Dishonorable

Weren't those before zenimax and bethesda..?

I've never played the sequel, but I liked the first Dishonored enough to play through it twice. A problem I felt it had was that playing in a fun way (i.e. loud and lethal) made it far too easy and playing it in a challenging way (sneaky and non-lethal) made it really boring since you couldn't use the vast majority of equipment/powers at your disposal.

yeah, which leads people to believe bethesda is responsible for the downfall but I think it's more a mix of arkane was never really that good to begin with and bethesda wanted a specific product and has their own problems with developer relations.

I never played Dishonored, but I'm enjoying 2 so far. I'm not totally sure what all the differences are.

I don't really know how much bethesda has to do with anything here. It doesn't seem like it's a very tight leash if there is one.

The mere name of Bethesda shuts down the complex thought processes of many an user here. Also it didn't take much more than seeing the black captain in Dishonored 2 before they decided the entire game was SJW, without caring to know that this was a returning character. 2 is exactly as SJW as the first, you mouth breathers, every important female figure is a returning one.
2 is honestly a straight upgrade, with the exception of how hamfisted the way they handled the heart and the outsider.

It's boring shit and deploying strawman like an utter faggot apologist isn't changing anything.

I've seen enough dishonored 2 threads to know how it goes, faggot. The game being SJW is as pervasive a falsehood as "it punishes you for having fun". Here are the facts.
Pros : Better levels, more non lethal options even in combat, more replayability with some real good options and statistics for challenge runs, more content and better gameplay in general. Nothing was removed from the first with the exception of anything directly related to the rat plague.
Cons : Outsider's origin story is fucking stupid, no subtletly with anything concerning the heart, botched PC release (now fixed) and denuvo.

Oh you meant Holla Forums specifically? Sorry I didn't read that right. That's easy Holla Forums doesn't play vidya.

Yeah I had fun playing the game but the story is kinda… shit.

The story is quite weak in the first one, too. Didn't stop me from clocking almost 80 hours in it. I still didn't play the second one, back then it had denuvo that wasn't cracked, and the full price was too much for me, and when it got cracked, I already forgot about it. Might download in the near future.

They spelled Dishonoured wrong.
I found it too short, too easy and too shallow, for a stealth run. For a killer run it was pretty gud, but still too short and easy.

I liked the first game. The second game is garbage purely because it runs like dogshit. The first game was in dire need of a new game+ mode and some more non-lethal powers. Additionally, the levels were sort of small. I've played the demo for the second game and it appears as though it's more of the same. It's not bad, but it could've been a lot better, and as I said, it doesn't help that the game runs like absolute garbage.

Because it gets pretty annoying when you have two games in a row that are shitty stealth games but to add insult to injury are pretty fun action games if you play them that way only that the game actively punishes you for it.

wait it got cracked ?
I've heard that 2 was significantly worse than 1 though.
I really liked the DLCs in 1.

maybe in terms of story but since it's so shitty why do you care ?

Dishonored is like the bastard child of Bioshock and AssCreed. Just play Thief and Thief 2 if you want a proper stealth game.

I wish there would be a game like Thief but based on assassination. Hitman has a different focus and Tenchu's gameplay is radically different.

I played the first one. It was alright, I really liked the setting and enjoyed the story. Gameplay was fun, but I don't play a lot of stealth games so I probably don't know what I'm talking about there.

Didn't play the second one because it just didn't interest me. The first game had a perfectly good ending and a sequel just felt unecessary.

It's not? I thought it did.

I've played both Games, the second one just recently. In the beginning i was quite surprised of the game, since new games just tend to suck. I also thought it would be some type of bioshock game, which i never liked. I remember, when i played dishonored 1 for the first time, i jumped in the water and was immediately quite surprised about the boundaries. I thought it would be some sort of linear expierence with lots of limitations, but i was wrong -especially when you find out you'll be able to teleporte around like the jumper. The story wasn't too hard to get and interesting, though a revenged themed story can always intrigue one. I definetly liked the lore of the game, characters and furthermore the gameplay.
Dishonored 2 felt like it missed something and the story was plain stupid. I also had the feeling it was overflown by diversity.
Black aristocrats? fuck off.

this guy basically sums up Holla Forums
always hate new games, no matter how they are.

If you look at their games you can see common flaws. To list some

Magic is incredibly unbalanced despite the difficulty of quickly drawing runes accurately. Compared to warrior or stealth builds, magic has several purposes other than combat such as healing, protection, and other incredibly varied and useful shit. It's not hard to create as many mana potions as you want with alchemy, and most enemies die in one fireball hit, or three.

Because of the melee combat system, you'll be able to survive regardless of your build, but magic involves staff fighting which allows you to knock down large packs of enemies through crowd control, and playing as a mage gives you a spell which makes you invincible for several seconds for little cost, or hilariously OP ice patches which make enemies trip and fall for an easy kill, or charm which is a great help. You are given so many mana potions throughout the game and you can unlock a skill which lets you regenerate your mana anyways. However, a full warrior build can slice and dice most enemies easily and slice the heads off of most enemies, only stealth players get the shaft considering later levels do not support stealthy playstyles at all. Out of all Arkane games, the balancing issues here are the least apparent because the game isn't that expansive compared to most immersive sims.

You are given abilities such as teleportation, metamorphosis, wind blasts, and fucking time stop. You know what the only counter is to a time stop? Another time stop, you just can't reasonably balance something like that without extensive limitations to your time stop powers like in TimeShift. But the combat itself also lends itself to mass murder. A melee counter is easily achieved and results in an instant kill, crossbows and pistols can kill most enemies in one shot with plentiful ammo to boot, and you get shit tons of gadgets like grenades and explosives. The only difficulty that arises here are purely from your mistakes and restrictions imposed on yourself.

didn't play, but it doesn't seem like they addressed the balancing issues and just left the concept of difficulty to the player

There is a certain mental hurdle involved in this game which you have to vault over so you can experience the game as brutally difficult or painstakingly easy. Since there's next to no handholding involved in this game, you're expected to figure shit out on your own. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the playerbase who weren't accustomed to these kind of games ended up getting brutalized with next to no resources to spare, while merely knowing the strategies to win will make the game a cakewalk. That involves basic concepts like PICK UP EVERYTHING AND RECYCLE IT FOR SUPPLIES or THE STUNGUN CAN BE USED ON BIOLOGICAL ENEMIES AS WELL or CYSTOID NETS CAN BE TAKEN CARE OF WITH A SINGLE FOAM DART or STUNNED ENEMIES RECEIVE MORE DAMAGE. You can end up with so many supplies and upgrades in this game, it's not even funny. Unfortunately the amount of enemies thrown at you at once never gets more intense despite how quickly you get stronger.

Oh I'm so glad they informed me a man missing a head was dead, I wouldn't have known otherwise.

