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So I finally got around to playing Dishonoured and started the second one. The first was really fun, cool setting with a steampunk world with like an Eldritch background. I played Low Chaos, and I don't think I actually killed anyone besides Granny Rags, Daud and the Whalers, because they were all like the only legitimately evil people in the game you couldn't punish non-lethally, which was strange enough in Daud's case.

Pretty much everything about Daud seemed weird, actually. I know the DLC supposedly work more on him, but he's a clear villain who just kills people for money, yet the game kind of acts like I should feel sympathy for him even because he's guilty, even though he's still training assassins and doing all that stuff.

Anyhow, it was a really cool game. The plot was fairly basic, although the Chaos aspect helped it a bit, and it did end really abruptly. Still, the game was fun, the people were cool and I enjoyed playing it.

The sequel so far has been fairly shit. I don't even know why you're given the choice to play Corvo again, it seems better thematically and logically just to have Elizabeth as the protagonist rather than just the exact same plot again. Unlike the first one the bad guys are all traitors and thus deserving of death rather than just manipulated and good people, so I'm forced to slaughter them and presumably ruin my empire with high chaos. For some reason the empire is shockingly shit with poverty and guards being evil and hanging civilians, despite the fact Elizabeth is supposed to be a good leader, and her people are shockingly willingly to betray her. It just seems like a far inferior game, although I'm hoping it gets better.

Anyhow, what did you think of the Dishonoured games? Which did you prefer and why?

Haven't played the second yet, adored the emergent gameplay and aesthetics of the first. Story was nothing to write home about, but the level design definitely was, so many different ways to achieve any given objective. When it came out five years ago, it was quite a revelation. The Daud DLC helped build his character a bit, but again nothing really to write home about. 

Played full pacifist in my runs IIRC, chaos just ended up spawning boringly large numbers of enemies. Dishonored used to be on my top five when it came out. Since then, other games have displaced it. If you haven't yet, I'd highly recommend Deus Ex Human Revolution for a similar but sci-fi experience, with a better story (though arguably a lame ending).

I'd recommend Deus Ex: Human Revolution to any RPG fan, but mostly for the gameplay and power fantasy involved. I enjoyed the story, but it was very predictable and the characters were not all that inspired. 

When you say the ending was lame, do you mean the ending cutscenes, or the last mission and the cutscenes together?

Final mission switching to a Vs Zombie mode, and there being no acknowledgement of previous actions in the final four endings, plus the way in which those endings were unlocked (help Sarif and/or help the other guy). Design wise if you'd been playing a certain way till that point, it should have affected your ending choices / video content. 

I liked the existence of the fourth option though, which was canon (it's what's happening on the game's cover art IIRC)

Still, while I haven't reached there yet, I'm sure HR's endings still knock MD's ending (or lack thereof) straight out of the water.

To a certain extent the original Deus Ex sort of had the same issue with its endings. You could pretty much get all three of them just by saving at a certain point towards the end of the game and just reloading.

Though I guess you still had to play through a bit more of the game to get them than you did in Human Revolution, which is just basically pushing a button at one spot.

There was one bit in HR I liked which was when you suddenly started having problems with your hardware and you can go get it upgraded at some point so you don’t have the issues anymore.

Being the paranoid sort that I am, I didn’t upgrade since I figured there was a sinister reason for getting the masses to all do it.

There's an excellent developer diary on how they made that scene. But yeah, that 'optional upgrade' was remarkably genre savvy game design

I would agree with those statements. The switch in enemy type was very silly, but at least it gave lots of cannon fodder to use your shinny new plasma rifle on? If only it wasn't introduced after the game was more or less over.

I haven't played much of MD myself yet, I basically only got it because of the power fantasy; it disappoints me greatly that they failed to deliver a proper follow up. It's like the original two Deus Ex all over again.

I loved the first one, the sheer number of ways to approach situations was awesome. Trying to get through while keeping the deaths to a minimum  was a fun challenge. The second one, while not bad was a bit of a let down, it's the same story, I noticed it has a few bugs and the camera sometimes goes insane when your character is swimming. The level designs make the game feel more like work then fun, epically the clockwork mansion. 

