WolfEye's debut game Weird West attempted to pack a little of Dishonored's immersive sim sorcery into a top-down action-RPG. For the studio's next game, co-founders Raphaël Colantonio and Julien Roby are leaning into comparisons with their old endeavours at Arkane more earnestly. The new game - currently untitled and without a release date - is a first-person sci-fi RPG set in an alternate-1900s North America, which ostensibly combines the ingenuity and gadgetry of Dishonored and Prey with a "real RPG" experience redolent of Skyrim and modern-day Fallout.
]]>Like us, you’re probably still reeling from Tuesday’s news that Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango and Prey’s Arkane Austin are getting shuttered by Microsoft. According to Bloomberg, these closures were just a part of a “widespread cost-cutting initiative” that’s still underway. All signs point towards more cuts to come, basically. ZeniMax studios seem to be the main target.
]]>Overnight, in what Edwin called an "unredacted document oopsie" related to Microsoft trying to buy ActiBlizz, two things have been revealed that interest me. Well, three. Firstly, Phil Spencer capitalises "Gaming", which I hate. Secondly, as noted in that linked story, Phil Spencer wants to buy Nintendo and, in pitying also-ran brackets, Valve, which has some of the same energy as me walking into an estate agent and demanding a six bedroom house with a new fitted kitchen and a hidden library. And thirdly, according to a release schedule from a presentation dated 2020, Bethesda and Zenimax have planned out their next few years of games in depressing MCU presentation-style. Boy, are the next couple of years going to be whelming.
As is predictable now, it is largely a list of sequels and remasters, many of them dated quite optimistically, it must be said. This document pegs Starfield for 2021, for example, and obviously that didn't happen. There are also two unnamed games on there for this year (Projects Kestrel and Platinum; 2021's Project Hibiki we know refers to the surprise-released Hi-Fi Rush) and it seems unlikely they're going to appear before the end of the year. We know The Elder Scrolls 6 isn't coming for at least another five years. They're going to remaster Oblivion (but not Morrowind, the weird cousin everyone else likes most, but whose parents aren't sure what job to give them in 2023). And they're going to make Dishonored 3. I'm excited about that! But also fearful.
]]>What does the future hold for ZeniMax and Bethesda? A sizeable helping of the same, if a 2020-dated release schedule leaked as part of today's accidental FTC Microsoft court document blowout is to be believed. The document is from a July 2020 Microsoft presentation about the acquisition of ZeniMax, during the early months of the Covid pandemic - as such, it doesn't reflect Microsoft and ZeniMax's plans today, following global lockdowns and the buyout, and several of the dates are obviously bogus. Still, it's probably a good steer as to current and future Bethesda and ZeniMax projects, which may include Dishonored 3 and remasters of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3.
]]>Dishonored was Arkane’s breakout hit, the assassination sandbox that elevated the studio to the top table of immersive sim makers. Its success validated Bethesda’s decision to buy Arkane a couple of years earlier, and left the publisher with a promising new series. But despite critical acclaim, Dishonored 2 failed to bring the series to a wider audience. And after 2017’s standalone expansion, Death Of The Outsider, Bethesda decided to put the series on pause in favour of a shorter, more experimental project - according to Arkane founder Raphaël Colantonio, who spoke to me in an interview about their cancelled project The Crossing.
]]>There’s an alternate world where Arkane made The Crossing, and it’s not necessarily a better one. Before Dishonored, the developer was looking down the wrong end of a bad publishing deal which, in the estimation of founder Raphaël Colantonio, would have ended in either The Crossing’s cancellation or a deeply underwhelming end product. In that timeline, there’s no telling whether the studio would even exist today.
Nevertheless, for fans of Arkane’s sophisticated and immersive first-person adventures, this lost project remains tantalisingly forbidden fruit: a foolhardy mashup of single and multiplayer in which teams of invading players would attack the protagonist of a solo campaign, against the backdrop of a multiversal Paris co-designed by Half-Life 2’s Viktor Antonov.
]]>Welcome to the latest edition of The RPS Time Capsule, where members of the RPS Treehouse each pick one game from a given year to save from extinction while all other games fizzle and die on the big digital griddle in the sky before blinking out of existence. This time, we're turning our preservation mitts on the year 2012, a year absolutely stacked with some pretty stellar releases. But which ones will make the cut and be safely ensconced inside our cosy capsule for future generations? Come on down to find out.
]]>The Epic Games Store's festive season of freebies has drawn to a close. The Epic Games Store's weekly freebies have therefore resumed. Right now and until January 5th you can grab Dishonored: Definitive Edition for free, which includes Arkane's first-person stealth playground and all its expansions.
]]>If Twitter does die, I will miss it. Amidst the wailing lie certain gems, like this thread of developers sharing confessions and cheeky tricks from across their careers. We're talking cobbling rat-tunnel ducts together to form a makeshift flare launcher in Dishonored, or using the bottom of a bleach bottle as a stand-in for a light fixture. I've picked out some of my favourites - come and revel in them with me.
]]>Time-bending sci-fi shooter Deathloop is one of the possible futures of the Dishonored universe, Arkane’s Dinga Bakaba revealed during a recent episode of the Xbox podcast. Bakaba was the creative director on Deathloop, and lead designer for Dishonored 2 and Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider. He’s finally spilled the tea, confirming players’ suspicions that the two Arkane series beginning with a D and featuring magical abilities are linked.
]]>Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider is a revenge and redemption tale, only here the target of your revenge is god. 'We're going to kill a god’ might seem like a well-trodden path in JRPG country, but Death Of The Outsider brings something new to the table. Here, the god is a trickster, a victim, and the source of the player's power. He's a figure that has come to define the Dishonored series as a whole, and is both revered and pitied by its players. So how, exactly, do you go about killing a god like this? I spoke to the developers at Arkane to find out.
]]>“What’s with all the meat everywhere, anyway?” my Death Trash alter ego Mildred asks. “It’s just there. Grows.” the meat merchant replies. “Maybe we’re living on a planet full of flesh and right now we’re standing on a crust of stone and dirt. So, do you want a piece of meat now?” I really don’t. But Mildred does. After all, this mystery meat is the main healing item in the game. It’s what keeps you and the world around you alive. It’s harvested from the ground like precious stones, the literal blood flowing in this grotesque world’s barebones economy, eaten raw and served in meat bars.