The reason I'm bitching so much about the lack of balance and difficulty in these games is because difficulty is rather important for your game to actually work. Especially with wide games like immersive sim which can factor in a lot of approaches, the challenge needs to be adequate to encourage players to think creatively and overcome obstacles through alternative means. If you can get through any challenge with the most basic and easiest approach, even on the fucking highest difficulty, why would you bother to use anything else? Why would you bother to learn the game's mechanics when this simple trick will get you through everything? Enemies in Deus Ex were strongly capable of fucking you up or at the very least be a drain on your medkit supply if you were playing carelessly, so instead of trying to blindly shoot everything, most players try to approach things differently. I'm not the one making the game here, if in order to get an actually challenging experience I have to restrict myself in so many ways instead of the developers actually presenting me a challenge, then I might as well be playing another game.

Because Arkane is Zenimax's bitch now they have to make their games casual friendly while harder difficulty modes don't do much to make the game actually challenging. Just now Prey had several Trauma systems cut which'd afflict you with ailments like bleeding, being on fire or broken bones which couldn't be healed with a simple medkit, but apparently this was too hard for the casual to comprehend so they cut it out right before release. What Arkane fails to realize is that difficulty is what encourages players to think outside of the box, yet difficulty is not what the suits think is best for the audience despite the popularity of games like Dark Souls, and even then journalists and most games are in fact incapable of handling a lot of difficult games without giving up or bitching about it online.

WE

Might've been merely pretending.

I like Dishonored and Dishonored 2, though.
I think some of the people who dislike Dishonored do so because they think it's trying to be a spiritual successor to Thief. But it's not–it's not even a stealth game, it's an action game that includes optional sneaking; retards get those two confused all the time.
Dishonored is closer to steampunk Deus Ex lite than anything else.

Stealth game… Where you cannot extinguish lamps or smash street lights.

This is stealth 101. Not to mention that it's a game that pushes the shitty black/white morality system, and to make it even worse it gives you loads of violent powers and weapons and then penalizes you for using them. Fuck that game.

And if you want a proper predator game, play The Chronicles of Riddick. I can only vouch for the base game Escape from Butcher Bay having yet to play Assault on Dark Athena.

Speaking of stealth. How was Styx 2 ?

I didn't like Dishonored because it was easy as hell, even on the hardest difficulty. I never played the second and I don't really want to.

Fuck, you're right. I forgot if a developer made a good game at some point it means anything they will ever make is automatically good. Real eye opener, user. Thanks

i couldnt make past 20 minutes in the first one

hated the graphics, gameplay and story

Because actually hiding doesn't count as stealth.

it is, though you are supposed to be over powered.
In dishonored 2 you can choose if you'd like to play without the abilities.
There's also an option to have only one life and if you die the save will be deleted.

I wish Bethesda had just let Arkane call Prey something else; it's obviously supposed to be a new IP, and it's even more obviously supposed to be System Shock 3, but they probably couldn't get the rights to that series. That's the one thing in an Arkane game that I do legitimately blame Zenimax for. They should've just called it PsychoShock or something.
On an unrelated note, I hate how Dishonored 2's interface uses a ton of different fonts, and text is skewed but only sometimes. Its menus are a design nightmare.

By that standard, 99% of games should be unplayable to you. Very few games implement enemies that change depending on how much (and where) they're wounded, and even fewer where such states apply to the player.
I'm not saying you're wrong, because I wish all games did that, too. I'm just saying that it's uncommon to find games where enemies behave differently at 1% health than they do at 100%.
Also, I think Dishonored's combat mechanics are pretty good. It's basically just Dark Messiah's combat with a few tweaks.

Dishonored 2 has much larger levels. It also allows for more non-lethal tools; you can KO people in combat instead of doing a finishing move, and there are new weapons like stun mines or crossbow bolts that force your targets to flee. Other than that, it's basically the same game, mechanically speaking.

Dishonored 2 allows for custom difficulty settings. It's pretty thorough. You can even customize how sensitive (or oblivious) NPCs are to detecting you when you're above them, or when you're leaning out from behind a corner.

B-Team got Dishonored 2, they promptly butchered the story and lore. The gameplay is pathetically easy unless you go no powers run, even if you don't the supernatural abilities are still fucking overpowered as shit, Blink was a fucking mistake. And lastly, it's unoptimized as shit with little polish.

Could you make it any more obvious that you're from Reddit? Fuck off.

To my understanding the stealth isn't very good, the story is bad, and combat is okay, but the story punishes you for that. Ultimately it's kinda boring. The big problem is that people like to discuss Dishonered as a stealth game and frequently in the same context as the greats like Thief in which case you are begging for a verbal smackdown because it's lousy as a stealth game in general and awful once compared to Thief. Dishonored might be an okay game in its own right, but for some reason people love to discuss it in its capacity as a stealth game, so go figure.

Can't you fuck off back to halfchan with this shitposting bullshit? Holla Forums plays games. It just happens that we play good games and therefore have standards. If a game falls short of the player's standards, obviously he or she won't like it. If you wanted a forum where people just play whatever and get all excited about the latest "innovative" trash, go to neogaf or reddit or something.

I could choose to play the game with one hand if I like. I'm sure it would make the game harder, but not because it's actually a challenging game.

Can you change the settings in the middle of a game or are they locked after you start?

The story is uninteresting and so are the characters and the gameworld, the gameplay is fun but only if you don't play the game obviously is meant to be played.

I have heard everyone shitting on it if you want stealth approach, but it is shit either way.
I am talking from my own experience. Full lethal run could be fun but they made sure it isn't.
It is superpowers game that will punish you for using superpowers. As a result instead of trying out cool stuff you just preserve mana by only teleporting. Using too much of other powers will just result in you draining your potion reserves.
Enemies are also bullshit. It was fun when you had to find a way to kill 8 guards at once. Once they added these guys on legs and guys who turn off your power I just dropped it.

I want fucking Dark Messiah again. Not some bullshit game that pretends to be Thief and Dark Messiah but sucks at being both.

Dishonored is pretty much the same type of game like Dark Messiah is, just with more elements for stealth gameplay. Did you never try to play as a stealthy rogue in Dark Messiah?

What? No it's plain a worse stealth game than even its contemporaries and the the good gameplay style you kinda have to roleplay or some shit.

as far as i can tell the only Holla Forums approved ones are grind and blade, doosex, and e.y.e. and even those games can be considered shit

This stems from the larger issue that most people, including Holla Forums, don't know what a stealth game is, and think it includes any game that has sneaking. Dishonored is not a stealth game. But you could play it like it is one, ignoring combat, in the same way that you could play Fallout 3 like a shooter, ignoring VATS.

