Dishonored, il nuovo progetto di Arkane per Bethesda

[Bishop76]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/a...ishonored.aspx

Bethesda’s next game is a first-person stealth/action adventure, and we’ve got the first look at it in our upcoming August issue. There are dozens of reasons why you should care about this weird-looking game you've never heard of. A few of the most important ones are after the jump.

Arkane Studios and founder Raf Colantonio have made memorable games in the past (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic) that ultimately suffered from a lack of publisher support. Bethesda Softworks believes in their vision and is giving them all the time, money, and development help (regular meetings with guys like The Elder Scrolls' Todd Howard don't make your game worse) they need. Harvey Smith, one of the main minds behind the first two Deus Ex games and a legendary veteran of game development, shares the vision and is on board as Dishonored's co-creative director along with Colantonio. Viktor Antonov designed Half-Life 2's iconic City 17 and is lending his talents to Dishonored's world. This is a perfect storm for creating a game that shatters the mold that first-person action games have built for themselves in the mainstream.

We've seen the game running, and now we share Colantonio and Smith's vision too. Dishonored is the antithesis of a edge-of-your-seat roller-coaster ride. It's a game about assassination where you don't have to kill anyone. It's a game about infiltration where you can set up traps and slaughter the entire garrison of an aristocrat's mansion rather than sneak in. It's a game about brutal violence where you can slip in and out of a fortified barracks with nobody ever knowing you were there. It's a game about morality and player choice where the world you create is based on your actions, not navigating conversation trees.

sono interessatissimo dopo queste poche info
speriamo di saperne presto di più

[D43dalus]

Già dopo aver letto le premesse, Arkhane studios, Harvey Smith, Viktor Antonov (l'art director di Half Life 2), e dopo aver dato un'occhiata all'artwork, ho la bava alla bocca. Non vedo l'ora di saperne di più, questo progetto potrebbe essere una vera e propria bomba.

[-jolly-]

l'artwork sembra proprio HL2 con un pizzico di terminator

[Freisar]

Sembra un progetto interessante , speriamo in bene.

[NoSf3rA†U]

Ottimo... ma sinceramente? Preferivo un Arx Fatalis 2

[Bishop76]

primo screen + dettagli da GI:

Who are you?
Players take on the role of Corvo, the Empress’ legendary bodyguard. As the game starts, Corvo is falsely imprisoned for her murder. What the corrupt Lord Regent behind the coup didn’t realize is that Corvo is legendary for a reason. He’s not only a skilled combatant accomplished in the art of not being seen, but Corvo has a suite of supernatural powers that combine with his natural talents and unusual gadgets to make him one of the most lethal men in the known world.

Why should you care?
Even if you haven’t played them, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Thief and Deus Ex. One of the main minds behind those two games, Harvey Smith, is the co-creative director of Dishonored along with Raf Colantonio, the founder of developer Arkane Studios. The two share a vision of a game that gives players the power to be creative with their skills and tactics, and invites them to come up with interesting solutions to the obstacles in front of them. Arkane is known for its immersive first-person gaming (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic), and the power of a talent-driven publisher in Bethesda (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3) behind the team is promising.

How are they going to do that?
Dishonored has several major elements that combine to create its unique gameplay: mobility, powers & gadgets, environment, and AI. The trick is that a single power doesn’t just do damage or heal you. You can combine them organically to create interesting effects. Stop time and knock a bunch of stuff off a table in one direction then book it in another, so the guards search for you in the wrong place. Summon a swarm of rats to attack one guard, but possess one of the rats and escape in the chaos. Every problem has as many solutions as you want it to.

What’s the catch?
It’s an assassination game that reacts to how violent you are. An unusual “chaos” system tracks how much collateral damage you cause, and the game world changes as a result of your actions. Unlike a light/dark side meter, though, it’s a behind-the-scenes element that affects story decisions without punishing the player or pushing them to play one way or another.