But where does the meat come from? Whence the amorphous flesh blobs and pools of blood? From another planet, another dimension? There are no animals in this strange ecosystem apart from Fleshworms. The strange meat seems to be linked to another mystery, the advent of the flesh titans (which are exactly what the name suggests). Soon we discover that we are able to commune with the meat and, through it, speak to a enigmatic being called The Oracle. The meat is a kind of universal consciousness, a flesh and blood information highway, into which those who are attuned to it can plug in. Whether the meat and the flesh titans are good or bad for humanity is up for debate, and there are factions that deify and others that hate them, vying for power. The clot thickens.
]]>Bethesda's games are beginning to arrive on Xbox Game Pass tomorrow. Microsoft made the announcement in a blog post, and there are 18 of them coming to Xbox Game Pass For PC.
]]>As part of my gradual rehabilitation after getting stuck in a games hole last year, I took the recommendation of my Electronic Wireless Show podcast mates Alice and Matthew last week, and have embarked on a playthrough of the Dishonored series. And, look, this is hardly going to come as a surprise, but… Dishonored is well good, isn’t it? Apart from anything else, I’ve just not played a proper, no-expense-spared-Doctor-Grant action adventure extravaganza in so long, that I had forgotten how much I can enjoy them.
But I suppose the really delicious bit for me, in this particular games burger, is the big pile of juicy lore stacked between its electric buns. Dishonored is a rare example of a game world that interests me so much, I actively read every book, note, poster and fish tin I can get my gristly hands on, just to marinate in it all. Rightly confident in its strength, the game has offered me a few ways to indulge this fascination further. But the best of them has to be the Horrible Haunted Heart.
]]>Update: Microsoft say they'll "keep the commitment" to bring Bethesda's Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo to PS5 as timed exclusives. More below.
Microsoft just announced they've bought ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda. The developers of games such as Skyrim, Fallout, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake and all those classics are now technically Xbox Game Studios. Xbox boss Phil Spencer made a post welcoming the developers, in what he calls a "landmark step" for both Microsoft and Bethesda.
What a year.
]]>QuakeCon At Home is live this weekend on Twitch, though it really should be called BethFest when you look at the schedule. The event has moved wholly online thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rescheduled celebration of id’s and Bethesda’s games has an intriguing schedule. Here are a few of the highlights.
]]>Hubbish bubbish, rhymes are rubbish, eye of newt and blah blah blah. Gosh, magic is a chore. If only we had a catalyst to... Oh, hello reader, what are you doing here? Well, as it happens, yes, you can help me out. Just stand over here while I scratch these runes around you. I’m trying to summon the 9 best magic spells in PC games, you see. Stand still, please. You won’t feel a thing.
]]>Break out the party poppers - Prey and Dishonored developers Arkane Studios turns 20 years old this year. Well, sort of. The studio may have been founded in '99, but who am I to ruin a party? To celebrate two decades of sneaking, stabbing, and all-round immersive sim'ing, Arkane are dusting off the oldest book on their shelf by giving away free copies of the studio's 2002 fantasy debut Arx Fatalis.
]]>Dunwall is renowned for its striking dystopian aesthetic, blending blinding walls of light with spindly steampunk stilt walkers. But the most memorable part of gorgeous action-assassin hit Dishonored has, for me, always been the boozer where you hang out with your pals between missions: The Hound Pits.
It’s a lovely looking pub, for sure. But coming from Dublin, where subversive relics of independence like The Confession Box are open about the intertwining nature of pub culture and rebellion, my interest is rooted in more than just the aesthetic. It makes sense to me that The Hound Pits is where Corvo and co meet to discuss their next political assassination. So, I reached out to Arkane Studio's Harvey Smith, co-creative director for Dishonored, and chatted about the reasons why pubs make class revolutionary bases.
]]>Times are strange and frightening. But one point of great solace for me has been hearing people celebrating things in their lives. It feels especially important right now to hold on to what makes us all proud about what we do and who we are. And what I really love is people showing off things they’re proud of making.
So I’ve been asking a bunch of developers to pick out something they’ve created that brings them pleasure to look back on. And here they are, including Harvey Smith remembering his input on Deus Ex and Dishonored, Derek Yu on one of his first-ever games. There’s pride in doing something for someone else’s game, in the power of details and in little inventions, and ah gosh, shut up, let’s just tuck into a big slice of escapist positivity.
]]>I'm Alice0 and I'm here to say, some great Bethesda games are out in a DRM-free way. GOG this week added the Dishonored games and two of the new Wolfensteins. That's some lovely gaming right there, so I'm just briefly highlighting it for people who prefer their games without DRM. They've got hefty discounts for one week to celebrate the launches too.
]]>Rat-dodging monarch restoration sim Dishonored is getting a tabletop roleplaying adaptation this very year.
Announcing the news last week, publishers Modiphius say they're working "in close collaboration" with the games' creative director Harvey Smith, also famed for his work on System Shock and the first two Deus Ex games. That's some pedigree, alright.
]]>Rural life is disgusting. All those shrubs and trees, how awful. You should pack your checkered pouch and head into the big smoke. The shining cities of videogameland are calling to you, and the team of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, will be there to help you get settled in to your disgusting, overpriced flat no matter which giant urban maze you choose. Trust us, life is so much better in the city.
Ignore the rats. You'll get used to them.
]]>Over the past several weeks I have sent a lot of interesting people who work in the games industry an email containing the following scenario:
"You enter a room. The door locks behind you. From a door opposite another you enters. This other you is a perfectly identical clone, created in the exact instant you entered the room, but as every second ticks by they are creating their own distinct personhood. The doors will unlock in 90 minutes. Nobody will ever know what happens in the room. What do you do? (assume the materials you need for whatever you want to do are in the room). Please show your working, if able."
]]>The old quote is wrong: neither death nor taxes are, it seems to me, as terrifyingly certain as the Steam Summer Sale. Yes, once more we can add to the heap that is our backlog by buying games for, what, five quid, on average? But there are so many to choose from that it's easy to get flustered, so who better than the staff of RPS to hand-pick the best ones for your consideration (rhetorical question; do not answer)?