You can only customize your difficulty when you start a new game.

fuck off nigger

According to Holla Forums, a game needs to accomplish these things to be considered a stealth game:

don't forget, no steam and no drm

Blacklist was a stealth game, at least if you played it on the highest difficulty. Styx is too. And Mark of the Ninja. All of those came out after 2010.
In a stealth game, being caught is a punishment, and not a self-imposed one. In Dishonored, sneaking isn't strictly necessary–it's just a low-risk method of traversal. When you get caught in Dishonored, you start playing an action game instead, with its own risks and rewards.
Stop using the "Holla Forums is contrarian" meme to mask your ignorance.

That's a nice way of saying "have good gameplay"

what in the absolute fuck are you doing even posting that image

So what you're actually trying to say is that a stealth game needs to be punishing and hard to be considered a stealth game? well i agree that every game needs to be hard -especially those, but just because dishonored is too easy, it doesn't mean that it's not a stealth game. Even Far Cry 3 has stealth mechanics although it's more of an action game.

kek.

I don't get the sperging over Dark Messiah. It was all right, but it's far too short, there's not much point in playing as anything but a warrior, and the only reason you'd want to keep Sareth's demon form is so you can romance best grill

Sorry reddit sorry that people here don't eat shit games up.

I wasn't "actually trying" to say anything other than exactly what I said.
No. All games involve punishments, because games have to have fail states. In stealth games, being caught is a partial fail state (i.e., it doesn't give you a game over) where you have a brief window to fight or flee. In Dishonored, it's just an opportunity to engage in the combat mechanics–you're going from zero risk (hidden) to risk-vs.-reward (combat).

okay grandpa, enjoy your 1000th run through diablo 2. im sorry i can't play the same game and eat oats every day like you

Dishonored and its sequel both have this Play your way theme going on. So choose how you want to play. Its stealth mechanics are good, optional and you can keep playing stealthy through the whole game. Just because you can play the game berserk-like doesn't discard its good stealth game. Now please, go fucking kill yourself.

Easy explanation for both, really.

Dishonored 1 is a power fantasy about being a supernatural assassin. It wasn't meant to be that difficult, it was meant for you to easily play and have fun. You will never wonder "am I good enough to kill that person?" because that will always happen but instead you're supposed to ask "how am I gonna kill you?" and have fun with it.

It's also not strictly about the missions and the targets but also about the world and the story. A good chunk of the game is spent approaching your target's location and this gives you plenty of opportunities to see what the world looks like, to meet the people that live in it and what they think, to get the story through somewhat indirect methods. This is why you never start exactly near your target, because Dishonored was as much about the journey as it was about the target.

This isn't to say it doesn't have problems but they all boil down to the same thing: lack of chalenging oposition. The moment you reach the Whalers should be the beginning of the ramp up, where every stage sees harder, stronger and more complex enemies, but instead you go back to regular guards instead. Daud's campaign solves this and is great for that.

Now, the hate stems from an overflowing amount of cretins. First you have the cretins at Bethesda\Zenimax that advertized the game badly. It was never a stealth game in the same vein that Thief was at all, it was never supposed to be "super hardcore", it was just a power fantasy.
Dishonored is closer to Prototype than Thief for instance.
But then you have the cretins that went to play this expecting Thief, either because they are that stupid that, seeing the magical powers given to you and the multiple videos about Corvo slaughtering people around, still expected a Thief-like experience or worse: they actually believed the marketing of Zenimax\Bethesda.
These are the cretins that can't understand the niche of "predatory stealth", wish that every stealth game play the same catering to them and they will buy games they should know they aren't gonna like just to complain about it later.

Then you also have the massive amount of cretins that plays videogames like it's a dayjob for them, trying to finish them as fast as possible. They'll complain about how short it is, how most content is meaningless and how a lot of things are redundant and you "gotta self-impose chalenges" because they can't just Blink on top of a rooftop and take in the view of a decrepit city being eaten alive by a rat plague. Nothing you can do for them, but just wait until they find out they aren't paid to play videogames…

Dishonored 2 likely suffers from all that but there's also 2 more issues.
First one is Denuvo and I'm not talking about performance issues. You place Denuvo on your game, you make sure nobody will talk about it unless they paid money, which means the usual people that pirate and then talk about it don't even mention it and there's nobody to talk about it with or dismiss any wrong information with it. No discussion, the game dies.

Then there's the actual performance. 50GB in your harddrive? Fuck that, that's a red flag for unoptimized crap nobody is willing to put up with. That's why so many people still haven't tried Doom despite being able to pirate it.
I personnaly saw it for sale at 20€ and was inclined to buy it until I saw that disk requirement, so that shit even wards off legit customers.

...

Yes, it does. Skyrim is not a stealth game just because it allows for optional sneaking. Neither is Dishonored. The only difference between them in this regard is that Dishonored lets you sneak the whole time. But the fact that being caught and engaging in combat is not a punishment (other than perhaps a self-imposed autistic one) precludes it from being a stealth game. You don't know what you're talking about. Leave.

And people try to convince me summer is just a huge meme

Addendum: This is not about whether Dishonored is a "good" stealth game or not. I like Dishonored. It's a good game. It has sneaking. It's not a stealth game.

Watch as an unironic Fallout 4 praise thread comes up in the next 24 hours.
This summer seems great already.

Technically, you stand to gain nothing from combat but what you could pickpocket anyway and you'll lose potions\ammo in order to win.
So technically, you are punished.
But in practice, you just get a way to showoff your cool sharingans and in the end you get an empty room you can explore more confortably.

Dishonored can be a lot of fun to play pure stealth, but it's also a lot of fun to play as a Wizard instead. Still not a stealth game.

You're a very inteligent man.

Regardless, the difference is that Dishonored has redeeming features and can be a fun game about your neck-stabbing escapades while Fallout 4 has no redeeming features besides severely screwing with console players nor can you extract fun from it no matter how hard you try. A thread made to praise Fallout 4 would have to reach really hard to find anything they can praise it for.

Are you fucking mental?
you fucking stupid kike.
I said its stealth system is good.
You.
Dumb.
Fucking.
Moron.
Fucking go kill yourself.
The debate isn't if it's a good stealth game, more if it's a good game overall. And it is.

Your reward is that you can get all the dead guys' belt items, and all the loot placed nearby. You could also get that by sneaking (though usually not all of it), but it's still the reward after combat is over. Also, combat in Dishonored isn't so hard, dull, or frustrating that it discourages the player from continuing to fight. it has a pretty good, enjoyable set of combat mechanics. It's not a punishment, it's just riskier than sneaking.
Other than that, I think everything else you've said is absolutely correct.

My point, the whole time, has been that it's not a stealth game. I do think it's a good game. You are illiterate.

You off your meds, Billy?

...

I want them to go back.

Where are the proofs?

/this. Sage for shit thread.

Google Billy Lush trannydestroyer.

A couple of Arkane's staff were hired directly from the Thief fanmission community so you can't blame people for getting ideas.

