Professor Paul1290

New video up, The Caduceus of St. Alban: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5C6J_0nbA&hd=1 I get a really close call and almost die from falling two floors, but I survived and only just avoided having to resort to loading a quick save. I haven't died just yet! I guess we'll find out how much longer my luck will last soon enough though. Also, I kind of butcher the pronunciation of "caduceus" in the intro.

Getting back on topic, I'm actually starting a new playthrough right away. So far, my only real significant gripe with the game is that the default difficulty is too easy, and you really have to go for Hard or Very Hard before the game really becomes challenging. Part of it might be that you're extremely agile in this game compared to Thief. Corvo might not any of Garrett's "magic shadow invisibility" but he does have "magic ninja acrobat skill" to make up for it, though perhaps a bit too much. They really crank up the security and guard density later in the game to try to offset this, but you do feel a bit too agile sometimes.

Darkness helps, but only to a certain extent. If you're up close to your enemy then the effect of darkness is near nothing on Hard or Very Hard, if you're far away then it can delay detection enough to get to a better hiding spot. That being said, you are a lot faster and more agile in this game than you tend to be in Thief and similar games, so you can take advantage of obstacles and avoid line-of-sight much more easily. Also, leaning is more effective and doesn't expose you as much as in Thief, which means you can easily see around obstacles while hiding without giving yourself away. If I remember correctly, Robert Yang tweeted a day or two ago that "Dishonored is less about the light gem and more about the "height gem"" and I think that sums it up pretty nicely. Stealth in this game at close range is more about line of sight, using clutter, and going above or below your enemy. Despite this, something I noticed as I played is that the distribution of "safe zones" in a room in Dishonored is strikingly similar to patterns used in Thief 2 and it almost seems to use a similar "level building theory" when you look at the rooms from a top-down perspective, except Dishonored uses clutter and vertical elements as "safe zones" instead of shadows. Dishonored is NOT developed by Bethesda, it's only published by Bethesda. It is actually developed by Arkane Studios, the developers of Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It's also built on Unreal Engine 3, and that engine is widely used enough that I think most decent PCs can run Unreal Engine 3 games without much trouble by now. It's also relatively clean of bugs, or at least there haven't been that many complaints on most forums I've seen compared to other PC games of similar popularity. I can't really speak for everyone, but I haven't had a single crash or noticeable gameplay-affecting bug during my first run through the game. In fact, the most technical trouble the game gave me at all was that I had to go into a config file and edit a number to get the FOV to go over 85 (the game has an FOV slider but it only goes up to 85) and that only took me a minute at most. You are correct that it is a Steam game though, if you object to that then that would be a valid reason to wait.

I didn't notice the guards doing anything too jarringly stupid. If you rewire traps and such they do tend to run into them, but I didn't think this was a problem. As for noticing you killing their comrads, I think they seemed to pick up on this just fine as far as I could tell. They found bodies I've left behind several times, and grabbing someone to knock them out didn't work too well if another guard looked in your direction or was standing too close. I'm not sure what you mean by hiding in the shadows causing them to ignore you. Shadows don't really stop guards from detecting you in Dishonored unless you are pretty far away, otherwise they just delay the time it takes for them to recognize you as a threat. At ranges close enough to melee or knock people out without using bullets or darts, stealth is more or less completely line of sight. Then again, I played on "Very Hard" (the highest difficulty available at the moment) and I'm not sure how difficulty affects guard behavior.

Well, there's a religious order called the "Abbey of the Everyman" that's the main religion of sorts (though they don't have big hammers). They're against a supernatural being worshipped by some heretics called "The Outsider".

I'm not sure about the Xbox version having as many interface options as I only have the PC version. However, I can say that objectives don't have time limits for the most part. I think the closest thing to a time limit I recall is that one of the assassination missions involved the target attempting to kill a possible secondary objective, but that didn't start until you reached that specific spot. I think most former Thief players will spend the majority of their time in this game putting off the primary objectives and going around to exploring and loot everything, and this game actually seems to encourage that a lot. Dishonored doesn't have loot goals, but amusingly at the end of the mission it does give you a loot count and tells you whether you've successfuly ghosted the mission. As an amusing side note, I'm starting think "choffer" (not sure about the spelling) is Dishonored's equivalent of Thief's "taffer".