Check out the full list below for a mix of games that should suit all pockets and tastes.
]]>One of my favorite parts of getting a press release is getting a press release that doesn't reveal any information about the game itself. You get a vague promise about a game that might happen someday if some people get together. Normally, I don't give that much of my time. This announcement is different. There's a new MMO and the folks behind it represent some of my favorite games in recent memory. I think you'll be stoked on this too.
]]>Leave no rodent behind – that’s the motto of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. With the release of Warhammer: Vermintide 2, we decided to celebrate the lovable dirtbag of videogames. The lowly, filthy, wonderful rat. Whether you are murdering five of them in cold blood for an RPG hotel owner, or pledging your sword to a disgusting subterranean monarch, there’s room in your heart for the humble rat.
And your intestine. And lung. Basically, shove over, organs. Make room for the rats.
]]>When you think of Dishonored, what's the first image that comes to mind? Rats, blades, haunted hearts and clockwork mansions? Perhaps it's cramped streets, a bleeding whale, or an arterial river. For many of us, it's a city. We asked Rob Dwiar, a garden designer, landscape architect, horticulturist and writer, to look at a specific aspect of those cities. The gardens. There's a whole lot of meaning locked in the green.
Across two (and a half) games, Dishonored has created an immersive world, rich with intriguing lore, place-specific atmospheres and a believable society. All of that is wrapped in brilliant, believably-designed environments, where a distinct sense of place is always present. Whether you're exploring palaces or cramped city blocks, navigating mansions or slums, each area has a sense of authenticity as a lived-in space, and the effect is not entirely aesthetic. By looking at the gardens scattered throughout the Isles, we can see how their layered and meaningful design elevates their importance from pleasant environments to important displayers of in-game themes, reflectors of in-game characters and exaggerators of underlying narratives.
]]>Speedruns themselves can be mind-boggling, but it's the community behind them that interests me the most. There's an infectious joy that comes across in every video that's come out of Awesome Games Done Quick, the annual week-long charity speedrunning event that wrapped up over the weekend. It's an event that provides the triple-whammy of heart warming camaraderie, entertaining speedruns and a whopping $2,269,209.96 so far for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. That's more than $50,000 over last year's total and donations are still rolling in - you can chip in here if you're so inclined.
I've collected some of the best runs for ya after the jump.
]]>The Games Done Quick events are among my favourite parts of the gaming calendar. Showmanship, absurd levels of skill and a mountain of cash raised for good charitable causes for a week straight, twice a year. The winter event - Awesome Games Done Quick - starts this afternoon at 4:30 GMT and if you've never tuned in to watch one of these live on Twitch (or recorded on YouTube), then you're missing out
While traditionally console-centric, recent years have seen a far higher percentage of PC titles (especially smaller indie games) demolished live, and the schedule for this coming week's event looks to be continuing that trend.
]]>Raphael Colantonio, the founder and president of Arkane Studios and creative director of recent fuzzy alien basher Prey, has stepped down from the studio after 18 years. “It is time for me to step out to spend some time with my son,” he wrote in a statement, “and reflect on what is important to me and my future.” Colantonio was also the co-creative director on Dishonored, and the man who once referred to us grubby journalists as “press sneak fucks”.
]]>I haven't yet got round to playing Dishonored 2 despite loving the first, so it seems awfully rude of Bethesda and Arkane to announce Dishonored: Death of the Outsider [official site]. It's a standalone expansion about trying to assassinate The Outsider, the magical goth who gifts powers to the protagonists in Dishonored games and prattles in an irritating way. Watch a cinematic trailer and find details below.
]]>Aside from starting a new tradition of unusually-named Steam Awards, Valve have also pulled out their worn and adored bargain bucket and have begun to fill it with games you’ll enthusiastically buy and probably never play. Yes, it's their Autumn Sale. In the streets, the apocalyptic jockeying for TVs and blenders has started. The moon has turned blood red. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Black Friday, and sales followed with him.
]]>Dishonored 2 [official site] creates a greater sense of place than just about any other game I've played. That's true whether you're standing on a balcony, looking out toward a distant objective across the chaos of the city streets between you and it, or picking through an apartment building, floor by floor, and seeing all the signs of life you'd expect to find. It's a remarkable game, and in many ways a true heir to the legacy of Looking Glass' immersive sims, and it features some of the most spectacular world-building you'll ever see.
]]>I've been playing Dishonored 2 [official site] for nine hours but I'm not here to spoil any surprises for you, so don't worry about precisely how much I've seen or what beans I might spill. What I want to do is to reassure you that developers Arkane haven't fluffed their lines with this sequel. Quite the opposite in fact – they're firing on all cylinders.
Even if the remaining levels are so badly designed that I find them intolerable, and there's absolutely no reason to believe that would be the case, I've already explored enough beautifully realised and densely packed areas to see this as a sequel that understands what its predecessor did well, and knows precisely how to do it better. Here, with no spoilers, are my thoughts on what I've seen so far.
]]>I know how much you like slitting throats, so I got this Dishonored 2 [official site] launch trailer for you. It’s got a lot of your stabby bloodshed in it, but also some other powers available to the discerning murderer, including ‘annoying flies’, the ‘mini warp’ and ‘becoming a living avatar of chaos’. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before but there’s some bits of plot thrown in for good measure. Which is good because plot is your second favourite thing after slitting throats.
]]>Bethesda, developers of Elder Scrolls and Fallout and publishers of Dishonored, Doom, Wolfenstein and more, say that their policy now is to send out "media review copies" one day before their games come out. That's what they did with DOOM earlier this year and that's what they intend to do with the approaching releases of both Skyrim Special Edition and Dishonored 2.
We think this is a bad thing for you and for everyone other than Bethesda.
]]>Have a whale of a time with...no. These creative kills are whale-y good. Oh no no no.
I understand the appeal of playing a game like Dishonored 2 [official site] without killing a single person, I really do, but Arkane are sorely tempting my no harm, nn foul-festering-bloodfly-feeding-frenzy policy. A new video shows both Emily and Corvo using their supernatural skills to create deftly calculated carnage. There are doppelgangers, body-swaps, blink-kicks that send people flying through the air like footballs, and combinations of time manipulation, razor traps and vertical violence that make a stab to the back seem so simple as to be uncouth.
