutely could get away with in the first game you're more or less just randomly flipping switches until you make it - Jen - with no plan whatsoever I mean just look at the second room full of interesting things that you'd want to stop and look at but the only way forward is this boring hallway tucked up securely in the corner of the room call me a prude but I'm just not impressed by the clockwork mansion anywhere near as much as I was say the first games returned to dunwall tower where you can enter from one of two ways and not only is it beautiful but your mind is instantly racing with all the possibilities of navigation you could get up on these chandeliers and blink to the balcony either on the left or the right you could walk up these stairs dispatch the guards and reveal yourself to the Lord region you could duck into this room on the left taking the more obscure route in order to head towards the runes and the torturers room tons of possibilities all signposted and aesthetically pleasing and obvious ways don't get me wrong those issues with poor signposting in the clockwork mansion and the outer mire institute are mostly isolated incidents I'd say about 60% of the time the different routes in this game are generally well signposted but aesthetically none of the maps have an ounce of the flair and character that the original dishonored had the fact that the elegant framing of the Grand Palace and the ruined streets have dunwall are the exception rather than the rule with this honor - is definitely a factor and why this game doesn't feel magical like the first one did for me but there's one big issue with this theory even when I'm infiltrating the Grand Palace my absolute favorite part of the game I still don't get that beautiful feeling that every second of Dishonored one retained even after 20-plus playthroughs so let's look at some of the other changes to Dishonored formula and see if we can pinpoint some other missing ingredient that might be holding the answer before moving on I'd like to point out one other thing that isn't the cause of this for me the main character being given voice acting our player character of choice will comment on things over the course of the level and give her summary of story events in between missions I don't have an issue with this they did it in the two excellent pieces of Dishonored one DLC the knife of dunwall and the brigmore witches and i thought it was an improvement over the base game given how sparsely it was used doubts commentary just further immersed me in his internal struggle between the killer inside of him and the damage that killing had caused to his psyche this is good stuff and its presence in Dishonored 2 like in the first games DLC is only an improvement over the original formula plus we get to hear the fantastic voice of thief scare it make a return it's a long way down so that isn't the issue either with that out of the way let's look at some of the other changes one big change that I'm pretty sure everyone myself included would see as an improvement is the new non-lethal takedown system you can do non-lethal drop assassinations non-lethal side attacks and even non-lethal moves and open combat if you parry the enemy off-balance first not to mention a very helpful non-lethal throw which combined with the other moves makes a non-lethal combat playthrough very possible these moves are probably a good thing in Dishonored 1 all you could do to non-lethal e dispatch someone was shoot them with a tranq dart or choke them out from behind more options is definitely something that the dishonored formula thrives on but a huge part of the satisfaction of a perfect non-lethal playthrough in the first game was that you were intentionally limiting yourself to show that you're so good that you don't even have to kill to do some of the most impressive things ever I mean hell I've done perfect stealth dishonored playthroughs where I didn't use any powers any weapons didn't steal anything and didn't even break any bottles to distract guard essentially proving that I could destroy the play conspiracy even if I was completely naked all without being spotted or killing anybody that's a huge limitation of the vast moveset that dishonored grants you but it was always one of my most satisfying playthroughs of any game ever all I did throughout the entire game was climb on things sneak around and choke people out from behind however by making non-lethal knock outs essentially just a different flavor of animation when compared to sword combat Dishonored 2 is sort of devalues the perfect pacifistic angel playthrough what's more impressive jumping down on an unaware guard to knock him out instantly or sneaking up behind them and slowly choking them out at the perfect time to avoid detection from their peers the dishonored one way might not be as cool but it is more challenging so how does dishonor to accommodate for this huge boost in the players non-lethal abilities by having many many more guards than the first game and making them much more perceptive in fact I'd say that even with these new moves a perfect non-lethal stealth playthrough of Dishonored 2 might be even more restrictive than the first game simply because of the greater enemy counts now this isn't necessarily a bad thing challenge is a huge part of why I play these games with so many limitations however a lot of the fun of stealth games is seeing what you can get away with and messing with the guards heads in order to open yourself a window to your objective you feel like you're smarter than the guards and like your patience and foresight is the reason you're able to make them look so stupid you die throw a wrench these new moves combined with the greater enemy counts of dishonour to sort of removed that patience from the equation in most cases it becomes a much faster paced sort of stealth as a result of this which is also a ton of fun but it isn't what made the first game so magical for a counterpoint to this look at the evolution of the Metal Gear series personally with that top-down perspective I prefer Metal Gear Solid twos flavor of stealth where you can run around quickly escaping a guards gaze by mere inches and they won't hear you even if you run right behind them that's a lot more tense and as I said in the case of Metal Gear Solid's rkd gameplay I much prefer it then look at Metal Gear Solid 3 guards can hear you coming unless you do this slow as all hell crawl towards them it's better for making the enemy guard look stupid because you spend so much time hiding in plain sight but it's worse for making you feel like a ninja as I've Illustrated here both sides have their advantages in the case of Metal Gear Solid I prefer the faster pace stealth of MGS 2 but in the case of dishonored I prefer the slower pace stealth of