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REVIEW: DISHONORED 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC - PS4 version tested)

7/12/2016

11 Comments

 
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Here we are then. Back to the video games, with this woefully belated review of Dishonored 2.

And on which note... let's talk about the TV show Westworld. 

Did you watch it? It was alright. The entire world saw the big twist coming a mile away - but I'd expect nothing less from Jonathan Nolan, writer of The Prestige... a movie that is only enjoyable providing you don't guess the twist five minutes in, which I - and presumably many others - did. 

But hey - I don't want to talk about Westworld.

"Hooray! Finally, he's going to discuss video games!"

No, I want to discuss a review I read of Westworld.

"FML."
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YOU AND I
So, I read this review of the Westworld finale, in which the writer repeatedly stated what "you" don't want to see in a TV show. You know: rather than what he didn't want to see in a TV show. He was generalising and not owning his opinions.

We all do this of course. We rarely own up to what "we" need. I get it. It's hard to be so nakedly transparent about our personal needs, when most of us are raised to believe that our needs are secondary to those of society, and everyone else around us. Which, in the latter instance, is at least subjectively true for everyone else.

Seriously though: read an interview with anyone famous. They'll be asked a question, like "What does it feel like to play a gig at Wembley Stadium?" and the response will be along the lines of "Well, when you get to be famous, the thing you find is that you often... blah blah..."

No, dear. We didn't get to be famous. You got to be famous, and your experience is entirely subjective to you as an individual, and that's why you're being interviewed. Stop generalising, and talk to us about your experience of being a famous person, because nobody else can experience it the exact same way. It might help to rephrase your answer along these lines: "Well, when I became famous, the thing I found..."

And that's what this Westworld finale review was like: "What you need to do when making a 10-part TV series is..."

Don't get me wrong: I actually agreed with a lot of the review. But two (three) things stood out for me.
  1. The overuse of "you" over "I", obv.
  2. The fact that none of the things the guy was going on about really bothered me until I read his review, thus underscoring the need of reviewers to dredge up as many opinions as possible, and peel those opinions apart, rather than just going "Yeah, I liked it" or "Nah, didn't really like it."
  3. In failing to own up to his own opinions - and either attributing them to everyone, or describing them in terms of a sort of universal law, it made the writer seem unfathomably arrogant, like he thought he was a god... that he thought he was better than the show's creators, and that his opinions were somehow worth more than those of his readers.

I suppose, having had a few weeks off of reviewing things on here, it got me thinking - once again - about the way reviews are perceived, about the people who read reviews, and the people who put stock in them.

Admittedly, this is no time to start bashing the press... but maybe if more writers were a little more open about their subjectivitiy, the media might seem a little less aloof and elitist in the eyes of, y'know, crazy people who think the press is inherently corrupt.

I dunno. Just a thought.

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UNH?!
So. Video games then.

Dishonored 2. I liked Dishonored a lot. Dishonored 2 I found inexplicably boring.

For all the hours I played on it - and yes, I did get past the creative insanity of the Clockwork Mansion - that boredom didn't really go away. I just felt like I'd done it all before, and it felt old-fashioned. And not in a nice, nostalgic way, but in a "why dis faff?" way.

Not only were the visuals - though beautifully stylised, and often just flat-out beautiful - slightly last-gen, the gameplay felt as if it was too. Its baseline of stealth-o-sneak-o - with its achingly dumb guards, who felt less of a real threat than a video game annoyance - somehow felt to me artificial and cold.

Some of these issues might've been diluted for me had there been a story that I cared about even remotely. Alas, even with its branching narrative choices - early on you get to choose between playing as the bloke from Dishonored or his daughter, and then whether or not to play through it with magic powers (why wouldn't you? "Oh, I'll have the cheeseburger, please - but could you leave out the burger part") - I failed to engage with it.

All the portent, from characters who don't give us a reason to even like them, let alone care about them - aren't we past that now? I can't help but feel that the industry should be more sophisticated in the writing of its character by now. Plus there are lashings here of my absolute bugbear in videogame world-building: audio and text logs. Please... please make them stop. That isn't how you tell a story.

LOOK AT THIS
So, look... here's the thing. I liked Dishonored. I didn't hate Dishonored 2. It feels different to a lot of what's out there right now. There are moments of sheer genius... and there are lots of dull stretches of just sitting around in crannies waiting for some blokes to wander past so you can move forwards.

My natural ADD doesn't always lend itself to stealth games. At least, not unless I'm sufficiently interested in other things around me - but for whatever reason, Dishonored 2's dull, dull, characters, and dull, dull, story, failed to grab me.  Wait. No. In light of what I wrote up at the top, I should change that to this: "I found the characters and story dull-dull..."

Man. This reviewing is hard.

"Oh but you don't have to sneak around, stupid. You can go in all guns blazing, or use your magic skills."

Pfft. Yeah, maybe. But the game very clearly favours a stealthy approach: making noise of any kind brings all hell down upon you, and combat simply isn't what Dishonored 2 does best. What does it do best, in my subjective opinion?

Making me feel a bit bored.