]]>Mark Johnson is the developer of Ultima Ratio Regum [official site], an ANSI 4X roguelike in which the use of procedural generation extends beyond the creation of landscapes and dungeons to also dynamically create cultures, practices, social norms, rituals, beliefs, concepts, and myths. This is the final in a four part series examining what generating this kind of social detail can bring to games.
In this series so far we’ve examined the current state of procedural generation (PCG) in game design and outlined what a greater engagement with 'qualitative' PCG might bring to games (in Part 1), talked through in detail the process for creating a richly detailed PCG element of social life (in Part 2) and given an overview of my own work in this area (in Part 3). For this final part we will now zoom out somewhat and talk about game design and the games industry as a whole, and where we might want to position qualitative PCG more broadly, both now and in the near future. There are two core propositions I’d like to put forward: firstly, that we should regard qualitative worldbuilding detail as being integral to the future of games, instead of an intriguing aside; and secondly, that the demographics of developers and players of PCG games are going to shape the direction that procedural generation evolves in.
]]>There will be many ways to play Dishonored 2 [official site], rewarding players for stealth and more brazen maneuvers both. We got a glimpse of some of Corvo's more aggressive skills at QuakeCon. Now, with Gamescom festivities well underway, Arkane gives us a glimpse at what empress Emily Kaldwin has up her sleeve, and she is easily just as vicious. Take a look!
]]>I've got two VR headsets in my inappropriately small home, and I spend more time feeling guilty that I'm not using them than I do using them. Conceptually I love the tech, and I sporadically have a fine time with 'experiences' - i.e. virtual tourism to real or made-up places - when it comes to games-games I'm yet to get all that much out of it. But what about non-VR games rendered after-the-fact in VR? Could this be the full-fat virtual reality gaming I'd imagined when these headsets were first announced?
]]>During one decade in the late eighteenth century, one gang was reportedly responsible for around 80% of bank robberies in America. That gang was led by George Leonidas Leslie, an architect and a criminal genius. He utilised his knowledge of buildings and their secret ways to break them down piece by piece, building scale models of targets, and replicas of their safes and vaults, planning for years. Like many master burglars, he could look at an exterior and understand the interior it hid.
Designing a game like Dishonored 2 [official site] requires some of those same skills.
]]>We already chose 13 of our favourite games in the current Summer Steam sale, but more games have been discounted since. So, based on the entirely correct hypothesis that you all have completed every single one of our first round games and are now thirsting for more, here are 18 more to throw your spare change at. Everyone on the RPS team has picked three stone-cold personal favourites, making for a grand old set of excellent PC games: here's what we chose and why.
]]>Bethesda's E3 showcase wrapped up this evening (LA time) and I was there, in an enormous hangar, as new things were announced (Prey! Quake!) and more details of the games we've already played or heard about were released. The pick of the crop was Dishonored 2 [official site], which had that rarest of things: an E3 showing that involved an actual dev walkthrough of a mission and the new character abilities. Beats even the shiniest of trailers. You can see a trailer below, captured in-game, along with thoughts on the wonderful time-twisting mechanic.
]]>A couple of weeks ago I was teasing splendid Kotaku writer Jason Schreier after he tweeted describing Dishonored as "still underrated." Underrated?! The PC version has a Metacritic rating of 91! There’s only one score (or “rating”, you might say) under 8/10, and that review is silly. This is one of the most highly rated games ever!
Since I’ve started replaying it, once again attempting to rescue the young empress from an evil regime, I keep thinking to myself, “Man, this game was underrated.” Sorry Jason.
]]>As much as PC gaming hardware has changed and improved over the years, there's always been one constant: the limitations of disk space. Granted, it's far cheaper and easier (no more absurdly tiny Master/Slave toggles) than it used to be to grab a new hard drive, but the rise of ever-faster but more expensive SSDs set things back a bit in that regard. With new mainstream games regularly asking for as much as 30 Gigabytes I remain, as I always have, in a battle for space. Which means I'm constantly uninstalling half-finished stuff in order to make space for the next big thing. Sometimes it's heartbreaking. But there's a line. There are a few games I can never uninstall, because it would hurt too much. Granted, they change a little over the years - new ones come in, old ones finally, finally lose their lustre (or I give up entirely on the belief that I will ever go back), but here's how that list of inviolable treasures looks right now.
]]>Hey, good to see ya, how ya doin'? Take a seat anyplace you like - we got window seats, we got booths, we got stools over here at the counter. I'd keep shy of the table just at the back there - it's reserved, on a strictly unofficial basis, and the guy who plants hisself there most days ain't exactly particular about whose keister he puts his boot into, if you catch my drift.
Now, what'll it be?
]]>Oh boy, am I conflicted. Fallout 4’s main plotline requires that I do this thing and as far as things go, it’s a pretty major thing and a major thing that you’d expect someone with the maternal instinct of my character Halle to crack on with straight away. The trouble is, rather than doing this major thing, for at least an hour now, she, and when I say ‘she’, I mean ‘I’, have been poking around Sanctuary, scrapping anything that glows yellow so I can salvage enough materials to build a house big enough for me and my Minutemen companions. I had largely avoided Bethesda’s drip-feed of Fallout 4 pre-publicity but when I somehow found out that the game had settlement building, I think I might have involuntarily passed a little wind in joyous anticipation.
That's because I’ve felt a similar rosy inner glow while hanging around other hubs and houses in many other games I’ve played. I think it’s easy to underestimate the value of having a ‘home’ base option, especially in open world games where there is a free-roaming element, but it's a part of why I love certain games.
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>Arkane Studios co-creative director Harvey Smith has been talking about the new setting for Dishonored 2 [official site]. Given that Dunwall is my favourite fictional environment of the last few years, I'm sad to be leaving it behind in the sequel but given that the hints to a wider world were such a tantalising aspect of Dishonored, I'm happy to see another region within the Empire of the Isles. Dishonored 2 takes place in Karnaca, "the jewel of the south" and you can learn more about it by watching the video below.