mgs3 simply because a huge part of the stories appeal is proving that Corvo isn't as bad as everyone thinks I mean the name of the game is dishonored the meta goal of the game is to regain your honor by proving that your patient considering perceptive Dishonored 2 non lethality just doesn't really feel like that long story short were too busy jumping on people's heads in this incredibly badass way to stop and smell the flowers and remark on how much smarter we are than the guards it's a difference in tone and while I can definitely see it being a breath of fresh air to some it feels like a loss of identity to me personally I certainly want to judge you for disagreeing with that one though it really does come down to preference I think that this is the main reason that my high point of this game the Grand Palace just doesn't give me that same magical feeling that I gotten dishonored one and it's DLC but I'm still not satisfied there's something else something smaller yet more fundamental that changes the feeling of Dishonored 2 and I think it can be summed up in one word loops let's quickly go over the original dishonored loops so that we can expose the most important elements of the game the loops change based on which type of playthrough you're doing as I said earlier so we'll be using a full stealth non-lethal run as our example as it's probably the most satisfying and closest to the developers original vision I'll be going over the first three loops again but that will cascade into the others so you're not crazy I am repeating myself at least for now the primary loop is again to progress while staying out detected the first tertiary loop is to steal things and do general recon overhearing conversations and reading literature so that you can formulate a plan and the second tertiary loop is to get the high ground so that you can handle the first two loops more easily high ground lets you scout ahead and make it easier to stay undetected so what's the third tertiary loop it's collecting runes and bone charms in order to upgrade your character different players have different play styles of course but most people tend to get the bulk of bone charms and runes either at the beginning of the mission before considering anything else or at the very end once the most guards have been dispatched and there's no more work to be done in the first game these artifacts are gender we placed in heavily guarded rooms other times they'll be locked in a safe in which the combination must be revealed through careful attention and exploration and I'll go ahead and group the granny rag secret recipes in the doubt DLC missions with the locked safe artifacts while the presentation is different they require the same sort of thinking from the player the key word here is clarity you know exactly what stands between you and an artifact in Dishonored one via guards traps a safe combination or a cryptic riddle that requires you to acquire things from the environment the primary gameplay loop progressing while staying undetected is already a puzzle a stealth puzzle to be more specific whether I throw the bottle to distract the guards where do I pass from shadow to shadow these next two loops are also puzzles this time exploration puzzles and ones that feed into the primary loop where can I blink in order to have an easier route through the area where is the generator powering the security device where are the city watch guards located where the thugs and weepers located and how can I take advantage of that information dishonored is at its core a game of puzzles clear-cut puzzles on which you know exactly what your objective is and the only question is how to achieve it even in an exploration puzzle you know exactly what sorts of opportunities you're looking for open vents cards with keys on their belts rooftops that appear to be in reach areas where there are gaps in the patrols that sort of thing in Dishonored 1 all of the artifacts are either trivial to obtain just requiring that you go off the beaten path a bit or else easily navigated - while being difficult to actually acquire this means that there's typically only one puzzle required to actually obtain them either a stealth puzzle or an exploration puzzle never a navigation bubble it's simple readable and clear so that we can focus on logical solutions rather than throwing ourselves at a brick wall of navigation until we get to where we wanted to be unfortunately this just isn't the case in Dishonored - and I think that more than a change in enemy encounter pacing or a change in visual priority this is the main thing that sours Dishonored 2 for me I constantly found myself simply being unsure of how to get to an artifact and it being completely obvious how to require it once I was there those artifacts and safes and the ones under heavy guard were the best kinda dishonored 1 and its sequels but the vast majority of them are simply in obscure locations in this - when I say obscure I don't mean off-the-beaten-path like this one found in a gutter in the corner of this level in the first game I mean that there in places in which the waypoints used to find them are a little bit deceptive they aren't challenges of clever thinking they're challenges of attrition take the most common location of artifacts in dishonour - for example in the top of a building completely full of blood flies these buildings or rooms tend to only have one entrance and one exit the two being interchangeable of course this means that you'll be banging your head against the building doing a complete circle around it until you find the one entrance and then slowly pushing your way through the blood flies until you find yourself unable to find the way forward upon which you backtrack and find the correct obscure path a linear path with a couple red herring dead ends I kinda like the blood flies and dishonour - but there's absolutely nothing fun about slowly making your way up a staircase in a cramped building full of corpses as you guys know I love thief's - and it seems like the main point of Dishonored one's primary selling point the blink mechanic was to liberate people from the somewhat restrictive movement of that breed of stealth game it's an evolution of the rope arrow mechanic from thieve - essentially I really can't understand she want to be getting every single bone Sharman room and dishonored and the sequel and to see a gameplay factor that will be eating so much every time being dedicated almost entirely to crawling through tight narrow corridors seems like a huge step backwards from the freedom of movement that both games are at their absolute best when they're cropping up it's a problem that again the first dishonor just didn't have because tight corridors were few and far between in that game any artifacts that were