I know I’m probably late with finding out about this, but i am just so hyped right now after having read about Dishonored. Aside from the fact that is has a supergroup of designers, artists and publishers behind it, what struck me the most was that it’s an original idea for an original game set in an original world and totally not affiliated with any franchise up to date.
For those of you even slower than me, Dishonored is an immersive first person stealth/action-adventure game with rpg elements (if i understood correctly) lead by Harvey Smith (good god this is turning into such a deus ex fanboy blog) and Raf Colantonio (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic) set in a fictional world combining steampunk and the supernatural with the main character being a royal guard with supernatural powers being framed for the murder of his Empress….imma let you wrap your mind around that for a while. The world sounds really creative, to say the least, involving nobles riding carriages, warmachines patrolling cobbled streets and an economy based on the newly discovered fuel of whale oil…..aaand moving along. The main gameplay element stated by the duo designers is creativity in approaching the game’s challenges, with many of its aspects facilitating this such as multi-layered, non-linear environments allowing for different paths or supernatural powers being designed in a non specific way allowing for their use in achieving extremely diverse effects (more on this in a sec). The game’s perspective, as i mentioned before, will be first person with combat ranging from melee to ranged via the use of certain guns (though as i understand it, these will be quite the slow weapons), incorporate the use of gadgets and a stealth element that keeps track of light and sound, with different surfaces causing more or less sound than others (think Thief) as well as having multiple-path bossfights which apparently can be dispatched nonlethally. Of the powers you can control there will be a time stop ability, short range teleportation a la warcraft’s blink, possession and an enhanced jump. In an interview, Harvey Smith has mentioned that the core of the game is already set and that they’re currently in a phase of development where they’re conducting extensive testing to see what people can come up with within the game and fix any negative unintentional impact of their design philosophy. During these tests, it seems, they were constantly surprised by the new things players discovered they could do, bulletproofing some while allowing others to persist, these are quite interesting effects ranging from, and try to keep up here, sticking a mine on a rat, stopping time, possessing the rat, taking the rat in the middle of a group of guards, ejecting from the possession and walking away then returning to normal time to watch the explosion kill off a great number of guards that in a fair fight would have been extremely difficult to handle. This or stopping time as an enemy is firing his weapon to then possess and conveniently place him in the path of the bullet he just fired. In short, they have taken many steps to make sure every player feels like he can complete a level the way they feel like it, whether this be sneaking through the shadows, possessing a fish, superjump/blinking over rooftops or fighting his way through every npc encountered resulting in what they feel to be a very tailored experience that makes each player’s playthrough a unique one.
Yes, i am very excited about this upcoming title and wish the team all the luck in the world in carrying out their vision as with something this complex it seems pretty easy to slip up and break things even if you have a good team and publisher support. I now leave you with a preview of the game from QuakeCon 2011 and some links for more reading if what i mentioned before got you interested:
Awesome Left 4 Dead fan video, sets a really great mood at the beginning and jump and epic shark in the last few minutes.
Spike Tv 2011 Video Game Awards
“Horrible, simply horrible and completely missing the point” is basically the gist of it. Judging from the past few years, it was obvious that this yearly ceremony wasn’t getting any better, but this year’s sunk to a whole new low. Just so things are a bit more clear, let me explain it this way.
The very name of it being an award ceremony implies recognition for the best games that got released this year and appreciation for the people who made them possible, and here i emphasize my using the past tense. I remember the show going on awkwardly enough, an award or two max with the rest being filled with commercials (world premiers, whatever, they’re presenting future products) when all of a sudden a female voice indicated “Here are some other of tonight’s winners” followed by 50 seconds which presented 15 awards. Yes, about 4 awards were given out properly on stage to the people who deserved them while the rest of them were compressed in a 50 second segment. What happened with the rest of the air time, you ask ? Why “World Premiers” and Felicia Day raising money to buy video games for children’s hospitals (because little Timmy who needs a kidney transplant would obviously prefer that money being spent that way).
As for the awards themselves, they seemed like no-brainers to me, though was very happy for Portal 2 and Bastion to have walked away with a few and am especially delighted for Stephen Merchant and Ellen McLain receiving the best male and female voice actor awards. Naturally there will be disagreements in who deserved what award, though i do feel that some factors were taken into account that shouldn’t have in regards to a few of them, namely Skyrim winning game of the year, which i’m sure still had a whole lot of hype still surrounding it, having only been released a month prior to this ceremony or The Witcher 2 not having received much attention, undoubtedly in part due to its being PC-exclusive, a platform that is sadly going more and more unnoticed despite its technical superiority to consoles (which The Witcher 2 fully exploits and was therefore a much more stronger candidate for, say, the best graphics award).
All in all, i started watching this expecting it to be chuck full of celebrities having the video game culture equivalent of a teenager who thinks Avatar is this century’s “The Godfather” awkwardly reading a prompter while making facial expressions like they know anything they’ve just said, sort of like the lady in the picture to the left who obviously understands what Zachary Levi meant by “people glitching in online games are douchebags” (which i was willing to look past, given that video games aren’t something most people have time for), but no, i didn’t even get that. I got a handful of awards presented by the book and over an hour of publicity for future products. Granted, there were a few parts i enjoyed, such as the intro, but they were too few, far between and unmemorable to make any difference. What’s sad though is that of course this is what you’re going to get in a world where most gamers haven’t heard of or don’t have time for anything more complex than kill->loot->grow
All in all, i started watching this expecting it to be chuck full of celebrities having the video game culture equivalent of a teenager who thinks Avatar is this century’s “The Godfather” awkwardly reading a prompter while making facial expressions like they know anything they’ve just said, sort of like the lady in the picture to the left who obviously understands what Zachary Levi meant by “people glitching in online games are douchebags” (which i was willing to look past, given that video games aren’t something most people have time for), but no, i didn’t even get that. I got a handful of awards presented by the book and over an hour of publicity for future products. Granted, there were a few parts i enjoyed, such as the intro, but they were too few, far between and unmemorable to make any difference. What’s sad though is that of course this is what you’re going to get in a world where most gamers haven’t heard of or don’t have time for anything more complex than kill->loot->grow