]]>First-person supernatural sneaky murder simulator Dishonored is indeed getting a sequel, which was never in doubt but is still splendid news. Publishers Bethesda last night announced Dishonored 2 [official site], which will let folks travel to a new land to stab faces as either the first game's face-stabber, Corvo, or the first game's small girl, Emily Kaldwin.
It's set 15 years later after she's received a visit from the Outsider to get her own magic powers, mind. Come see in the announcement trailer.
]]>Alec wrote about some of his favourite gaming moments last week and I was inspired to put together something similar. Ever the structuralist, I decided that I'd string my favourite moments across a fictional interpretation of an actual day. Here is one of many days in my life, from a breakfast of champions to the blurred bottles at the heart of Saturday night.
]]>Though there have been murmurings (and indeed alleged leaked emails) that much-anticipated but much-troubled open world shooter Prey 2 had been snatched away from original dev Human Head and entrusted to the tattooed hands of Dishonored dev Arkane, Bethesda have now stated that the game is as dead as Zhora after three bullets in the back.
But what's in a name?
]]>You could finish Dishonored for free this weekend. It's free to play on Steam until 9 o'clock on Sunday evening, which certainly gives enough time to zip through and stab everyone in the neck. You would, of course, be a monster--not just for the reckless murder, but for missing some of the finest first-person sneaking of recent years. No, unless you have nowt going on, the trial will give sneaky players just enough time to crave closure. Handily, the game's on sale cheap too, as are its ace DLC chapters.
Killfreaks can alternatively play Titanfall and Borderlands 2 free this weekend, mind.
]]>There are a lot of words being written about the new consoles this week but when I spoke to Warren Spector a few days ago, he was clear about where his future lies: “I think all the interesting stuff is happening on PC now… Assuming I make more games, which I intend to do, PC and Mac are going to be my targets.”
It’s good to hear. We spoke at the Bradford Animation Festival and covered a wide range of topics, from his theories of design and pioneering role in PC gaming to thoughts on the current state of the industry. In this first part of our conversation, there’s insight into how Spector see his own legacy and the work of his former colleagues, and how frustrations with Thief’s difficulty inspired the player empowerment of Deus Ex.
]]>Path of Shadows is an upcoming non-commercial student project in which the player character can teleport between shadows. As seen in the prototype video below, it resembles an over-the-shoulder Mark of the Ninja, with a protagonist who is wearing a magical glyph version of Isaac Clarke's RIG read-out. Limiting the teleportation ability to shadowy areas suggests prescribed paths through levels, a puzzler's approach to stealth. As is often the case, the sneaky protagonist feels compelled to creep through temples, silently murdering guards. A goddess instructs, "do not bother remembering anything", which sounds exactly like the sort of thing that somebody would say if they'd killed you and taken command of your soul in the recent past so they could make you smash up a rival deity's temple.
]]>This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.
Games move pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss them. The pretties this week come courtesy not of a particular game, nor indeed me, but of the Dead End Thrills Flickr group, a caravan of some 500+ 'players' who spend more time stopping games and looking around than they do actually playing. The times we live in.
With some 11,000 images in there, I wasn't sure how best to approach this. (Drunk, obviously, but how badly?) I've gone for the easy option: a round-up of games and/or users that stood out over the last few weeks. What you'll often find is that wrangling games into 'screenshot mode' has knock-on benefits for any PC gamer, so let's see if that holds true.
]]>When I saw that Dishonored was going to have additional DLC missions I was worried that it might wander off the beautiful path that the original game created. It was all too possible that any additions might seem like bad fan fiction for the original, quite neatly encapsulated, game. Corvo's story was so complete that would be very odd to see “further adventures of”, or anything of that ilk. Arkane, of course, chose wisely in this regard. They chose Daud, the troubled master assassin defeated by Corvo in the original game. And Daud, I am beginning to feel, makes for a better experience than Corvo ever could.
The Brigmore Witches, then, is very much worth playing.
]]>Dishonored lacked multiplayer, $5828375 worth of microtransactions, and hyper-linear setpiece rollercoasters, yet for some reason everybody loved it. It's almost like people want intrigue, options, and whale-oil-based societies from their games. Almost. So, with the new (and excellent) Brigmore Witches DLC bidding adieu to the first game's creaking, disease-infested Dunwall, what's next for the best sneaky-stabby series to come along in years? Bethesda's officially calling it a "franchise" now, so a sequel's all but certain. Where might it go, though? Could multiplayer be in the cards? And where does Arkane think the first game failed? Also, were Dishonored's two DLC episodes - with their tweaked powers and fairly vocal main character - a preview of things to come? I spoke with Dishonored co-creative director Raphael Colantonio to find out.
]]>Bum. I've just realised I've not actually finished the previous Dishonored DLC, The Knife of Dunwall. I'm halfway through the second mission. Usually that wouldn't be a problem, but Arkane took the odd decision to make their DLC episodic, and Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches continues the story they started in the Knife of Dunwall. You are still Daud, fighting for redemption. If anyone else is in my position then it's best you don't look below the cut. Spoilers!
]]>Jim is basically the J. Jonah Jameson of RPS: I was handsomely making sweet news for you guys when he stormed into the forbidden RPS chatroom of mystery, slammed his fists on the desk with the rage that only an editor can muster, and demanded I find some mods. "It's the weekend!", he angrily typed. "If you don't find at least three mods by the end of the day that the readers can play, you can go and beg VG247 forra job." And then he stormed out, muttering about page impressions, tea, and robots. Luckily I've been on a bit of a modding binge of late, so I have a few interesting things for you. Do you have Arma 3 installed? That's nice.
]]>They're clearly lacing the drinking water at Arkane with Creative Itch Juice, as both Dishonored's co-lead Harvey Smith and one of its writers, Austin Grossman, have put out novels in the last couple of months. Of course, both are esteemed games industry figures from long before that, having worked in the fabled Looking Glass/Ion Storm mines and contributed to some of the most-respected titles in PC gaming history. Unsurprising, then, that they'd have something to say about their experiences. I'm yet to read Smith's Big Jack Is Dead - that's next on my list - but I have made my way through YOU, Grossman's fiction-ode to videogame development and his first novel since the popular supervillain tale Soon I Will Be Invincible.