When can I learn more?
Soon! You can get ten pages worth of details in the print magazine, and we’ll be dropping new online content, from video interviews to an interactive map of Dishonored’s world, throughout the month. We asked a lot of questions, and Smith and Colantonio had a lot to say. For starters, on Wednesday we’ll share a video that breaks down why you should be interested in the team at Arkane even if you haven’t played any of their previous games.

- Play as Corvo
- Corvo is the Empress’ legendary bodyguard
- Corvo is imprisoned at the start of the game for the Empress’ murder
- Corrupt Lord Regent behind the coup didn’t realize is that Corvo is legendary for a reason
- Corvo is a skilled combatant, known for not being seen
- Corvo has supernatural powers, natural talents, and unique gadgets
- This makes him one of the most lethal men in the world
- Single power doesn’t do damage/heal you
- Combine powers to lead to interesting effects
- Example 1: Stop time and knock a bunch of stuff off a table in one direction then book it in another, so the guards search for you in the wrong place
- Example 2: Summon a swarm of rats to attack one guard, but possess one of the rats and escape in the chaos
- Assassination game
- Reacts to how violent you are
- “Chaos” system tracks collateral damage you cause
- Game world changes based on your actions
- Behind-the-scenes element of effect
- Story decisions affected without punishing the player or pushing them to play one way or another

sembra parecchio interessante

[D43dalus]

Ci sono i combattimenti all'arma bianca . Ecco che l'hype sale a mille

[Bishop76]

altri screens:













mi piace lo stile grafico

[gmatta]

Dopo Bioshock, ecco un'altra ambientazione originale e affascinante. Alleluja!

[the silver]

L'ultima immagine è Half Life 2 cavolo, la vettura, i colori e lo stile sono UGUALI al furgone standard dei combine.

http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Armo...sonnel_Carrier

[Beato Angelico]

altri screens:













mi piace lo stile grafico

a me fa cagare sinceramente, e pensare che ritenevo la grafica del prossimo xcom brutta.

[D43dalus]

A me non dispiace affatto, ricorda un po' xcom per i personaggi "stilizzati" ma sembra già avere molto più carisma. Sarebbe interessante vederlo in movimento (soprattutto per vedere come hanno implementato la fisica e il sistema di combattimento)

[D43dalus]

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[sync]

mi interessa

[Kyashan77]

Sarà stupendo, ne sono sicuro.

[gmatta]

L'anteprima su TGM e il fatto che abbia apprezzato molto Arx Fatalis e Dark Messiah, bastano per rendermi conto sto gioco sarà mio al day one.
Me ne frego se la grafica é datata, é lo stile che mi interessa non quanti fili d'erba si muovono al vento.

[Samus78]

Anche a me pare promettente, se non altro al team di sviluppo devo un pò di riconoscenza per averci regalato 2 perle.

[Bishop76]

nuovi screens:

Spoiler:

[Vault Boy]

Interessante ..anche se continuo a non capire i riferimenti con Arx Fathalis e Dark Messiah..due titoli che ho molto apprezzato ma che,da quel che si è visto,non centrano nulla con questo gioco..

[Bishop76]

[Bishop76]

[Bishop76]

un botto di nuove info:

Old World! Dishonored - is dragging the immersive world sim kicking and stabbing into the future. By Jon Blyth.

* More details of Dishonored - Character, Gameplay, Story, Place and Possible Spoilers.

• If you're looking for a reason to start getting excited about Arkane Studios' new game, try the talent behind it. Harvey Smith was lead designer on the original Deus Ex. Art Director Viktor Antonow designed City 17 for Half-Life 2. Raphael Colantonio, Arkane's founder and president oversaw Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, a game that broke new ground in intimate first-person swordplay in 2006.
  
  This first-person action-RPG combine everything they've learned in the last 12 years. Building on Dark Messiah's combat, it offers even more intricate interactions between swords, guns, magic and stealth. And it takes place in an outstandingly original world.
  
  It's a world difficult to write about sounding like a press release, but these words must be said once: unique, beautiful, stylized. "It's a retro-future industrial world," offers Colantonio. He adds "it's not se in LA, or New York", in a tone of voice that quietly, wearily acknowledges, America's ubiquity as a setting. Dishonored's location is inspired by historical Europe.
  