I played High Chaos dishonoured. Stealth is always fun for a little while, but I didn't much care about the story and the "Moral" path seemed like an utter waste of time given all the cool shit I could have been doing had I not been struggling to play the dumbed-down version of the game for the "Good" ending. I feel like Low-Chaos is supposed to be like a New Game + kinda thing. "Alright, you've had your fun, now try these specific challenges to make the game harder".

Coming out of the gates with "Doing fun things will make your ending BAD!" kind of defeats the point of the game and all the gameplay and superpower options that get skipped out on, and makes it feel like you're supposed to be playing a painfully generic stealth game with teleportation. If I wanted to play just a steampunk stealth game rather than a steampunk stealth murder game, I would've played Thief, which doesn't judge me for how I play and does stealth in general much better. Had the game not told you about the way your outcome affects the game, and not framed the endings as "One clearly better option and one clearly darker option", then I'm sure it would have been much better received.

I liked the first one quite a bit the whole setting was pretty cool. I heard so much bad stuff about the second one I haven’t bothered to buy it. Maybe when it comes down in price.

Deliberately played through killing as many people as I could. Just didn’t see the point in doing a pacifist run and since there was going to be chaos anyway, I figured I might as well go all the way with it.

Corvo is supposed to be the Empress’ bodyguard and is a ruthless dark god blessed killing machine on top of it. Doesn’t make much sense for him not to use lethal force to save his daughter and put her on the throne.

The DLC with Daud was okay. Didn’t really feel any sympathy for him though. He just seemed like a shitty version of Corvo.

Alrigh, finished the sequel. It was better than my additional thoughts, as it actually does highlight how shitty a leader you were, and it's actually quite fun. It has a really cool level where you control time to switch between timelines and a bizarre clockwork mansion. It's actually is quite entertaining in many of the levels. Definitely a better game than initially thought, although it ends just as abruptly, and many characters from the first game, like virtually all of the surviving loyalists barring Sokolov, are entirely absent and written off. Anyhow, I'd like to retract my initial shitting on it.

So would you say it still doesn't match up to the first one, or about the same in quality?

Eh... yeah, I'd say it's as good. I mean it has flaws, but the first one had a lot of generic elements like the protagonist that this does a lot better.

Corvo was cool when he was silent. He was a vengeful specter of death or whatever who saw no need for words. Now he's super cringy and I hate listening to him grumbling. 

Uh, you played as Corvo? You're a retard. Thematically Emily works as a way better protagonist. Plus, Corvo was boring as fuck in the first one and it led to some weird dialogue, like rescuing Emily where she's like "You must have come here by boat (because reasons)" because Corvo couldn't just tell her.

Fucking retarded that they switched the Outsider's voice actor. The original dude was so cool

Dishonored 2 runs worse than my old grandmother in a wheelchair. Dishonored 2 flopped commercially so we can kiss the series goodbye (just like Titanfall and Watch Dogs).

No, your computer is just a hamster wheel wired up to three transistors, because you live in fucking Borat's village. 

I play on a Vacuum Tube. Transistors ate too advanced for me.

You ate a transistor?

Add Deus Ex to that list. Apparently they're no longer making 3 because they screwed Mankind Divided so much it didn't sell. It didn't sell so they're not going to complete the series. Moral of the story - don't be an idiot.

Also, Sims 5 is unlikely, and Mass Effect will live or die by Andromeda. Big publishers really don't have the stomach to stand their ground.

Honestly I haven't been buying that many of the major video games anymore. Most of them don't appeal to me anyway.

Most of the games I buy nowadays are the smaller indy stuff.

I'm buying Torment: Tides of Numenera in a couple days, but that's about the only major one that has interested me. And that one probably isn't considered an AAA game.

Nowadays I'm giving AAAs the silent treatment, and inevitably their prices tank to 40% off in 3 months, and >50% in a year, it's absurd. Plus, by then all the early bugs are resolved, so it kind of pays to wait unless you're a fanboy. I mostly get stuff via humble monthlies / humble bundles, the value for money is INSANE, and the odd indie here and there which I don't expect to see in a humble bundle.

