Dishonored Blind LP

[DuskAtDawn]

Meet Bethesda Softworks. They're currently locked in a fierce legal battle against Blizzard over which company owns your soul.

Meet Arkane Studios. They've been around for 17 years now and have released all of three games, only one of which actually matters.

Meet me. I'll be your host for this lp, a blind playthrough of Dishonored, the lovechild of the previous two entities.

In the interest of full disclosure, this isn't a true blind play. I've gone through the first two missions, multiple times for the first one, to see if this game was worth the time and effort to sslp.

It is.

This game is... well, it's beyond words. It's incredibly hard to get a stealth game to balance properly, because it's incredibly easy to screw up AI in general. Too perceptive, and the game's borderline unplayably difficult. Too blind, and suddenly you end up with people who are selectively blind to crouching people. Either way, the game's no fun.

It's a wonderfully responsive, incredibly intuitive, and just overall fun game. And for a game that's four years old now, it's also very pretty and well optimized. Like, "How is my potato of a computer able to run this at 60fps on high graphics?" optimized.

So, without further ado...

Let's get this thing started.

...

Tomorrow maybe. This first post is mostly a test to see if the process I went through actually works, this being my first time sslping a game. The actual update will be sometime either tomorrow or Tuesday.

So, thread rule: I know full well there's a sequel coming up this November, and this game's four years old now, so I'm not going to say no spoilers full stop. But please do spoiler out... well, spoilers.

 

[DuskAtDawn]

The game starts with a passionate speech from the Empress to Corvo, saying that the spymaster insisted she send him to gather news from the locals.

So, starting out, you're placed in a small boat and lowered into the water. One nice touch about the cutscenes in this game is that you have limited camera control during them.

Generally, what that means is that you can look around a little bit, so long as you keep the person who's talking in view. In this case, you've got full control, and can look around to take in the ambience.

So, you might notice a few things about the surroundings. I'm not sure of the term for it, but Dishonored takes place in a world where they've got all sorts of anachronistic features, such as electric lamps and tesla walls, but are still kinda stuck in the middle ages.

It's as if someone tried to make a steampunk world, without steam. Or punk. And threw in a whole bunch of disease, whales, and magic. Yes, there's magic, though it's more "dark god granted me powers" than "science, but with less common sense". That'll come up later.

It's a very pretty world, from this angle. A little heavy on the pollution, but hey, that's a sign of progress! Right? Don't get used to it. From what I've seen, clean water and clear skies (and daylight) is more of an exception than a rule, though it may change later on.

I do like the world-building that happens in this section, though. If you're observant, you can see a big whaling boat bringing in its latest catch; that's because just about everything runs on whale oil. Somehow. It's a nice touch.

So, anyways, the entire boat ride, exposition is happening. I won't be transcribing text, but I'll summarize it;

"There's a plague, rats everywhere, and we're kind of fucked.", "You've been gone for a few months.", "We kinda need help, so I hope you've got good news."

After that, the boat takes Corvo to a... lock? I think that's the term for it. It's a big building where the water level is changed so boats can go up. This room is also very pretty, and it's more along the lines of what we'll be seeing later on. Still cinematic, but much less bright and happy.

Corvo is led out onto a bridge, where, out of fucking nowhere, he's ambushed by the greatest enemy of men everywhere;

A young female child!

Meet Emily. She's the Empress's daughter, and may also be Corvo's. I'm not sure, but I'm certainly getting that vibe from their interactions. Whether or not he actually fathered her, he certainly seems to act as her father. Or rather, she acts like he acts like he's her father; Corvo has a nasty case of silent protagonist, and I don't think he even has a voice actor in this game, though he's supposed to have one in the sequel.

She'll ask him to play hide and seek with her, which is a tutorial for the stealth mechanic. If you accept, she'll take you down below the bridge you just crossed, and count to ten while you abuse your incredible hiding skills to beat a young child. I didn't, because I have an IMPORTANT MESSAGE for the Empress. I don't think there's any real penalty for blowing her off, other than feeling kind of like a prick. I can live with that. She does mention that you have plenty of time to play, because her mother's talking to "that nasty spymaster". Ah, kids. Never change.

Oh, and here's another very pretty view of the city. You can see a broken aqueduct over to the right, or maybe just the supports for it. I don't know what the deal is with that, but you see it a lot in this section, and noone actually mentions it.

Meet random Watch Officer. Characters in this game are modeled surprisingly well, albiet they all have their gun just kind of magnetically attached to their chest. I like their faces, having gotten used to Fallout and Skyrim level facial modeling.