  The early concept art in particular, show a town that's plainly London. But since those early pencil sketches, the world has been processed and reimagined, with influences from geography and history woven into its fabric. It's a world that's been distorted, flexed and infused: drained of surplus detail and colorized with a palette as subtle as it is compelling. It's a distinctly new world.
  
  You play the bodyguard of the Empress. Colantonio describes him, confusingly a both a bodyguard and a "supernatural assassin." But then a gain what is an assassin, if not a kind of highly proactive bodyguard? You've been wrongly accused of murder, and your game will be occupied with putting things back to their rightful place-or just getting your revenge.
  
  
• Dishonored is a daisy bed of possibility, in which the player's creativity is encouraged to roll around. "We could talk about any aspect of the game for hours, but encouraging player creativity is the most important thing," say Smith, who co-created Dishonored with Colantonio.
  
  "In most games, the player can do one thing, but that never spills over into his other abilities." To give an example: many games let you shoot guns, and just as many let you throw grenades, but it's a rare game that lets you throw a grenade and then shoot it out of the air."We've gone in the other direction" Smith say. "We offer the player powers and system that interact. Sometimes sloppily, in ways that we can't predict," he adds, in a tone that's not apologetic.
  
  
  
  *Rat Attack*
  
• The Kingdom has its own problems. Rats, emboldened by the plague roam in packs. These are rats capable of leaping onto men and tearing them apart before they hit the ground. Thugs take advantage of the chaos, looting buildings and attacking people. The guards that roam the city aren't able to keep the peace, even though they alone are able to pass freely through the rat-and-human-frying Walls of Light.
  
  Electricity is a sticking point of steampunk world, where clockwork and supernatural forces normally dominate. But Colantonio and Smith have come up with a pleasingly off-key energy source: the rich, waxy oil of whales has recently been hardnessed, kickstarting an industrial revolution. Jars of orcine blubber provide these forcefields with their energy. Knock out the jar, and they'll fail, but that leaves the rats free to roam a new area of the city.
  
  The rats are one of those interactive system Smith mentioned. Prowling the city according to their own set of rules, they'll avoid large groups of people, but if they see a lone figure, they'll attack. Rats are tied into another system: the level of Chaos prevalent in the kingdom." The way you handle yourself and accomplish your missions affect the entire kingdom", explains Smith. The more you disturb thing, the more Chaos you're contributing to the world. "We decided early on not to make it good versus evil. Since you're an assassin, we have Chaos on a scale that reflects that profession. You be tight and efficient, or a sloppy bull in a china shop".
  
  
  
  
  *Making Chaos*
  
• So, if you stealth your way through a level, leaving guards unmolested with heads attached, you'll cause no Chaos. Barge in like a big Stabby Susan, killing everyone you see and you'll generate plenty. With more Chaos in the kingdom, the value of life is cheapened. Out of fear and self interest, NPC's will make less generous decisions. The story will branch in more dystopian directions, with betrayals increasingly common. And there'll be more rats.
  
  The first demo I'm shown takes places in gray-walled room, textureless test chamber used by Arkane to try out all the combinations of player powers and enemy types. It's not designed for public consumption, but it gives and idea of Dishonored's most important network of system your assassin's abilities.
  
  Arkane's last solo-developed game (that made it to the shelves) was 2006's Dark Messiah. There's a reason that sentence was so clumsily loaded with qualifiers: the Arkane team worked with 2k Marin on Bioshock 2 since, and they've worked with Valve on The Crossing, a game that blended single player and multiplayer in it's early rounds of publicity. That project's currently "on hold", but when new employees join the company, they often organize a session.
  
  Dishonored's combat looks, at first glance, much like Dark Messiah's. There's the same tight melee, with a daggers being used to block as well as slice, and counter moves tearing open jugulars and in particularly effective cases, liberating the entire head from the shackles of its body. This was exactly what Dark Messiah got right. The "overlapping system" in Messiah involve causing fires, kicking people into spiked beds, pushing them along patches of ice you create, with your magic.
  