What can I say? Lots of reviewers clearly don't share my boredom. You might share their subjective enjoyment.
​
SUMMARY: A dull sequel to a game I really liked.
​SCORE: Some things out of yeah.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
REVIEW: WATCH DOGS 2 (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC - PS4 VERSION TESTED)
REVIEW: CALL OF DUTY INFINITE WARFARE (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC - PS4 VERSION TESTED)
​
REVIEW: TITANFALL 2 (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC - PS4 VERSION TESTED)
​
REVIEW: GEARS OF WAR 4 - XBOX ONE
​
11 Comments
John
7/12/2016 10:05:41 am

Oh, I agree so much with the intro. It is one of my bugbears, you have summed it up so well, and I think it is spreading to be a part of normal speech, much as 'in terms of' has replaced 'in', or proper sentence structure. ("What are you doing, in terms of, where are you going?"). I've found examples of both from 10+ years ago, but it wasn't so prevalent. I think the 'you feel' thing starts out as modesty, an attempt to make it 'not all about me', but it is actually arrogance, as it suggests all of us feel one way about something, and can even suggest there's only one proper way to feel.

Massively annoying. But I loved "He was generalising and not owning his opinions." as a summation. Beautiful. Exactly.

Reply
Sordid, bloated whelk
7/12/2016 11:02:57 am

I feel the opposite - whereas Dishonored left me flat, largely due to the stealth being arbitrarily easy due to magic ghost powers, I really enjoyed the focus on making magic ghost powers fun and chaotic this time (Attach bad guys to each other, stand near a ledge and fling them towards yourself, moving at the last second so they fall to their demise), instead of Dishonored's powers, which just felt like a way to 'cheat' at the game (see enemies through walls! Turn into a rat and just skip an obstacle completely!).

I thought the level and world design too, was miles ahead of the (already stellar) work in the first game. Sure, the Clockwork Mansion is amazing, but did you even get to level 7? There's a reason it's mentioned every time this game is brought up

I agree with a few things: I wonder if the graphics looking last gen is a consequence of the extremely murky shading and colours of the game...it looks great in sunlight, but places with a lot of contrast were hard to read and slightly headachy. The story and characters were nothing, but I truly can't think of a recent game that made me give a hoot about the characters, and probably less than 5 games have done so over the course of my life (I'm pinning my hopes on Trico for this weekend)

Also, just as with Dishonored 1, by the last mission I was bored, and got it over with so I could trade it in. I have no desire to play it again, but it was really fun while playing.

The stealth doesn't negate the action, it facilitates it. Dishonored isn't Thief 2: Silent 'no kill' runs are for masochists, if a masochist is someone that likes being bored for no reason

Reply
Alan Stock
7/12/2016 11:56:54 am

You actually nailed just what I felt about Dishonored 1. Although I thought it was decent and had some great moments, the whole thing left me kind of empty and bored inside. It felt like I'd done it all so many times before and all somehow meaningless. I still don't understand why we seem to be in such a minority with these feelings! Sounds like Dishonored 2 is just more of the same!

Reply
Fancy Pants
7/12/2016 12:15:44 pm

Totally agree about text and audio logs, diaries, all that caper. Easily my most hated thing in gaming - and Dishonored 2 has a metric fuckton of these.

I'm more or less in agreement with you on the. Really liked the first one, second one seems a bit dull. I'm reckon playing it through as the bloke was a big mistake on my part. Oh well, I'm not starting again now.

Reply
Penile David
7/12/2016 12:45:13 pm

Does it have a lot of those? I can't remember any other than a few audio-typewriter things, even then 2 per level or something. It does present you with a lot of reading (it's super-lore heavy, which is great for some players) but you can just ignore it. You don't even need to press play on the typewriter things in most cases (though I'll concede to a couple of cases in which they lazily drove the mission forward)

Reply
Fancy Pants
8/12/2016 10:10:06 am

It has a lot of text (diaries, letters, all that), not much audio. My point is that reading reams of "optiional" text is no way to immerse yourself in any story. Well, unless it's a book. But then it's not optional. And these, almost always unseen, games characters who leave letters and diaries just littered about have real tidiness issues.

Clive Peppard
7/12/2016 04:28:07 pm

I loved West World and didnt see the final twist at all.

maybe im simple...

dishonored 2 can do one, the first one was meh

Reply
Fancy Pants
8/12/2016 10:12:40 am

Same. Reading Reddit and the like now, I'm not sure anyone saw the main plot twist at all. Everything else, yes, but (without spoiling) the motivation of Hopkins' character, and how this was resolved? Dunno.

Reply
Kelvin Green link
8/12/2016 10:53:46 am

Yes, the twist in The Prestige is obvious, but I wasn't prepared for the second twist right after, the one that derives all its ironic power from the first one being so mundane.

Gosh it's difficult to describe without going into spoilers.

Anyway, the second twist may have been obvious too, but it came as a surprise to me and the way it draws upon the first twist was, I thought, clever.

That said, I've not been impressed by any of Nolan's other writing, so perhaps it wasn't deliberate and I'm giving him far too much credit.

I haven't seen Westworld -- no Brynner, no bother -- and I haven't played either Dishono(u)red.

Reply
Jambo Bobbins
11/12/2016 11:03:12 am

I like to think of games as systems. Good games have systems you can observe, tweak, obstruct or undermine. It's true of Civ. It's true of Bioshock. It sounds like it's true of Watchdogs 2 to some extent. I loved Dishonored, mainly for its world-building, but I wonder if the problem this time around is that there just isn't anything very interesting going on. There are two states — the AI runs like clockwork and you find a way through it with minimum disruption, or all hell descends upon you in a state of sheer chaos. Neither extreme is particularly compelling, says I. There. That was funny, wasn't it?

Reply
brokenpixel
12/12/2016 05:05:29 pm

Agree with the review, it's somewhat ok and somewhat delivers what Dishonored 2 should be. But somewhat leaves me feeling a bit meh.

Reply



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