I loved the first one actually, although it was way too short and the world in which it was set was too small for my taste.
The sequel is just SJW garbage.

are you me
this and assassin's creed are the most boring games of past gen to me

All the promotional material for the game is about you killing people left and right.
All the hype surrounds Blinking around a lot, something that makes stealth piss easy.
There's never anything similar to Water Arrows or Noise Arrows, no Blackjack, nothing.
All gadgets are advertised by their killing potential.
Every single marketing video dedicates half it's time to neckstabbing and the other half to look around casually.

If after seeing all that shit, someone still thinks "this looks like a game about avoiding detection and combat is an afterthough", I don't know if I should congratulate him for being that immune to hype and marketing or slap him for being such a dense motherfucker.

This is like watching several McDonald's commercials, going into one of their "restaurants" and complaining that you got a burger instead of a steak.

As true as that may be, once you start playing the game everyone kvetches as soon as you start killing, as well as the nonlethal options being easier than killing in half the scenarios.

That's fair. And hiring Stephen Russell to voice Corvo isn't the smartest decision if you want to actually convey the character of your game. I find it hard to believe that anyone at Arkane believes Dishonored to be a successor to Thief, which makes those kinds of decisions seem like cynical, calculated moves–or, at best, drastic mistakes of judgment.

Assassin's Creed is garbage and always has been.

Nonsense, your fellow men sing praises of your stabs and your loli even draws pretty pictures of you at work!

This is quite possibly the most retarded complaint anyone can raise about the game. It's a game about a madmen using powers beyond anyone's comprehension to fullfill his quest for revenge. Where you honestly expecting any sort of happy ending to it? Would that ever make sense or feel satisfying?
If that's your thing, you might want to try Assassins Creed instead.

First mission, you gotta drag the live body of your target to a room where you brand him. Or you can stick a blade in his back right when you meet him.
Lady Boyle's non-lethal alternative requires figuring out which is the real one and then convince her to follow you down to the cellar. Or you can throw a grenade in her party and kill them all.
The twins can be dealt easier, true. But you're heading to the brothel anyway, they don't really save you anytime and they aren't well guarded anyway.
Even the last mission has everyone committing suicide or dying random deaths if you were violent before, making it far easier.

Non-lethal options often required going out of your way in a sidequest or hunting for clues, when a slide&stab or an arrow from an high place could do the job far easier.
Are you really sure they were easier options?

Kinda, yeah. I mean all the bad guys got into power by stabbing the queen, why is it so evil to stab them right the fuck back? And it's not like anyone was enjoying their rule, so why would any citizen be distraught elizabeth is coming back? And all your allies turn their nose when you kill like their all fucking above. "oh hey corvo we broke you of prison and gave you a crossbow and knife, but you didn't HAVE to kill them jeez, we never told you to do THAT, gosh." It's just bad writing.

Also the nonlethal options seemed like they come on to you I guess? Like the game presumes you aren't gonna just go kill them. And killing them isn't satisfactory anyway. For example why can you expose the main bad guy's secrets and humiliate him separately to killing him? I want to be able to either kill him and string his body up in town square, or just poison him, or maybe kidnap him and get some alone time to beat the shit out of him. I want to be able to deal with enemies using all the elaborate ways the game advertises, but it's never really necessary when you can just stab them and have their bodies just disintegrate.

I don't hate Dishonored but DMoMM did the powers shit better and the 'stealth' option is completely trivial. It's your typical mainstream compromise game that was too scared to try anything extreme because it might put off casuals. And the whole force morality chaos system was dumb as shit.

He's not illiterate. He just lost the debate, got overly emotional and tried to change the conditions of the conversation so he didn't outright lose. It was pathetic to read tbh.

got a console copy of dishonored 2 for christmas, beat it twice, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't great. probably woulda enjoyed it more if i wasn't so concerned about the fact bethesdas name is on the title. its a middle-of-the-road game in an era where those don't exist anymore

I liked Dishonored tbh, there is still no crack for the 2nd game so ill wait with my judgment till then

kys nigger

You can't stop getting defensive over your shitty games Harvey.

What's it like being a stupid fucking nigger?

What's like being an assmad little bitch?

They were too easy and encouraged little to no stealth due to the lack of actually dangerous situations

Sure is cuckchan in here

i'm not so uptight and desperate for approval on Holla Forums that i won't play a free game just cuz it was on a console

You talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded.

Daily reminder that contrarian crybabies belong back on cuckchan.

Holla Forums brought over a lot of retards from halfchan, and those idiots are determined to drag fullchan down to their level. You can give them shit for being retarded but those idiots think of it as a hazing ritual to be initiated into the secret club of smug shitposters or something, as opposed to genuine indication of their retardation.

Sounds exhausting to be perfectly forthright, kindred.

come to /games/ leave the halfchan amd Holla Forums faggots behind

Cry more you asshurt faggot. It sounds like you fell for one or more of those HYPE "innovative" games and then got buttmad when no one gave you the attention and validation you were seeking for being on the hype train of something probably retarded. And then you started to delude yourself that it was all Holla Forums's fault for hiveminding against you or something.

Look pal, gamergate happened on these boards. A lot of people have no faith in marketing buzzwords (like "innovative") or the shit videogame journalists are selling, even before GG ever happened. The only real question is if the game seems like actual, honest-to-goodness fun (not marketing "fun" or watch-it-on-youtube "fun"). If you have any recommendations for games you want to share, go ahead, but don't get so anally ravaged when it turns out other people don't share your (probably shit) taste that you want to take it out on the whole board.

Why do all these zenimax shills keep coming here?

...

Who wants to to play a shitty oldschool game thief though?

If I'm gonna move, why not just move to 8ch.pl/v/?

if you're being honest and you really don't know then maybe you should consider playing actually good games instead of just the latest hollywood blockbuster and have your opinions told to you by "journalists"

This is gonna be like the Holla Forums split from /g/ all over again isn't it? And then /g/ tards come over to try to shit up Holla Forums anyway because they're parasites who look for the most active boards to shitpost all over. Still, I'm game for a better board.

There's also endchan.xyz/v/ but it's a damn slow board now.

Arkane got fucked during development of dishonored one super hard and the game was way worse than it otherwise would have been, Bethesda sets studios up to do worse so they can screw them later or fuck their contract like with New Vegas. also i wont buy or even pirate games that use denuvo so fuck them.

it's 244 not 1000

The game is good. On an unrelated note, I hate Arkane because they fired the original Outsider VA because he was "transphobic". The guy's xbox gamertag was trannydestroyerxXx or some shit like that and that is just not PC enough to hire him as a VA. In getting rid of the original VA they also managed to fuck the Outsider's character entirely. In dishonored 1 he was an apathetic god bestowing powers upon mortals so that they could entertain him. In dishonored 2 he's actually in danger of being usurped by Delilah which makes no sense at all because he gave her powers in the first place.
They also tried to add "deepest lore" to the game by giving the Outsider some gay background about dying as a child and gaining powers for whatever stupid reason.