  To say Dishonored's system are more sophisticated although they cover the same mix of physical violence and magic is to grossly understate the fact. In his supernatural arsenal, your character has the power to possess people. It's slightly different kind of possession that most, though: your body physically enters that your victim. This means it's not just great for getting to places you might no be able to reach using the authority of your host, but also a useful way to teleport.
  
  You're not entirely safe to start a fight with your puppet, though if he dies you die. This is also true of possessing a rat. While there are passages through some areas open only to rats, remember that they're plague carriers get too close to a human, and that human will try to stamp on you. (if you're wondering how an assassin fits inside a rat, you should probably worry about possession first).
  
  You can also possess fish. Why? I'm expecting a practical answer. Maybe there'll be a fish on mark's bedside table, and you can pour your body into its gills. Maybe they're convenient hiding places while a guard passes. Or maybe the steampunk Thames supports marine life, and they're a fast travel option. Colantonio's answer is less pratical, but surprisingly, more satisfying. "We've created the system.
  
  
  
  
  *We decided early on not to make it good verus evil*
  
• If you can possess humans and rats, people would be angry if you can't possess fish". Fair enough. While entering the body of a fish might seems pointless you can't give people crazy toys and tell them to play sensibly. I'm secretly convinced this power will be useful in some way even if tit's a way that Arkane hasn't foreseen yet. That's pretty much Smith's point when he says that Dishonored isn't an "insulated" game. For example, two more powers are ability to double-jump and Blink a line of sight teleportation ability that'll be familiar to Warcraft mages and StaCraft Protoss players ( and X-men's Nightcrawler, for that matter).
  
  It lets you set down a marker and quickly teleport to that location. The double-jump ability, meanwhile, lets you get a line of sight on some locations that Arkane didn't originally mean for you to get to. Up in the chandelier, for example, where our man with the demo controller has unexpectedly taken us. "I've never seen anyone go up there before, says Colantonio. That might be a practiced bit of improvisation, but other uses are more impressive. Another of your Magical abilities is to bend time. This doesn't just let you slip through a room unnoticed you can pop into the room with time frozen, fire off three crossbow bolts, and as they leave your influence, they'll stop in mid-air. Return to cover, let time resume, and your bolts will find their trades simultaneously. Better still, you can combine time-bending with possession.
  
  Freeze time as a guard shoots, and his bullet will stop in mid-air. Possess him, and you can reposition him into the path of his own bullet. What's the benefit, apart from a likely Assisted Suicide achievement ? Well, you get to give yourself a pat on the back for being so clever. Finally, our demo-man shows off a trick that combines four powers. He summons a pack of rats, freezes time, place a proximity-triggered razor wire trap on a rat's back, then possess the rat. They presto! Your own remote controlled land mine. Combos like this are something that can only have come out in playtesting. It's difficult to know how free and easy you'll be with your magical powers in the game, however.
  
  It's controlled by "Spiritual Energy" that's replenished with a blue potion, while we're working with infinite supplies for the purposes of the demo. Raphael takes me on a short mission in the slick, colorized world. Low on fussy detail, but extremely high in personality, the gray skies and the brown brickwork are the dominant colors, but there's a subtle and compelling network of purples and oranges, and the blue of the new technology that's arrives since the whale-oil revolution. Our goal is to get hold of some information on a lawyer, Arnold Timsh. The information can be found in the Bitterleaf Alms House - which is locked. Fortunately, we're a supernatura assassin who laughs at locks.
  
  
  
  *Alms trade*
  Overhearing a conversation in the street, it's seems we're not the first to try to get in: a man with a big ideas and bigger mouth had a key, but got himself killed on the roof of nearby building. They key is still there. I didn't get to play it myself, but the way the assassin moves appears to more like first-person platforming with a strong physical sense of your cahracters's body. It's Colantonio who hauls the assassin onto a balcony, leading to a room containing one of the game's collectibles Bone Charms.
  