Numenera is one of those rare games that's between Indie and AAA, in the last decade most games either went high price and slightly better quality (than otherwise), or lower price and more indie values. 

I'm waiting for the final release of Original Sin 2, kickstarted that one a year ago. Recently I've played (and finished) Sleeping Dogs (highly recommended), VA11-HALLA, Steamworld Heist, Ryse Son of Rome, and Yu-Gi-Oh Legacy of the Duelist. I have another 28 games in various forms of completion I'll be moving onto now, of which I'd only consider 4 to be AAAs.

Only AAA I'm looking forward to is Horizon: Zero Dawn. The only reason my brother took his PS4 back out. Sucks that it's an exclusive, because PS4 is bad...

I'd disagree on the PS4 being bad. Objectively seen, it's the only console worth buying except for Nintendo - if you like the games on the Wii U / 3DS. Fun fact, Halo 6 is coming to PC.

I like the story and mechanics of Sleeping Dogs. It feels like you have actual influence over what you're doing, and you're playing a guy who knows what he's doing, whereas stuff like GTA 5 feels like you're achieving something despite being the definitive example of a drunk old uncle.

Sleeping Dogs doesn't really give you much opportunity to be a supervillain, like other open-world crime games, which is a major downside on its part, but the gamefeel of actually being able to fight off a load of people without feeling like it's just because you punched first and punched harder, or threw a lot of grenades. I guess that's because the America-based games are first and foremost about guns, so you kind of have to simulate things like driving, carjacking, and fisticuffs better than everyone else if you want a crime sim in a place outside of America, where guns are heavily restricted.

Then again, you could still do things like fly a plane well, hit someone without stumbling for 3 feet and nearly falling on your face, and use a gun properly in GTA IV, Saints Row, and literally almost every other crime sandbox, so I don't know what V's excuse is.

Titanfall 2 is way better than Titanfall 1. So is Watch Dogs 2 (Even though I don't like it.).

Yeah, but for once audiences finally realized that bad games aren't worth buying. The more amount of hype the first part had, the greater the failure of the second parts' sales. TF1 and Watch Dogs 1 had wildy huge hype trains that derailed the franchise.

Tragically, this time the Devs really did mean it when they were making these games, but the players didn't forget the failures of those part 1s

Yeah. It's funny that because the first games were screwed up so bad, the sequels are pretty low in popularity, even though they're much better and actually semi-decent.

Screwing the first ones isn't unexpected. When I look back at my top games list, outside of Valkyria Chronicles none of them is the first part in a series, the developers learn in the first. The sad thing with TF2 is that they really made a good story in that one, I hear, and it'll never get sequelled. TF2s failure also had a lot to do with calling it '2' and launching it as the first of the series on the PS, and launching it inbetween BF1 and CoD, what were those idiots at HQ thinking?!

They weren't thinking anything; that is honestly the only conclusion I can come up with as to the entire mess that is the Titanfall series. It's a shame too, because it is a really cool shooter, and Tf2 really showed its potential to grow into something great. Although, personally what I saw of the campaign for Tf2 didn't blow me away, it was just a standard, solid story about man and machine forming a bond.

Honestly, TF2 did have an excellent storyline, but it was never really explored in the actual game besides just vague allusions in the different match types. Most players who haven't gone to the website have no idea why anything's the way it is in the game. Thing about TF2 is, it has such a big and constantly enlarging storyline, complete with complimentary hats, but at the same time, it's so complete in theme and concept that a third game wouldn't really do much but restrict the massive variety of playstyles already available.

I thought it did pretty much the same as the first in sales.

My brother got all the endings, High Chaos and Low Chaos. To be honest Low Chaos is very similar in terms of ending, with very little other stuff. I think that going High Chaos is more fun because it is less tedious, and you get to use all the fun gizmos at your disposal. It feels that to get the "Good" ending, you have to sacrifive everything useful and just sneak around nonstop.

Literally the only point of buying Dishonoured at this time.

That was performance art right there.. the trash can kill and the bottle toss in the air kill. Thanks for the share

I like how he took the opportunity to take long upskirt views of the whores in between all the killing.