There is your answer.

How long have you had the 'tism, lad?

Disregarding the whole Zenimax/Bethesda thing, it's mostly just because they try to be Thief but they aren't as good. They're alright games, but they're very obviously trying to emulate another series and not doing it as well as that series.

TES games are not stealth games by your standards. But then you go ahead and say that Dishonored isn't a stealth game because it has combat. MGS and Thief both have combat, are you going to say they aren't stealth games because of it?

Correct.
It's not a stealth game because it's combat isn't a punishment. How many times do I have to say it?

Among AAA games, Dishonored is one of my favorites. It has its share of flaws, but it's a quality game with fun stealth, creative combat, and really good freedom of movement. Dishonored 2 doesn't do a whole lot to expand on it besides the new character with her new powers, but I don't mind it all that much. It's pretty much more of the same, and I'm okay with that because I liked Dishonored in the first place.

So in the future, if I want to discuss Dishonored 2, how should I start the thread?

It's a bethesda game, you can't start it properly. There will always be someone to kvetch about either bethesda, muh not a stealth game, or muh SJWs.

Do it somewhere else.

Not saying that to be mean but discussing games hare, especially bethsada stuff or certain objects is all but impossible, I've actually gone to 4chan sometimes because of this, because sometimes I'm stupid and don't just wanna endlessly shitpost, I actually wanna discuss games but doing so here is not really possible anymore.

So you wanna talk about Dishonred? Do it elsewhere, you'll probably get better conversation, not just endless sages and shitposting.

I get the whole >halfchan sentiment, but at least the people there will have some serious discussion threads about games on release that weren't memed up as high-profile releases like most AAA games.

I mean, halfchan has no right to have higher quality discussions then us, yet if you try to start a thread about a game like nuDoom or Prey here, most people aren't even interested in having a discussion and will publicly voice they think your thread is a blight on the website for no other reason than the publisher or/and the common consensus source material itself. It's not worth it posting no-effort posts in threads you think are shilling efforts for whatever reason, it sets a bad example for other users who in turn will go do the same thing for other possibly harmless threads, and discourages logical thinking and reasoning through certain stopwords. If we really intend to see ourselves more superior than halfchan, then we need to maintain that quality instead of considering it an automatic given.

There's also the fact that Dishonored 2 still hasn't been cracked, so there's barely anybody here around who has actually played the game, and can only copypaste the opinions of others to make it sound like they know what they are talking about.

I thought the first game was alright, although the streamlining and dumbing-down the devs went through shows in the level design, and the later game falls apart as it's mostly a straight route through to the end in the levels. 7/10, would play again a few years later.

cool meme

What a bunch of faggots

Just return to your hugboxes, i don't care if halfchan or plebbit, but man, this is pathetic.
You don't want a discussion, you want a circlejerk, and you won't find it in here.

The reasons are clear, it's a more casual stealth game, some people like that, some people don't.
The first one was rushed (and it shows towards the end), the second one i didn't play because it doesn't appeal to me, it also doesn't help the SJW politics hamfisted here and there.

you know, we could have those kinds of threads here, its just that theres a handful of people who want Holla Forums to die out

I enjoyed the first one haven't played the second. Only thing I didn't like about it was you couldn't hide in shadows. I knoiw nothing of the sequel other than you can play as Emily but I'm afraid that they fucked it up somehwo and made it more casual. I wouldn't be surprised.

Did you just skim my post and shallowly classified it as another 'it's better there than here' post only for you to respond to such template posts in a template fashion? Cut that dishonest fucking shit out, I'm trying to state the opposite here.

I don't give a shit whether any threads about the game ends up being a one-sided smackdown, the chance for it to be properly discussed shouldn't be intentionally diminished for the most inane of reasons. Maybe you didn't get the memo, but this case we were talking about Dishonored 2 specifically. Everyone and their mother has already played Dishonored 1 and formed their opinions about it as evidenced by this thread, but most people can't give any thought out commentary about Dishonored 2 because they haven't played Dishonored 2 (largely because of Denuvo) so instead they just parrot the opinions of others who seem like they did play the game instead of keeping their trap shut about subjects they barely know anything about. Heck, I haven't even played the game, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in reading what the game is like.

Again, cut that fucking shit out and stop blatantly assuming things.

Preface: I bought the game last week using a G2A key that included the preorder bonuses for ~$20. I rarely pirate games any more, but I'm not a stranger to such things.

What I've taken away from the game so far:
1. Enemies are dumb as fuck. All the typical stealth game enemy AI flaws are here, and they just aren't very aware most of the time. I'm playing on the hardest possible difficulty and it's still pretty damn easy.
2. If there's anything I've noticed as a trend amongst Arkane games, it's that multiple solutions to any given problem is their forte and that's true here as well. There are genuinely a plethora of ways to solve any problem and several different routes through every mission. Exploration and experimentation is very rewarding.
3. Emily's powers are pretty damn interesting, the most outstanding one being Domino. Linking together a group of up to 4 enemies so that when one of them gets killed/incapacitated they all do opens up a LOT of options. Add on to this that her Doppelganger (another ability) can be linked in this effect, and you can remotely assassinate 3 targets by killing your clone.
4. There's a strong focus on player choice and "morality." Killing civilians and/or too many people in general gets you higher "chaos" rating which has a lot of effect on the game, including but not limited to making friendly NPCs more cynical and jaded. It honestly reminds me a bit of how your allies in KOTOR would turn evil with you if you were a bastard.
5. Lore. Lots of lore. Lore out the fucking ass. Every three steps there's another piece of lore to read. Books, diaries, and audiographs are everywhere. If you like lore (and I do) then you won't be disappointed. On top of all that? One of your items is your dead mother's heart and she spits out lore of other characters when you squeeze it at them (see OP).
6. You can de-craft and re-craft bone charms (the little passive bonus items) and stack multiple effects and create unique effects this way. Lots of room for experimenting.
7. There are some issues with the game. My biggest one is that the entire GUI sways constantly, like a rocking boat. I get the aesthetic they were going for with this, but it makes reading all the lore a pain in the ass sometimes.

tl;dr:
It's easy, but has rewarding exploration and experimentation and a shitton of lore.

Funniest thing I ever had with Emily's powers linking people together was when I linked a bunch of guards together, then jumped down to choke one out (to knock them all out) but got spotted. Guard runs up, takes a big swing and decapitates the dude I'm effectively using as a body shield while I'm choking him out, which because they're linked means the other guards including the attacking one are suddenly beheaded where they stand. It was a great spectacle.

Has 2 been cracked yet?

Prey was cracked so I'm pretty sure Dishonored 2 was as well.