I just finished a run through Dishonored on "Very Hard" difficulty. It's definitely not a very long game, I finished it in 15 hours. However, I have to say that was the best 15 hours I've gotten out of a AAA first person game since the original Deus Ex. In fact, I haven't liked a AAA game as much as I've liked Dishonored in a very long time. I'll go even further than that, and say that for me Dishonored has already earned itself a place with the original Deus Ex and Thief 2 for re-playing at least once or twice a year. Yes, I like it that much. To anyone here who's about to play this game: -If you're comfortable with The Dark Mod you'll probably want to start Dishonored on Very Hard or Hard right away as the default difficulty is probably going to be too low for you. -The interface is very hand-holding by default, but don't let this put you off because it has a TON of options to toggle various HUD elements on and off. I think I saw three different toggles related to how the items frob, so you can set things how you want here. The game seems to have options to turn off just about everything in the interface that may put off a hardcore Thief player. -In addition to the above, don't be afraid to turn off objective markers here. Unlike certain other games that let you turn off objective markers, Dishonored's maps are actually designed to be navigable by eyes and common sense, so you can turn them off and not feel crippled.

I regret not having Fraps on at the time, because when they first started doing that I had one of my TDM "OW! Goddammit stop throwing rocks!" moments. XD

I just got partway through the first assassination mission. So far, I really really like this game. I will say that, setting and theme aside, a lot of areas do feel pretty Thief-like, especially indoors. It's not as much of a shadow-stealth and looting game as Thief (stealth is mostly line of sight), but it feels like the influence is definitely there. If the first mission is anything to go by, they seem to have gone pretty far out of their way to construct significantly sized areas around the mission-relevant areas, enough to tuck several side-quests into the missions. There are plenty of places to loot if you feel like doing so. There are lot of buildings with a lot of entrances and a lot of streets that branch of into a lot of interestingly designed alleyways. I also want to mention the mantling. Mantling in this game is pretty darn good. I'd say it feels a bit like TDM's mantling except more sped up. I actually found myself trying to press C to mantle without jumping but that ended up with me crouching repeatedly. One thing I would recommend for most people here is to set difficulty to "Hard" or "Very Hard" right off the bat. I started on "Very Hard" and it feels fairly comfortable, so I'm going to guess "Normal" in this game will be a bit too easy for some.

What's hilarious about this is that the issue of having a "don't be seen" objective didn't really hit me until partway through the mission. I actually brought a extra flashbombs this time thinking it would help me! I think it was around 17:40 as the guard is coming back up the stairs and I comment about the low ceiling when I silently thought "Wait a sec, my objectives say I can't be seen! AW CRAP!". It's especially funny when I re-watch that because I notice I make my "I'm not comfortable" comment about the light above the stairs, quite an understatement. You might have noticed I used plenty of water arrows in this one.

As requested earlier, here's Sneak and Destroy:

Thanks, I will probably do more of these. I definitely try not to load saves whenever I can except for recording purposes. I find it more fun both when recording and when I play on my own to put-off loading a save until the situation becomes really unsalvageable. Thankfully that hasn't happened so far except for the accidental loading in Too Late.

Thanks. I've posted this on at least one other forum but I only go to a couple forums that are even remotely Thief related, so feel free to link these elsewhere!

I was trying to grab his feet and either push him in or lift the legs up and over the edge, but both times he landed such that either his waist was caught on the edge or his leg were sticking out with knees locked straight and kneecaps facing down. He ended up being balanced on the edge such that lifting his limbs was rather tricky. In hindsight, flipping him over would have probably solved both problems. I have a tendency to prefer hiding bodies in bathrooms and toilet stalls in stealth games, hence the "quest for spacious latrines!". Bathrooms tend to be bigger than closets yet small and out of the way enough that most games don't have NPCs going in and out too often. (and yes, there's also the juvinile potty humor factor!) Some TDM FMs actually have NPCs that go in and out of the bathrooms, with some interesting consequences on my end!

