I spent ages working out how I would “solve” the kennels in the first mission, which – frankly – is a tiny area. Nonlethal turns everything into a bomb with multiple wires – how to snip each wire and defuse the bomb without setting the whole thing off. I’m having enormous fun weighing up the pros and cons of using possession vs blink vs sneaking vs environmental support. Which one least likely to get me killed? I didn’t go into this seeking a branching story and I’m disappointed by that either. Everything I wanted seems to be here. We’ll see if I still feel like that once I’ve finished the game. Play time so far: 12 hours after the first real mission.

I see your point about “well, a sandbox is about completing your own goals” and Dishonored asks you to find solutions to a set of provided goals. But I think there’s so much range in there that the possibilities are vast.

The issue is that perhaps the game doesn’t do enough to acknowledge that range. This is essentially Bennaroch’s point as well as Kill Screen’s. Some people just don’t feel that sandbox side of its nature. Maybe I will understand this more if I play assassin.

@Gregg B: The phrase you’re looking for is ludonarrative dissonance.

@Steerpike: Two people died in during my High Overseer mission. I screwed up and lead the overseer who was chasing me into a fight with a Bottle Street Gang member. He killed the gang member and kept after me; then I lead him into a back alley teeming with rats. The game reported two people died in the mission; I think it was counted against me. I have a feeling it will count Weepers against you as well.

Indeed, the game explicitly says: “choices you make affect the city. More deaths will lead to a greater number of rats and Weepers, different reactions from your allies, and darker outcomes.”

What’s not entirely clear is whether certain deaths count and certain deaths don’t (late-stage plague victims are essentially dead already, but very aggressive; do they count? Plus putting them out of their misery seems merciful. Anyway)

That’s the thing with what I was saying about context (and something Randy Smith said as well in another article I dug up while looking for the one above (here: http://www.edge-online.com/features/opinion-grand-theft-auto-ivs-lack-coherence/)), how the main character is portrayed within the narrative and what you play them like can be entirely at odds with one another. Early on in GTA IV when Niko first arrives in Liberty City, he talks about how he doesn’t want to start killing again but on the way to the next mission or story point it’s entirely possible to run over countless pedestrians, in fact, it’s probably a given considering how difficult driving is initially. Does Niko react to this? Of course not, but the cops do and they eventually switch off and go back to sleep. I see parallels there with what you’re saying about Dishonored in that killing isn’t something that the game seems to notice or react to in any sort of meaningful long term way, mechanically or narratively. With Thief, on Expert you were explicitly told to not kill people, master thieves don’t need to do that, so straight away you were like “I am a master thief, I don’t need to kill anyone.” which cleverly sidestepped the whole thing (assuming you chose that difficulty).

Something that appeals to the completist in me in DX:HR is that, so far in the game, when I’ve finished a major mission, all the remaining conscious guards have evacuated (for story-specific reasons) meaning that I’ve been free to wander off and explore before leaving. That seems like a luxury to me!

@Gregg – I did admit there was an interesting point made in the quoted article, one which has occurred to me before. Here’s a parallel observation. I’ve never been convinced that mixing Thief-strength stealth into combat works. Stealth is not an easy game to play, requiring patience and yields a typically intolerant design (get discovered -> quickload). The shooting part is a design crutch to enable players to survive stealth fails and appeal to players who don’t get stealth. In fact, some games appropriate stealth as a way to make killing easier or more stylish (see Mark of the Ninja).

Dishonored wants to be a bit more Deus Ex, enabling players to be stylish killers if they so choose – just take a look at the PR. The game just lets you fall back into the ol’ killing habit if you’re having trouble with stealth; I don’t know of the full range of repercussions but the fact that the game has been done in ten hours suggests to me that most are not playing as ascetic non-lethal stealthmonks.

Killing is rarely punished when the option to kill is available. The reason people don’t kill in real life is not because of a dark ending but because the infrastructure of society turns against you. I want a stealth game to reflect this; I find talk of “ethical choices” in games kind of this calibre ridiculous because killing carries barely any consequences (hey Bioshock!). This shouldn’t be about a player deciding whether to use the left mouse button or right mouse button – but a choice with critical, mechanical consequences.

STEALTH RANT OVER

I will say I’m finding some of the stealth tricky – I’m playing on Hard – looking at the situation and wondering how the hell I’m going to get through it. It’s pushing me to be a little more innovative. I actually left half a level full of conscious people! Oh, by the way, I don’t think that thing with the rat is going to work.

@Jordan – I would like to feel some connection too. One thing that threw me already in Dishonored was someone calling me an assassin. I haven’t killed anybody yet so wasn’t sure whether to parse that as a mistake in dialogue or intentionally designed to make me feel uncomfortable about who people thought I would become. Which it did, of course.