]]>Here at RPS, we're not often in the business of reporting rumors, but this one's too much of a doozy to leave inside the colossal organic womb ship from which all rumors are born. Prey 2's been MIA since time immemorial, with various rumblings of strikes, stall outs, and near-cancellation the only things even vaguely resembling a warm trail for us to follow. Now, however, according to Kotaku and Prey 2 fansite Alien Noire, Dishonored developer Arkane has - allegedly somewhat reluctantly - taken the reigns. THE PLOT THICKENS. Watch it ooze and burble after the break.
]]>The Knife of Dunwall is the second piece of extra content for Arkane's splendid, if slightly cold, Dishonored, and the first which includes new missions proper. It came out a few days ago, I played it a few hours ago, and then I wrote this.
]]>The headline is a lie, as they so often are, because there is actually a whole lot of Daud in Dishonored's first proper chunk of DLC. Following the trials thing, which I didn't bother with and have therefore dismissed completely, Knife of Dunwall is just what Dr DLC ordered. The player controls Daud, who will have "a unique arsenal of new weapons and powers that enhance Dishonored's dynamic combat, mobility and stealth systems". While Dunwall itself may be Dishonored's finest achievement, and I look forward to seeing new districts in this DLC, I'm increasingly convinced that the fluidity of motion - whether sliding, climbing or striking - has somewhat spoiled other first-person games for me. Here's a trailer, whaler.
]]>After, ooh, hours of speculation, Bethesda has revealed the details of the next Dishonored expansion pack. The Knife Of Dunwall takes a parallel peek at the Dishonored storyline. And because Alec masked spoilers in the previous post, I'll do the same. If you have Dishonored on your Steam wishlist, go there right now and stare wistfully. Everyone else, I'll be over there. *blinks*
]]>This shouldn't really get its own post grumble grumble because it's just a tease grumble grumble, but if I only give it a couple of lines there's no harm done. Wait, did I just hear the sound of kitten being killed? WHAT HAVE I DONE?
We've been waiting forever* for proper Dishonored DLC - story stuff, meaty stuff, not just challenge map stuff. As previously announced this appears to star... oh, spoilers, of a sort, if you continue. You have been warned.
]]>Just before Christmas, Nathan wrote a piece asking for a conversation about the role gaming violence plays in our lives. And as so many have when discussing the topic, he featured an image from Dishonored at the top - a man getting stabbed through the neck. For Joe Houston, the former Arkane developer who created that stabbing scene, this was the prompt he needed to give his own perspective on the subject.
Whenever I’m clicking my way through game industry opinion articles, I tend to get hung up on pieces about video game violence. This is mostly because the image plastered across the top of the post is a screen grab from Dishonored. You know, the one where a member of the city watch gets his jugular opened in a first-person blast of arterial spray. But it’s not the shock of that image that stops me. No, I pause because I’m the guy that wrote the code to make the player do that in the first place.
]]>There's no question that Dishonored's Heart deserves celebration. Fortunately RPS contributor Paul Walker has done that in fine style, digging in to what makes the object so significant to the game, and speaking to co-creative directors Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio about how it came to exist, and their feelings about its part in the game.
Dishonored's Heart is an object which lives up to its name in many ways. It breathes life into the game’s characters, imbues the city of Dunwall with soul, and helps the player to feel the melancholy tone which permeates all facets of its world. Characterised by the intersection of the mystical and the technological, it distills the very essence of the pseudo-Victorian steampunk landscape in which Dishonored’s tale unfolds. It is presented to the player as a navigation tool — a guide to lead players to the occult items littered throughout the fictional city of Dunwall. But, as co-creative directors Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio told me, “It also plays a part related to informing their decisions about when to apply violence or not, making it a really interesting, more subtle part of the power fantasy.” Here we start to get to grips with what it is the makes the Heart so compelling.
]]>The first DLC for Dishonored is, as we know, the Dunwall City Trials. Rather than expanding the story in any meaningful way, this is much more of a mechanical inclusion, a series of tests to apply skills gained from playing the game in its rather beautiful setting. And there's a new trailer showing it in action. With the most inappropriate, dreadful music imaginable. Take action! Click below!
]]>I wonder what sales projections look like for Bethesda. The splendid news today is that Dishonored has outsold the publisher's expectations. But when they sell games like Skyrim, what must those expectations be like! Talking to Destructoid, the Mouth Of Bethesda, Pete Hines, was disappointingly cagey about saying exactly how many copies had sold (oh could this industry just GROW UP), but did explain that they were so impressive that Bethesda now have a new franchise on their hands.
]]>The somewhat underwhelming in concept first DLC for Dishonored is, as we already knew, Dunwall City Trials. It's a challenge map pack rather than an expansion containing more long-game assassinations or world-building. This leaves me a little cold in principle, but perhaps there will be something to be said for using and combining the game's many combat, stealth and movement systems unfettered and without the focus on meeting a specific objective.
The pack now has a release date, which is December 11, and a price, which is £3.99. And specific details, which are below. I'm nice like that.
]]>Remember Dishonored? No, you're thinking of BioShock. Dishonored was the one with the Blinking. Yes! Gosh, those were the days. But soon we can relive them again, as Bethesda have announced a series of add-ons (not expansions, and not DLC - "add-ons") that will be coming out in coming months. First up in December (December?! That's hundreds of years away!) is Dunwall City Trials, and it'll cost you €5, or £4, or whatever it is Americans use for bartering these days.
]]>Yesterday Jim wrote a superb piece arguing that games are best when everything is going wrong. That the measure of a game's potential for generating anecdotes, and its depth of connection to the player, is based in the amount of peril it's able to generate. Citing games like Day Z, FTL and XCOM, Jim's argument made one small mistake: it was all wrong. Games aren't best when they're stressing you out, piling on the pressure, raising your anxiety levels to breaking point! Games are best when they embrace you into their wonderful worlds, telling you great stories, and letting you get away from the incessant worries of real life.
]]>With Dishonored reactivating long-dormant stealth glands the world over, now seems a fine time to revisit perhaps its primary ancestor, the Thief games. Doom 3 total conversion The Dark Mod is a mightily ambitious attempt to recreate Thief - its mechanics if not its actual missions - in a more modern, and very much darkness-orientated, engine. It's just had a major update and a promising new mission added too.