in such a corridor were at the very entrance of one at the far side of a difficult stealth or exploration puzzle there is absolutely nothing puzzling about finding these artifacts in Dishonored - it is as I said just a war of attrition you against the level design and the level design against your patients in the original game the artifact collecting was a bit of seasoning to go on each mission and Dishonored 2 the objective of the mission feels like a bit of seasoning to go on the artifact collecting half the time by the time I was done with the artifact collecting I'd have practically forgotten why I was there in the first place and why whoever I was after deserve their punishment you don't feel like an assassin you feel like a lumberjack working away at a problem until either you or it however there's an even more subtle difference than the artifact collecting than the actual quality of the locations and that's thought Dishonored one was a bit more linear and the missions often took place over several smaller Maps the result of this is that your heart will only show you the locations of a few artifacts at a time that combines the slightly more linear level design means that you're much more likely to just collect artifacts as you go along rather than running circles around the level at the beginning or the end and Dishonored one you're focused on progressing and the artifacts are never too far away from where you were headed anyways and Dishonored 2 they're all over the place and you have to go much further out of your way to collect them because the levels are so much larger and open-ended with this bone charms and other side con men quickly become the focus of each mission rather than well the mission ironically it seems like the abbey of the everyman had it right after all black magic is evil and it is the folly of man at least in dishonor to I have a bad taste in my mouth ending a video on such a negative note but I found a way to sort of come to terms with dishonored - obviously a big part of that was finally identifying the problems with it that had eluded me for nearly three years but a bigger part with my most recent playthrough a perfect stealth perfectly non-lethal no powers play through his emily kaldwin when you get to the core gameplay concepts what I love so much about Dishonored one is that it uses the simple mechanics of blink bend time possession choke dust tranq darts and so on to expand on the core gameplay of thief 2 again blink is just an evolution of the rope arrow doing a no powers run of that game is like a hardcore classic thief difficulty however the game is at its best when you use those powers as evidenced by the second to last mission done wall tower the game wasn't designed with no powers runs in mind they just happen to be a happy accident as a result of the game's openness I'm pretty sure that this is the only spot in the game where you absolutely have to use blink or Jill lead to progress other than the sequences in the void of course although it's worth noting that if you don't mind exploiting you can also do a spring razor jump to progress here Dishonored 2 however was designed with the idea that players won't want to do no powers playthroughs and that's a great thing we get the option to reject the outsiders mark right here in the beginning so how does a no powers run of that game evolve the thief's formula simple by making the stealth faster paced by multiplying the enemies and giving us aerial knockout moves that same change that I was complaining about in the context of a normal full power run just so happens to be the exciting unique gameplay innovation that makes no power so compelling it's a totally different brand of stealth and I've seen anywhere else it doesn't necessarily make you feel smarter than the enemies and instead makes you feel like a ninja as I said earlier with my mgs 2 vs. 3 comparison this is what I mean by coming to terms with this honor to almost all the power isn't Dishonored 1 am 2 are more suited towards a slower more thoughtful play style the kind that excels at making you feel smarter than the enemies while the new approach to non lethality and enemy numbers lends itself to faster paced play styles that don't do this however if you strip away the powers that non lethality is perfectly harmonious with the verticality of these levels and is simply a totally different flavor of dishonour than the fur game there's nothing at all rewarding about teleporting to a high point than jumping down and knocking someone out however when you have to climb up to a high point to do that non-lethal move I think you'll find that the specialized knockouts are the exception rather than the rule they become more of an efficient means of traveling downwards than an actual knockout move the transition between mgs3 flavored stealth and mgs2 flavored stealth was one that I had a hard time getting to grips with since the power still felt like a carryover from the slower paced mgs3 stealth however again when you strip away the powers that dissonance just isn't there he'll be personally affected by almost every single enemy whereas most of them just go by in the blink of an eye pun intended when you use powers in the second game the first game did manage to make almost every enemy placed in a meaningful even with your powers while the second game doesn't quite manage that in traditional play it absolutely does on a no powers playthrough though and what's more and possibly the biggest advantage to a no powers playthrough on a no powers run you won't be spending any time looking for magical artifacts instead focusing purely on the story and while you're there in the first place so here's my tip for enjoying Dishonored 2 if you felt that same ungraspable sense of loss that I did for all of those years doing no powers run and pretend that you're playing a direct sequel to thieve 2 forgetting the original dishonored altogether of course I recommend playing the game with powers as intended your first time around because save for the dissonance they have with the other mechanics the powers both new and old are completely awesome there's a secret nugget of gold on this game and it comes from making those daunting choice imaginable a mere 45 minutes or so into the game isn't as good as Dishonored 1 and the doubt DLC nope not for me but is it well worth your time absolutely [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 187,877

Keywords: Dishonored, Chris, avellone, arcane, studios, immersive, sim, essay, review, game, design, Daud, Corvo, Emily, Delilah, analysis, 0451, stealth, assassin, negative, bad, sucks, level, mission, rune, bone, charm, black, magic, powers, no powers, gameplay

Id: T9tZCE9UyuI

Length: 29min 5sec (1745 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019