There were some pretty lame setups of enemies etc too. I suspect that blink has a lot to do with it, because once you can blink and jump you are a totally different beast (moving around is a hell of a lot easier and opens up the maps a lot).

I was expecting to go into it and stealth a lot, in the end I did a lot of blink and ranged kills with the skill that vaporises you’re kills so that it tidied the level up a bit after me. Not so much stealthy as more of a enemy hoover.

I think maybe part of the problem is that you aren’t expected to fully master any skill before you unlock a new one. So you can constantly have some half-learned skills being performed with less than fulfilling results. It doesn’t feel like a game that will get much replay value because there are limited goals and the payoffs are typical console ones (i.e. cutscenes, reveals etc). Which is a shame, because the skills are quite nice to use once mastered.

Ultimately it really doesn’t feel like an open world or sandbox game to me, mostly because it has very strict rewards for completing very specific goals. Which I think is at odds with the sandbox idea of “make up your own goals/rewards”. Its still just a bunch of quests, even if you can do them in different orders. Skills are used but ultimately to the same goal (to progress the designers view of “story”). So you really aren’t able to break away from that narrative unless you completely ignore the story quests, which means you can’t progress the levels.

I guess if you thought that thief and deus ex were sandbox, then you could say the same for this. But I don’t think it stands up to much scrutiny in that regard.

@HM — The first one, not so bad. The second one, you don’t find out what it is until after you’ve done it, and even thought you don’t witness it at all, I felt unsatisfied and a little duped. But then again, the story line and characters had made it clear I wasn’t going to be privy to the “solution” and that was part of the deal. I’m not really complaining; the story and choice both served to garner a reaction from me, and that it was unexpected, although not necessarily what I wanted, is actually a good thing.

@Steerpike — Not necessarily different choices = different story, because functionally that doesn’t happen in Dishonored (that I’m aware of, thus far). Functionally, targets are taken out of the picture and two missions in the plot seems to be progressing in a way that doesn’t depend on *how* they were removed.

I would suggest, however, that different choices should equal different feelings, or emotion from the player, in relation to both gameplay and narrative. How you choose to navigate rules, environment, and enemies should give you a sense of identity as a player, and even if the overall plot differences are minute, I’d like to feel some connection to the cursory choices I make, even if that’s primarily role-play happening in my head, as long as its loosely supported by the game.

I’ve no idea what I’ll be like in Dishonored but I foresee myself playing as non-lethally as possible, as usual, and only resorting to other abilities and approaches if my hand is forced. I think that’s what Benarroch is getting at, that we’ll slip into our comfy playstyle, grab a hot mug of cocoa and stay there if given half a chance. While we’re not exactly taking the path of least resistance (as I suspect a lot of the sub-ten hour players are) we are playing in a personally familiar or rational way that perhaps doesn’t make the most of what the game offers because we’re given the choice to play that way. I don’t like to say people are playing it ‘wrong’, particularly in a game that embraces freedom, but I think that freedom can make us lazy — why go to all those lengths if merely doing this or that will do? Look at Immortal Defense, I was easily the most creative with different towers on the levels where I was given fewer to work with. I was forced to be inventive. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

Then there’s the issue of playing so creatively that it’s kind of weird and out of context ‘For example, in “Dishonored,” the pieces are there for me to summon a posse of rats, stick a proximity mine to one of the rats’ backs, assume control of that rat and force him to suicide-bomb a nearby guard. I could do that, but why the hell would I? It’s interesting, sure, but there are no circumstances within the game that make it a good idea. I’d be making that decision as a greasy little sadist sitting in front of a computer, not as a disgraced assassin making his way through Dunwall.’ Which is a fair comment.

I think there are a few sentences in Benarroch’s article that don’t sit well with what he’s ultimately getting at, like the one you quoted, but I can see where he’s coming from. The take away sentence for me is: “‘”Dishonored” made the mistake of giving the player a boatload of options, but no compelling reasons to select one over another.’

Anyway, I haven’t played Dishonored.

I’m playing through Dishonored very slowly – just finished the first assassination mission, actually. And I too appreciate the range of choice, which grants a variety of paths (and often some complex, forward-thinking decisionmaking, such as how to handle the poisoned wine) and allows for a multitude of approaches.

Since I want to give this post a little more discussion on Tap-Repeatedly I’ll cut this short, but I do find your revelations about the psychology of choice fascinating. They certainly explain some of my own emotional reactions when I play.

Dishonored is a fantastic game. Sure, there can be some complaints about it, but I can’t get behind Benarroch’s; it’s fundamentally flawed. Frankly, “choice” and “narrative” are two separate things in a game, and they can be completely exclusive. There’s no law that says different choices MUST lead to different stories. In fact, I consider it a sign of masterful game design that you’re able to exercise so many choices and still get the story that Arkane wanted to tell. Consider how often a choice breaks a story in a game. Is Benarroch saying that’s better?