I don't know any private trackers any more (which is why I stopped torrenting) but maybe you can ask nicely in the share thread or something.

No.

They didn't. It's basically the same game, with a few new tools and combat features.

Did you play the original Dishonored? The Heart was in that game, too. (Though they didn't outright say it belonged to the dead Empress, they just hinted at it.) Also, I agree that the interface in general is awful.

Nice. Very nice.

the bit about Denuvo being a kiss of a death to a game as far as conversation goes is interesting. When I think of the past few games that people have talked about, aside from MGSV, anything with denuvo is at best half-heartedly discusses and at worst completely absent. When will they realise that people not-talking about your game is worse than people infringing your copyright

Question for people who played Dishonored, were there witches in that game as well?

Just encountered two witches for the first time in Dishonored 2 and it honestly surprised me, I didn't think the game would throw a non-boss enemy at me that could use magic.

Only in the DLC. There were however Daud's assassins who could also use magic in the base game.

As already stated, they were in the two DLC packs, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches, in both of which you play as Daud, rather than Corvo. The DLC is better than the main game; the witches are better enemies, Daud speaks and has a more interesting motive than Corvo, and the powers are slightly different.

I played the base game, there was this old woman named Granny Rags who was implied to be a wealthy aristocrat turned mentally unstable vagrant as a result of worshiping the Outsider. She's an optional boss fight in a late portion of the game, and during the fight she exhibits numerous supernatural powers.

"Only bad publicity is no publicity" is a thing for a reason. Pirates get their games for free but they also tend to be free marketing as well with word-of-mouth.
That is… If you trust the quality of the game you're making and hope to sell more than just in the first week.

MGSV was kind of an exception since it was cracked later anyway and is part of an established franchise. Lords of the Fallen hasn't seen the same treatment, nor any other Denuvo game. It's a bit of a shame since we end up missing quality shitposting with screenshots and webms from the game, much like Andromeda had.

Witches are canonically in the story, just another faction that gets their powers from the Outsider but they aren't the only ones.
They kinda are the natural progression in enemy difficulty (but not by much) and one of the reasons the DLC of the first game is actually pretty decent.

if you could teleport, would you use that power to punctuate your conversations like a jackass?

Get that reddit shit out of here

It's a real and useful category of games, no matter how many times you sperg out about it. Preemptively filtered.

Fuck off and die

What.
How?

So you're just some misguided retard who saw the term and decided to use it? Jesus christ

Ｎｏ，　Ｉ　ｗｏｕｌｄ　ｕｓｅ　ｉｔ　ｔｏ　ｓｔｅａｌ　ｍｏｎｅｙ　ｆｒｏｍ　ａ　ｎｕｍｂｅｒ　ｏｆ　ｂａｎｋｓ　ａｒｏｕｎｄ　ｍｙ　ａｒｅａ　ｕｎｔｉｌ　Ｉ　ｈａｄ　ｅｎｏｕｇｈ　ｍｏｎｅｙ　ｔｏ　ＬＯＶＥ　ＬＡＩＮ　ＬＥＴＳ　ＡＬＬ ＬＯＶＥ　ＬＡＩＮ　ＬＥＴＳ　ＡＬＬ　ＬＯＶＥ　ＬＡＩＮ　ＬＥＴＳ　ＡＬＬ　ＬＯＶＥ　ＬＡＩＮ　ＬＥＴＳ　ＡＬＬ　ＬＯＶＥ ＬＡＩＮ

If I want to jump around or kill people with swords and magic powers, I could play pretty much any other game in existence. And that's just about the first game, there's no way to salvage dishonored 2 I'm not even gonna bother

Mate even if you convince someone here to play the game they're just gonna pirate it, stop

Alright, what is a immersive sim?

How did you even get to that conclusion OP?

I'm not misguided, and I've been aware of the term (and using it) for many years.

A game that is highly reactive to players' moment-to-moment gameplay decisions, that allows for multiple play styles (combat, stealth, conversation, etc.), that lets players complete objectives in whatever way they see fit (as much as possible), and that encourages emergent gameplay and, ideally, tries to encourage the kind of problem-solving and creative thinking that you would use in a real-life situation (which is why they're systems-driven and usually first-person). Basically, games that adhere to the design philosophy of Looking Glass games.

I have 30 hours on it

Not a bad game but it feels incomplete, first few levels you can complete on no powers mode but later on you run into more and more bonecharms and rooms that are inaccessible without blink. you can't fully ghost it without powers either, there are a couple of chokepoints where using sleep darts was the only option.

Using the heart on people was probably the best part of the game, that and noticing the little details that changed between low and high chaos, like the lovers on the rooftop in the museum mission.

Babby's first day

Goddamn, no wonder the number bump in recent weeks, a bunch of Reddit and Halfchan came here for summer
I know the local userbase, which is shamefully half casual as fuck redditors and newfags due to kid migrations post-moot 2 years ago, is not that good and threw a lot of quality away, but this is ridiculous, from being shitpost central to cuck mansion

6/10 played it for the teleport and stab. Not going to touch the second one, ever. Simply because

The problem is half of them admitted that they haven't even played the games, yet criticized the gameplay. I'm okay with those who haven't played and criticized the denuvo and other technical shortcomings, but the rest are salty cucks.

...

honestly, it kinda falls flat. i remember playing it and the idea and aesthetic was neat but it just got repetitive really fast. the gameplay is unimaginative. it's just kind of dull. you've got a bunch of ways to kill but the only entertaining way to play it is stealth and that never really gets expanded upon. i love stealth games yet i just sort of got bored of dishonored quite soon into the game. i've since really enjoyed other stealth games so it's not that i'm just disillusioned or something like that either. stealth games need complexity and a proper degree of simulation. when you try to make them more accessible by taking any of that away you just make them worse. it's just a very mediocre game.

Hey faggot. It sounds like Resident Evil 6 should be your favorite game ever. Every enemy reacts specifically to where you damage it and how much you damage it despite the enemies being monsters.

More dead bodies attract more rats, more rats brings more plague

Played the first one. It's just not a fun game and it punishes you story wise for having fun anyway. And even then it stops being any amount of enjoyable after about a few hours. I got 1 run through it and thought maybe it was worth another playthrough because I would have more fun doing pure stealth without getting a single kill and found out that that was even more fucking tedious and boring.

Basically the games are potential without any solid ideas. I would have preferred more depth to the stealth mechanics and level design but alas no cigar.

Dishonored was shallow, short, and way too easy. The combat was boring, the stealth was garbage… why do people even like this game?