I'm going to insert a 'Read the rest of this entry' link now, if that's okay.
]]>I once read a suggestion by conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, that you could drop all of culture into two broad categories (I paraphrase): “High culture”, which is best appreciated with some formal education about what is going on with it (difficult literature, opera) and “Low Culture”, which is basically everything in folk, primitive, and pop culture, for which education is not required. Sounds stupid and elitist, doesn't it? Scruton himself admits many caveats, as I recall. It's clearly impossible to create two such categories. But recently, well, I've started to think that perhaps he's right about the education thing. At least when it comes to videogames.
I speak with reference to this FT article about a non-gamer judging videogames, and subsequent defences of the same. Actually, no, I don't think we really need to worry about what non-gamers think of games. And that is because, in this instance, we are the highly educated elite.
]]>Stealth game fans pay heed. Over the next two days RPS hosts a conversation between Nels Anderson, Lead Design of Mark Of The Ninja, and a number of other stealth-game luminaries, as they discuss matters of of sneaking and hiding in videogame form. Anderson talks to Patrick Redding, Game Director on Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Andy Schatz, creator of Monaco, and Raphael Colantonio, co-creative director of Dishonored.
This is part one, part two will appear tomorrow. Onwards! (But stay out of sight...)
]]>Dishonored is pretty great. Incredible, even – at least, in places. We've had many wordthinks about it, and odds are, the future will bring many more. Those, however, are for another time. Today, we're giving the angular, Viktor-Antonov-designed spotlight over to one of the main minds behind the whale-powered wonder, Harvey Smith. From System Shock to the original Deus Ex to an ill-fated Area 51 reboot to a canceled RTS and even a brief stint in mobile gaming, he's seen all corners of the gaming industry. But – dare I suggest it – there's far more to life than videogames. So I sat down with Smith to discuss how and why he does what he does, and as it turns out, he may well be just as incredible as the game he played a crucial role in creating – if not more so.
]]>The UK game retail charts are about as relevant to PC gaming - and indeed gaming as a whole - as Mars Bars are to the red planet, knickers are to a fish or kindness is to the Murdoch dynasty. Nonethless, I feel compelled to mention this week's, purely because they suggest that even the most mainstream field of games isn't as resistent to new ideas and thoughtfulness as the moneymen who think Call of Honor is the only profitable game in town might believe.
While the deathless Fédération Internationale de Foot-to-ball Association retained the number one spot, Dishonored snuck straight in to 2 and XCOM to 7. Hurrah for new things doing well!
]]>As RPS has long pointed out, staggered international release dates for games may well please high street stores, but they piss off just about everyone else in the world. The archaic, anachronistic notion that a game should come out on Tuesday in the US, and Friday in Europe, was pretty daft when a trip to the shops was the only way to get a game. To still do it when everything is online is aching stupidity. And it's a real shame to see games as great as XCOM and Dishonored being sullied by this utter nonsense. You want an extra kick in the teeth? On Wednesday 10th October, a day after the game was released in the US, Bethesda have seen fit to release the "UK Launch Trailer", two full days before it's actually out over here.
]]>No doubt there are big things yet to come from the last quarter of 2012, but even by October it feels like it's been an uncommonly important, even vital, year for games. The hit rate of great things, expected and unexpected, has been pretty steady, but on top of that there have been major emerging trends as gaming starts to move out of the awkward transitional phase between olde worlde boxed sales and anything-goes online existence.
I'm really just ruminating on a truly fascinating 10-ish months to myself here, but see if you agree with - or better still can add to - any of these arguably defining aspects of the year nearly gone.
]]>Earlier today four RPS writers - each of them deep into their second runs through Dishonored - sat down to have a chat about Arkane's revenge-filled game of assassination and invisibility. Here's what they said. [We've avoided any major plot spoilers, keeping mostly to mechanics and a bit of world/setting discussion. We will have a spoilery discussion coming up later in the week.]
Jim: Gentlemen, we have entered the era where Dishonored is a game that people can play. Would any care to describe what they think Dishonored is?
]]>There's going to be a backlash against Dishonored. It can't be helped: when a game makes big promises, a justice squad will quickly arise to loudly demand that it accounts for not meeting them to the very letter, and in this case I suspect there's an additional flock of people who have been led by marketing to expect an all-out action game. I can predict, even sympathise with, some of the complaints, others I suspect will be absolutely mystifying to me. It's the finest hour in what we might loosely but innacurately term 'blockbuster shooters' in years - I'd feel petulant were I to demand it give me even more. But there is one complaint that may reach a crescendo in short order, and that is the issue of length. For me, Dishonored was a deliciously long game, clocking in at about 25 hours even without the total replay I intend on having very soon. For someone else - someone who has a lot of numbers in the name they use when playing Halo 4, say - it will be insultingly short. It may not even make a double figures quantity of hours. That's not the game's fault, it's theirs (or, perhaps, the fault of the marketeers who sold the game as an action opus). They gobbled the onion up whole, too greedy or too lazy or too accustomed to inflexible fare to peel apart its layers.
]]>Expectations are high. A stealth game that utilises the brains of Deus Ex veteran Harvey Smith and Viktor Antonov, architect of the imaginary, would always be an intriguing proposition and Dishonored's industrial plague-ridden city is a curiosity that would stand out in any crowd, but in the particular crowd it finds itself in - early twenty first century first-person games - this is a game that stands out like a whale in a sardine tin. I've been sneaking my way through this brave new world, and now I feel obliged to tell you wot I think.
]]>Interactivity sure is neat, huh? Why, I bet one day we'll even be able to control the characters directly - like, with a mouse and keyboard. I know, I know: silly old Nathan and his craaaaaaazy ideas. Ah well, let's jump back to reality, where we abandoned our pursuit of true "video games" in favor of smellovision back in 1983. Today, I have for you an interactive trailer of Dishonored. It lets you choose between many enticing options - sometimes up to four! A word of warning, though: it'll knock you unconscious, throw you into Jello, and then drag you straight into spoiler territory if you're not careful.
]]>The final part of the Dishonored: Tales From Dunwall animated series is here. Sterling work, these, which put me in mind of Thief's cutscenes. The style isn't anything like the same, but there is style and lots of it. Part one and two are also available for your viewing.