Ok, next one is up: As with the other one, this is all one-takes straight through with thankfully no loading any saves except to split the video. I run into trouble at the last minute again, I guess I got a bit sloppy after completing my objectives.

I randomly decided to make a quick "bonus video". I hope you like it, as it was the result of having a lot of beer and other alcoholic beverages! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ0UhhfPiA4&hd=1 Enjoy! On a more serious note, this video should be at the appropriate brightness so if it's still too dark for you please speak up.

Probably different monitor settings, I notice if I switch to one of the other modes for my monitor then I get results similar to what 7upMan describes. In that case, I'll go with the second option so it's watchable by more people. It's slightly washed out for me, but not too bad.

Thanks for the comments. I'll definitely look into increasing the gamma a bit for the next one and reducing the game volume somewhat. I might do some newer missions, I guess we'll see. On the subject of brightness or gamma, I uploaded two test videos at a couple increased levels: Here's test 1, at 1.2 gamma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOVocyCqB5U&hd=1 Here's test 2, at 1.3 gamma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJcQWCzJu0Q&hd=1 I'd like to hear from 7upMan or anyone else who had trouble seeing anything in my previous video. Do you like number 1 or number 2? It's like going to the eye doctor!

Ok, so I just made my first attempt at recording a playthrough of a TDM mission. It's awkward as heck as I'm not used to playing while recording myself and talking and I stumble quite a bit. Hopefully the next one turns out better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WCVgtRffqg&hd=1 I am somewhat worried that the video might be too dark. It seems to be darker in the recording than it is when I actually play, and some people's monitors probably aren't as bright as mine. It's unlisted for now until I know whether I should do a re-take or a bit more editing. Tell me what you think. EDIT: Increased brightness a bit.

The keyboard I'm using right now is a Rosewill RK-9000BL and I've had it for almost two years now. It isn't very fancy and it's one of the cheaper lower quality mechanical keyboards, but even this keyboard has been far better than any of the membrane keyboards I've had over the years (and I've gone through quite a few). On the other hand, I would hesitate to recommend this model at this point as I've recently been hearing about some defects in some of the some batches of this particular keyboard. I guess I got kind of lucky on this one. XD I suppose as far as something I would recommend having a look at, I did find something rather interesting. Unicomp, one of the companies that manufactured the Model M "buckling spring" keyboards, seem to still make and sell modern versions of that keyboard: www.pckeyboard.com/ They should be a nice option if you want a keyboard with buckling spring switches like the reliable Model M, but don't want something that's had everyone's dirty fingers all over it over the years.