Call of Juarez has stealth mechanics. Is that a stealth game? Your argument is shit, and so is Dishonored.

thats not how it works user, if an sjw uses the term you must never even think about using it yourself no matter how well the word fits what youre trying to convey or else youre spreading propaganda on their behalf
just kidding, hes a fucknut

Well, I'm that asshole who grew up with Thief 1 and 2. I really, really love classic Thief. I had understood that a few people of the Thief team were involved in producing Dishonored, which would have excited me, had I not been familiar with how Assassin's Creed turned out, so my expectations were low. Apparently, Arkane wanted to implement a light gem system and make combat less focus on the game, making it similar to Thief, but some asshole from Bethesda said "put magic powers in it and make the character a powerhouse." I don't know if this is true or not.

Anyway, I bought Dishonored on the cheap in a Steam sale, and I thought it was okay. I like the nautical themes, but I wish they had more emphasis on them. I didn't much care for the art direction, but I appreciate that they tried to do something different. The stealth is very lacking, there are few tools to aid in it, and it clearly was not the main focus of the game. Predatory stealth, resulting in your only punishment for getting caught is combat, which you dominate in and with significantly more tools, is not the kind of stealth I'm interested in. The result is that the game is way too easy, and to play this with action in mind, makes it a pretty shallow action game. Parrying is piss easy and results in an insta-kill. I don't particularly like games where I'm an undisputed super badass because it ruins the immersion for me and usually doesn't work in the narrative's favor.

I'm waiting for the sequel to either get cracked or go on sale for a price that I'm comfortable paying. Again, my expectations are low, especially since they're pushing the strong independent female who don't need no man angle, compounded with the power fantasies, I fear that Emily will come off as a giant cunt. I love Stephen Russell, and I want him to get more work, but I feel they threw him in to voice Corvo because they still don't quite get why the Thief fans turn their nose up to this series. I'm sure Dishonored 2 is a very middle of the road video game that won't appeal to a very large crowd. When I play it, I'm sure I won't be horribly offended, and in the end, I'll forget almost everything about it, and never look back. I mean, that's the current business model these days, right? Make forgettable shit with no lasting appeal so people buy more games instead of playing the old ones again.

For being such a "shallow" game, Dishonored and its sequel sure have a lot of pretty interesting kill combo montage videos on youtube.

Don't get me wrong, I know what you're trying to say, but… there's obviously a niche for the game. You don't personally have to like it to understand why someone else might.

I know that respecting other opinions is not the Holla Forums way but you can at least make an effort.

I think this is where I differ from a lot of people. I didn't go into Dishonored 2 expecting a stealth game.

I know that might sound strange since it was MARKETED as a stealth game, but I kinda missed out on all the marketing and only got into it after beating Prey 2017 and deciding I wanted to check out one of Arkane's other new games.

Your posts scream "I-I'm not a shill my fellow goys I-I mean gaymurz" and I recognise your gif from the nuPrey shill thread. Tell your employers that they're cancer for me.
Why are you pausing ON THE INTERNET?

This post reeks of Bethesda/nu-Arkane shill, as does this whole thread.

I played Prey, beat Prey, tried Dishonored 2, I like both.

I fail to see your point, other than "anyone who likes anything on Holla Forums is a shill"

It's more like "anyone who talks about shit games on Holla Forums is a shill" ie you.
Also stop posting your trash waifus, thanks.

That's not empirical fact.

Prove under reasonable conditions empirically and logically that this game is shit.

Because it has no lightgem and no context-sensitive footsteps as gameplay element.

Also it's a MASSIVE drop of quality compared to the Masterpieces Arkana Studios released previously.

*takes bottle*
*swings it against the counter breaking off the bottom of the glass*
*holds it toward you threateningly*

YOU TAKE THAT BACK, YOU SOB!

They fell for the "graphics over gameplay" meme

LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN

It's getting more praise from the faggots here than it deserves is the problem. It's a nothing special game that faggots here apparently think is anything above mediocre. As for the actual facts read the fucking thread. It punished you for having fun and the Stealth is under developed. The level design is also pretty shit, especially for a game that says "you can do anything anyway you want". You can pretty much find exploits on every map that make it a cake walk. Even if you kill nobody.

Most threads about Dishonored are rather polarizing or middling, nothing really worthy of mentioning

Kinda why it's weird when you see people praising the game like it's anything above a 7-6/10.

Nobody's praising the damn game, and I'm certainly not claiming it's anything above a 7/10

I'de say it's a shit game. I'm being generous by saying it's anything above a 5 honestly but people here have shit taste so let them assume it's above a 6. In any case Dishonered's not really worth talking about. It's a confusing mess of a game in some parts but it can be basically labeled as underdeveloped. To the extent that it's just shell of something interesting. The stealth mechanics are boring, the combat is ok but ultimately not really thought out enough because enemies have pretty retarded AI and most of the abilities are way to OP to make stealth really worth it. And the story is just fucking terrible all around.

I liked Dishonored it was a pretty fun stealth game though the story was nothing but a rack to hang interesting levels and gameplay on. Skipped the sequel because the PC version was busted at launch will probably go back to it eventually. Holla Forums hated it because of a busted PC version and they thought it might SJW crap because of the female lead and some shit some of the devs said. It didn't look like that was the case though because I don't really remember any examples of bullshit in the game.

go suck a bag of dicks

Make me fag.

Frankly, not a lot of people have actually played Dishonoured 2, and 8ch isn't a heavily populated site to begin with.

Certainly doesnt help that it has denuvo, I dont buy games that look good if they have denuvo let alone games that look mediocre. Maybe there is decent discussion to be had if the game gets cracked

Has it been cracked yet? If it hasn't then yea a thread shouldn't be made. Only good goys would support that shit and a thread full of jew apologists isn't a thread worth having.

Just checked it, hasnt been cracked.

k then. Only shills would make a thread before it's cracked as is etiquette. Would be nice if the OP provided a torrent as well but that's expecting to much for somebody who's typically a faggot.

What's it like not having money?

It annoyed me you couldnt actually see morgans tits. Why even make the protags body visible if you cant look at your own tits or package?

lol.

I liked the artstyle and setting more than anything. Rather than a stealth game centered around the crown id have rathered an urban setting where you work as a merc, cop or gangster and can fully explore the city.

The problem is the style is built around nothing solid. It's not bad by any means but I would have preferred one built more around the culture of a shanty fishing town than some weird cyberpunk shit that occasionally conflicts with the time and setting. Which is fictional but not really practical.

Might just be Gothic settings intermixed with cyberpunk arent really your thing. I enjoyed the setting the most of anything else, while the story wasnt all that strong or great. Never tried 2 tho, cause fuck denuvo.

Well my issue is it defeats a lot of functions and clashes with the game on a realistic level. The setting can hardly be called a setting when the world around it doesn't make much sense. The cyberpunk looks nice. Just doesn't have any logic behind it.

Uh what?

IDGAF about piracy one way or another but not talking about a game before it's cracked is stupid. And not pirating a game doesn't make you a shill. Hell I'm a pirate and I still spend thousands on games.