]]>The second part of the Dishonored animated short "The Tales from Dunwall" is out, and you can see it below. The first part is here.
]]>Dishonored's whale oil-powered hype tank keeps on rolling, this time with a three-part animated prequel series detailing the backstory of the first-person assassination sim's (yes, I know that's a scarcely representative description) world and the city of Dunwall. It's short, but it's moody, subtle and rather beautiful, in a sinister sort of way. Dunwall is not a cheerful place, as the following two minutes of animation, narrated by Hit Girl herself, Chloe Moretz, reveal.
]]>Have you ever tried to explain your favorite game to a friend or family member who just didn't get it? Did you then decide - for some reason - to do it partially in French? That's the idea behind the latest in Dishonored's development documentary series, but thankfully with slightly more subtitles than real life. Also, heaps of gameplay footage, which is always nice. It's Arkane's attempt to paint a moving, talking, stabbing, rat-based-time-bomb-creating picture of Dishonored's "experience." But does it succeed? I'll let you be the judge. But just this once.
]]>One of the developer sessions at this year's Eurogamer Expo (at Earls Court in London on 27th-30th of this month) will be hosted by Dishonored developers, Arkane. EG reports:
]]>The Dishonored video bombardment will leave nothing standing. Eventually all that will remain of former gaming websites will be a flickering screen and a hyperlink pointing at digital vendors of Bethesda's next big game. The latest salvo attempts to define that most nebulous of game design concepts: immersion. The key devs on the project show up in this ten-minute mini-documentary to discuss how this concept relates to industrial design, the non-photorealistic art style, and weird alt-not-London that they're trying to express. There's a tonne of stuff on the architecture, of course, and it's inevitably full of lavish new glimpses the Dishonored world, too.
Also, look at the amazing official Tumblr.
]]>Dishonored hardly needs a bigger sell from Bethesda, but this dev diary, featuring Raf Colantonio, Harvey Smith, Viktor Antonov and others, is certainly convincing. They talk about all the aspects we've heard before - the complex mechanics, the exquisite world design, the fiction - but more than the words are the in-game scenes that go with it, showing some aspects of the game we've not seen much of before, such as you interaction with numerous NPCs, and your escape from prison at the start of the game. I'm fairly certain this is going to be breath-taking, and roll on October. (Not that I don't have enough to play in the meantime.)
]]>I fully endorse the idea of advertising videogames with other videogames - especially when it's done cleverly, ala Borderlands 2's recent 2D demake. I mean, it's sort of the logical conclusion to these things, right? Who wants to look at screenshots or watch a trailer when they can clomp through a world on their own three WASD fingers? And hey, Dishonored's looking incredible. Really, is there a more natural fit? That brings us to Dishonored: Revenge At Hand, which is... a game about watching trailers. Huh. And so, in this version of Dishonored's honor, I have decided to revive my "Oops, I broke Dishonored" series.
]]>I know there's an entire army of your screwing up your eyes and refusing to look at another jot of Dishonored coverage until it arrives in October, but for those not yet convinced there's still more to be seen. The latest game footage trailer (below) lays out a chunk of stealth business, which is something trailers seem to ignore when they are dealing with stealth games. Not so here, as you can observe from this. And that bit with the candle at 0.58 is really neat. I had not seen that before.
Yesterday we published my chat with the game's co-lead, Raf Colantonio. So have a read of that. If you want. No one's forcing you. Not yet, anyway.
]]>At last week's German mega-convention, GamesCom, I sat down for the second time to play Dishonored. This game of stealth, magic, and assassination will be one of the handful of truly important games in 2012, and whether or not it is entirely a success, its release and development will have been an important event in game design history. Read on for more thoughts on why that is, as well as words from the game's co-lead, Arkane creative boss Raf Colantonio, who I spoke to after my most recent session at the controls of super-assassin Corvo Atano.
Spoilers will be kept to a minimum.
]]>I'm in love with Dishonored - or at least, what I've gotten to play of it at various press events and things. Torrid, disgusting, fluid-filled love. And QuakeCon's demo, which saw me infiltrate a fancy mansion party to assassinate one of three "Lady Boyles" (only one of whom was my real target) might actually be my favorite section yet. Co-creative directors Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio, however, have gone on at length about how much they love it when players break their game and pull off supernatural stunts they couldn't even conceive. So, after already sinking a few hours into repeat playthroughs, I sat down at my trusty demo station with a mission: ruin everything. Test boundaries. Push limits. Become the world's foremost expert on Jello mold physics. And gosh, it was really, really fun.
]]>Following on from the "Daring Escapes" trailer, Dishonored shows off more game-footage with "Creative Kills". This time we get to see a wide range of uses for Dishonored various powers, all of them pertaining to the dispatching of enemies. Ugly business. But what'a pretty game. And I get to play more of it at GamesCom next week. It's a hard life.
]]>It won't be long before I'm the only member of RPS who hasn't played Dishonored, which is surely due to some form of dire cosmic plot against me. I'm not going to spend the next few months tugging at Alec's sleeve and asking, over and over again, "but how good was it?" or calling Jim in the wee small hours of the morning and asking, "will it satisfy my every desire?". Instead of gathering every last remaining scrap of knowledge that falls from their brain-pans, I've decided to impose a media blackout on myself. I'll be the one who goes in knowing the least and that'll make the experience all the sweeter. But then I remembered that it's my job to look at every picture and video of every game. Here are some new screens.
]]>Blimey, this is a cast and a half. Let's just plunge right in: Susan Sarandon will be playing, er, "Granny Rags", while the extraordinary Brad Dourif makes mouth noises for inventor Piero, creator of that scary mask worn by the game's protagonist, Corvo. Slightly more bizarrely, Bethesda inform us that Carrie Fisher "can be heard broadcasting government propaganda over loudspeakers throughout the city of Dunwall, where the game is set."
]]>We had thought Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed III six separate releases was confusing. The plans for the game everyone at RPS is most excited to play this year, Dishonored, now makes that move look positively bland. In a display of eye-rolling pre-order bonus alchemy, Bethesda have announced a divisive and flat-out bizarre set of retailer-dependent exclusives. It takes the form of a handy guide for publishers to see exactly how they shouldn't promote a game, as you can see below.
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