I think it's really limiting to assume that procedurally generated worlds need to be sandboxes as I don't think that's necessarily true. Sandbox games tend to be the more popular and obvious use of procedurally generated content, but it's not like the technique is bound to that genre. Many Roguelikes use procedurally generated content of some kind, and they're not really sandbox games. On the contrary, they're games with goals, challenges, and balance. They generally have set goals that are set by the developer and are not very dynamic, but the stuff between the where you start and your goal can often involve a lot or random content and procudural generation. Some genre's that aren't really sandbox games have been using some form of lightweight procedural generation for a long time, even if we don't often call it such. This is fairly common in ARPGs or "Diablo-alikes". Some strategy games also apply random or procedurally generated content as well X-Com: UFO Defense being a classic example. As I mentioned above, you don't necessarily have to pair procedurally generated worlds with procedurally generated goals. It's not really a black and white thing, a lot of games use some kind of random or procedurally generated content to varying degrees, and the games we call "procedurally generated" are just games that use more of it. On the topic of goals, there are a variety of different ways to make goals dynamic while still keeping them as goals. Maybe you don't let them emerge purely out of a simulation, but you can definitely do better than writing everything by hand. Generally a game is going to have a single, very general, and somewhat vague overarching goal that defines the overall "plot" the game. Unless you're making some kind of pure sandbox game or something like that you're always going to have that. It's probably going to be something like "save the world" or maybe "win the war" or something really general like that. However, the sub-goals that lead you to that ultimate goal don't really have to be as set in stone. I've already mentioned Roguelikes as doing this quite a bit, but there are some other specific examples outside that genre as well. One example is how Soldak's Din's Curse and Drox Operative handle goals. They have "quests" like any other RPG and these quests have a lot of elements that are written by hand, but the way they use the hand written elements is a bit more dynamic. For example, Din's Curse has the idea of mobs grouping together occasionally gaining higher status sometimes by killing each other. When mobs gather on a given floor and become organized, that is where "kill this group of mobs" come from. When mobs kill or overthrow each other and gain status, that's where "kill this boss" eventually comes from. When they eventually gather enough to come to the surface and attack the town, that's where "protect the town" comes from. This by itself is relatively simple as you have a set of pre-made events that may occur randomly, and that by itself that isn't all that interesting. However, these games do something else to take this idea even further, they arrange these events in chains of "cause and effect" that may affected or interrupted by the player or each other. This means that what starts as a series of pre-made events that get put into the world randomly can eventually mix with each other and what the player does to create even more situations. For example, maybe the RNG decides that a mob kills another mob and "levels" up. This is more or less arbitrary to start with, but this sets off a series of events that may eventually turn out different depending on how other events turn out. If the player chooses to ignore this mob, or simply doesn't notice this mob, this mob may eventually become more powerful as long as it doesn't get killed off by the player or another mob. If this happens, and it might not, this mob may eventually become a boss. A boss might make a doomsday device, they might gather an army, they might send some of their minions to the surface to cause trouble, or they might all of those as well as a few other things. Maybe the player will pay attention to the new boss and kill him off, or maybe they'll be too pre-occupied with other things. Maybe the boss may be overthrown by another new boss, and the army changes mob type or dissolve completely. Now when you have many of these "cause-and-effect" chains going on and branching off at the same time, with things like mobs organizing and causing uprisings, food poisoning raising goods prices and killing the populace, merchants getting killed or setting up shop, and random storms/curses, you can get a lot of mileage out of what originally starts out as a relatively small number of well understood pre-made events. It's up to the player to attack these problems and fulfilling a set of "victory conditions" to achieve the large overarching goal. Another somewhat less structured way of doing things is to not try to name "goals" or "quests" all that specifically, but only explicitly name a large overarching goal and dynamically put things in the player's way that create interesting situations. This way, short term sub-goals emerge as the player plans his way towards his ultimate goal. This is more or less how some roguelikes and some strategy games work. To name a specific example. AI War: Fleet Command does this a lot. In that game you always have the goal of defeating the evil AI, but the stuff that gets in your way is subject to a lot of random number generator as well as elements that interact with each other to create even more unusual combinations. You may encounter an enemy that is powerful against a certain unit type, or might do something very bad if you attempt a certain action carelessly, and a variety of these might be found in the same system where their effects overlap. Maybe the AI might decide to attack or do something else on top of what you are already encountering and cause problems that overlap with those you already have. Again, you still keep an large and very general overarching goal. and you have relatively simple pre-made objects and behaviors that can interact with each other to multiply the amount of variety you can provide with them. AI War: Fleet Command combines this with a variety of options for starting conditions, available units, AI behaviors, and in-game events. This allows the player to set up a variety of games that have a tendency to behave differently on top of the variety the game provides already.

I can definitely see that being the case. It's odd, but it's not glitchy looking or immersion destroying levels of odd. I'm pretty sure a lot of players have been using this whether it's intended or not. TDM's thief (or thieves) tends to seem pretty agile in general anyway, so it's not too inhuman of a stretch to think he can climb pretty well.