So, Sokolov's been mentioned off-screen, as the guy who created the lock we just used. That's this guy;

and he'll be mentioned much, much more later on. He's the Leonardo da Vinci of this world, pumping out creations that are massively ahead of the tech tree for the time. He's the one that creates the things we use as health potions in this game (the elixir that's supposed to cure the plague), and just about any machinery or electrical doohickey is connected to him in some fashion. He also paints, and I suspect that some of the stuff we'll be looting later on will be connected to that.

And this guy's Campbell. High Overseer Campbell. He's... probably evil. I don't know much more about him than that, but anyone who's job title includes "high" is probably either evil or will turn evil. He also looks kind of prickish, and is having his portrait made by Sokolov, so he's probably egocentric.

As Corvo approaches the Empress to give her the message, he interrupts a conversation between her and her Spymaster. This guy:

He's also evil...and I can confidently say there's really nothing more to say about him. No, really. You'd think he would have some deep motivation for being a subtle asshole, but I don't think there actually is one. He's just a dick.

Corvo approaches the Empress,

, who's name I can't quite recall atm, other than that her last name's Kaldwin. It's probably not important anyways, for reasons you'll see soon. He gives her the message, which can be summed up as "Plague's your problem, deal with it. Oh, and to make sure you don't make it our problem too, we're blockading you." Assholes. The Empress briefly exposits, before noticing that the guards have pieced the fuck out (you can see the spymaster leading them off in the subs on that last picture). Right after that, Emily notices a group of men on a neighboring roof (and she's got excellent eyes, because I still haven't seen them, and I know where to look.).

These guys show up. This is a brief combat tutorial, teaching you how to block and shoot, and how to shank a bitch. It's not complicated; [RB] blocks, and if you time it right, you can parry. swings whatever's in your right hand, and [LT] shoots whatever is in your left. Bullets do shittons of damage, but as you could probably expect are loud. I won't be using these after this initial section, ever, but I'll cover that in the next update. Right now, though, they're the fastest way to take these assholes out.

After taking down two or three of these,

this guy shows up. A step above the nameless grunts we just shot the hell out of, I believe that this guy friend's the focus of most of the DLC this game's got, which I will be playing through after my second playthrough. He holds Corvo in the air with his telekinesis bull, and his friend, I believe named Daud...

Shanks the hell out of the Empress. Then telekinesis jerkoff grabs Emily and drops Corvo on his head or something. Both then vanish, just kind of walking away and teleporting or turning into shadow or something. None of that magic is stuff Corvo will ever be able to use. Shame, having an "oh shit invisible" option would be invaluable later on, when you want to disengage.

Corvo crawls over to the dying Empress (some master assassin Daud is, walking away before she's dead.)

The only thing that image doesn't accurately describe is her going "urp...bleh." after that sentence, and dying in her lover's arms most stereotypically.

What? Oh, yeah. It's heavily implied, if not outright stated, that Corvo's porking his boss-lady. I don't think there's an Emperor anywhere in the game, and it's never mentioned how succession works, so I can only assume that this world runs off a Matriarchy, with rule passing from mother to daughter.

So, after Empress whatever kicks it, Evil Spymaster and Probably-Evil High Overseer run up, along with Unnamed Grunts #5 and #6, who pull a sword and gun on you, respectively.

What this image fails to express is how unconvincing this whole exchange is. It's all incredibly over-the-top, and I get the feeling that the only one who doesn't know what's really going on are the grunts. Evil Spymaster (hereafter referred to as "Prick", until I can remember his name) issues the order to arrest Corvo. I'm not sure how two unnamed grunts were supposed to actually pull that off if he wasn't concussed; canonically, Corvo's kind of a badass. Like, legendarily badass.

But right now, Corvo's kind of suffering from a pillar to the head, so grunt 5 manages to knock him out with a sword-pommel to the head, and it cuts to the title screen.

And that begins chapter 1, Dishonored.

 

[Sword Stalker]

Never seen anything like this before, but I can't say I don't enjoy it.

 

[Xicree]

Dishonored was good. Im REALLY looking forward to Dishonored 2.

 

[DuskAtDawn]

The format is known as a Screenshot Let's Play, and it's more commonly seen on sites like SomethingAwful. But if you want to see more, look on the Let's Play Archive. There are some absolute masterpieces there, like the Animal Crossing LP.

And I'm all of two hours into the game, but I'm looking forward to it too. There's a certain level of... refinement, of polish that I can't quite describe. It just... FEELS right to play. I just hope they don't completely screw it up; Arkane doesn't have a massive list of successes, just the one really successful game. And the Prey reboot's been in dev hell for ages.