You can talk about it. Just expect to get about 200 replies calling you a shill and for buying a game on Steam. And yes buying a Denuvo product on Steam of all things makes you a shill. Nobody else with a modicum of self respect would buy such a shitty product with such a cancerous form of DRM and anti-piracy methods. I spent $300 last year on hardware for games and maybe $80 on actual games. There's nothing that's come out in the last 5 years that's given me a thrill or has been any fun. Last title I can think of that I had any amount of fun on was Dead Space 2

It's not about being fashionable faggot, play games for as long as I have and games that are mediocre become less and less fun to play as time goes on. The bar of my standards naturally goes higher the more games I play.

Dishonored 1 however is disliked because it's stealth mechanics are shit and it's more fun to play as an action game, Anons that like to play stealth games generally consider that to be a terrible design choice for stealth games.

I completely fucking missed this in the OP. Jesus fuck OP your taste is shit. Prey was fucking mediocre garbage.

Fucking retarded

It's not cyberpunk it's steampunk

It's not that either.

Pretty much my views. I really liked the world building in D1 but the stealth was just too vanilla. Also, going too lethal just seemed like a dick move considering most of the 'baddies' are your assoiciates.

D2's first announcement that emily? is a playing character showed me that they're priorities are off. At best, i might try a cracked version out of respect for the first game.

...

you say that as if they're not in charge of fucking it up
you saw what they did to prey

No? Do you just mean the name?

Fite me fag. It's a good game.

user have you been living under a rock?
YOUR NEXT LINE WILL BE; >e-celebs, TO YOU!

But it's not. It just has the same name.

I mean yeah, they GOT the name from Human Head, but that doesn't make it part of the series.

It's a batshit insane decision out of left field to name this game after something it has NOTHING TO DO WITH, especially when it's a completely independent production in every fathomable way.

i wish i had your autism

Since when was talking about a game autistic on Holla Forums?

WEW

If you care more about the quality of the game being discussed than the quality of the discussion happening surrounding it, you can leave any time.

He means what Bethesda did to what was actually supposed to be Prey 2, where they colluded with Zenimax to force the previous studio into selling out for a measley sum to them so they could have yet another zombie slaving for them.
It's fucking shit what they tried but everyone should be damn happy it did not worked at all.

Usually the idea is to get brand recognition and fans of previous titles to generate hype for you. A sequel to well loved titles has an upstart in sales, if you will.
But it's true, this was a retarded decision. Fans of the previous game were not expecting SS3 at all nor will they be happy with this and newcomers don't care that it's a sequel. It was mostly Bethesda shooting themselves in the foot again, as usual.

Zenimax owns Bethesda. They call the shots. It's not really "collusion." It was shitty and unethical, though.

It's collusion in the sense that it doesn't make any rational sense except if it was premeditated and agreed.
Why would you lend money to someone that keeps failing your milestones?
Why would you reject milestones that were clearly made?

It was one company investing in someone that wasn't worth the money by all financial standards and one company sabotaging their own product, screwing themselves out of any sales and it makes no sense unless it was cooperation between both of them behind the scenes. Just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it's not collusion (unless the word only makes sense if you speak in legalese)

Hopefully it serves as a cautionary tale both about what kind of publishers they are and what publishers tend to be in general.

I think he's saying that it can't be collusion because it implies two entities are involved when Zenimax and Bethesda are one in the same.

Holla Forums likes to bitch about Dishonored. I enjoyed it. A solid 7/10. I'm not claiming the people who complain about it are incorrect, there are plenty of flaws and shortcomings with the game, and it's fucking sad that it is what it is rather than what it could have been. It was still a rather decent game for fucking around with accomplishing objectives and using different ways to kill things. I never bought the game however, because I refuse to pay for anything that involves Bethesda.

I have not played the new one. I'm not sure if it's cracked yet or not, but I don't know that I'd want to torrent it anyway. I have not heard good things about it whatsoever from anybody.

Collusion is illegal cooperation, generally to exploit a third party. For example, if Pepsi and Coke both agreed to raise their prices to the same level, so that the consumer would have no choice but to pay more, that would be collusion.
I think a better term for what Zenimax did to Human Head is simply "breach of contract," or perhaps simply "fraud." They were deliberately acting in bad faith in order put Human Head into a financially vulnerable position, to manipulate Human Head's owners into selling the company to Zenimax. What they did was almost certainly illegal.
Prey was a cult classic. It wasn't a bad investment on Zenimax's part.
Do you mean Human Head? Because they refused to work on Prey 2 in order to get out of their contract with Zenimax. It wasn't self-sabotage, but more like chemo: you hurt yourself because it also hurts the enemy, and you just hope that you can outlast it.
Also, Bethesda Softworks is the publishing arm, and Bethesda Game Studios is Todd's team (which only makes Elder Scrolls and Fallout games). You probably knew that, but a lot of people here don't, for some reason.

I think the correct term there is "cartelization", where 2 or more entities make their own cartel, but I'm no lawyer.

What I meant was that by Bethesda's reports, Human Head was failing every single milestone and had nothing to show and yet Zenimax still dumps more money in them. Any other company would see that and stop putting money in a sinking ship (like Kotick and mister Shitface) but Zenimax kept going for no legal logical reason.

I actually meant Bethesda, assuming that the game would belong to them. They had the milestones met but rejected them for arbitrary reasons that made no sense, effectively ruining the development of the game they were gonna publish, again for no logic legal reason.

Human Head actually did the right thing there and I hope Prey doesn't sell shit (even if it's a good game)
Hopefully Arkane will grow some balls and ditch Bethesda too.

I actually didn't knew there were 2 entities there. If they have their own publisher, why the fuck do they need Zenimax? Aren't there other lawyer companies you can hire to frivolously suit other people?

Human Head was meeting the milestones, and Zenimax was deliberately claiming otherwise, so they didn't have to pay Human Head. That way, Human Head would go bankrupt and have no choice but to let Zenimax buy them. Zenimax wasn't paying them.
Exactly!
The reason was so that they would force Human Head into bankruptcy, so that Zenimax could buy Human Head. Remember, this was a period of time when Zenimax was expanding. They bought id and Arkane, and were probably going to try to buy Obsidian, too.
I think you should re-read the images about Prey 2, and you'll see what I mean.
Agreed.
Impossible. Zenimax owns Arkane. The only way the two could split is if Zenimax sold Arkane, or spun them off; they have all the power.
Zenimax is just a company whose only real purpose is to own other companies, and profit off of their work. Zenimax owns Bethesda Softworks, which they use to publish all their games. They also own a bunch of development studios, including: Bethesda Game Studios (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout), Zenimax Online Studios (The Elder Scrolls Online), id, Arkane, MachineGames, and maybe a few others.
This is why it was annoying to see people a few months ago blaming Todd for NuPrey.