  You can have a limited number active at any time, and each has a different perk: more benefit from potions stronger abilities, etcetera. They're distributed randomly, so every player will have a slightly different game depending on which charms they find, and when. We get into the Beitterleaf Alms House nor by retrieving the key, but by possessing a guard who's already inside the building. When the assassin leaps out of his body, the effects of on the temporary host are seen: he bends over, cramped and vomiting, making him an easy target for kill. Colantonio reassures me that it'll be possible to complete the game without killing anyone, although he admits that it would be "a pretty hard-core playthrough".
  
  We find a safe, and discover that Timsh has been falsely certifying people as plague sufferers so that they forfeit their property to the state. Like the whale oil, which has its root in its real-world use as lamp fuel, this resonates. After all, in some countries witches by people seeking to acquire their property. As much as its looks the parallels to reality make the stories of Dishonored's world easy to by into. It's not just the story and society in the world that have been crafted to he believable: an immense amount of research and care has gone into the architecture. Viktor Antonov left Valve after directing the creation of Half-Life 2's City 17. I got a call from Arkane, "Antonov explains, and they needed me to create a world quickly, with zero fiction.
  
  I know what Arkane's strengths are I worked with them on The Crossing and we had to present something to Bethseda every quickly. There is no legacy here, this is not a sequel. It was scary, but a real opportunity to be creative. Decisions had to be made about accessibility and originality, and crazy mystical stuff. Antonov is co-directing the art with Sebastian Mitton. "It is based on the plague in London." says Mitton, "but we are not being historical. We want to avoid the cliches."
  
  
  
  
  *Best of British*
  
• I'm shown the first round of concept art sketches I mentioned earlier."London is too quickly associated with steampunk and Jack the Ripper, so we wanted to get a different aspect." What followed were research trips, photographs, and distillation of what makes up British architecture." The renaissance in England didn't come through France," says Antonov. It was a weird renaissance that went through Italy, Austria, and Germany."
  
  He describes this as "really nerdy stuff" in one breath, but in the very next sentence he's saying "we had a lot of fun with a lot of architectural work, finding out which bricks were British." There's no need to apologize for that kind of nerdiness, the benefits we're getting from that research and expertise is apparent in every screenshot. In making the world unique, liberties have been taken.
  
  The walls of the Tower of Londong have been redesigned to fit the more claustrophobic authoritarian Kingdom. Road barriers are a forbidding black with aggressive teeth, reminiscent of occupied countries in World War II. "Tall Boy" guards stride around on nine-foot-high mechanical stilts to keep them safe from rat swarms, while other, spider-like structures hold guards high on their spindly supports.
  
  
  
  
  *Model Citizens*
• If inordinate care has been take over the architecture, then there's just as much love poured into the character design. The guards and the thugs share a uniformed feel in their period garb, but because I'm mainly shown combat I don't get to see the characters whose portraits line the wall of the room I'm in. The Aristocrats look impreious but besieged. The lower classes look weather-beaten and resolute.
  
  Like everything in the world, detail levels are kept stylistically low but every line carries meaning. One character I see being designed is labeled "Granny Rags". Her role in the game isn't exaplained. Arkane isn't ready for that yet. A female artist is putting the finishing touches on her 3D model. She's taken a month to create, and she's once of the most compelling characters I've ever seen.
  
  Part brutal nursemaid, part Nosferatu, her bouffant has seen some savage backcombing, and the blood that's made it to the surface of her lips look is like it had a hard time getting there. She's a defiant, proud, and it says something about the personality of a model when a dozen hateful conversations with here spring instantly to mind.
  

For all the talent at Arkane, this is the first time the team hast build their own world from the ground up. Bioshock 2 had the strong stylings of Rapture to confrom to. Dark Messiah had the Might & Magic universe. Even Arx Fatalis, while technically original, was conceived as an Ultima game. Dishonored looks genuinely novel, fresh and oustanding, and if the system of the Kingdom, the combat, the factions and the Chaos all mesh together with the story, characters and architecture, this could be amazing.

Source - PC Gamer Magazine - November 2011 Edition.

[Kryele]

Davvero molto interessante, anche se non ho ancora letto tutto da un'occhiata veloce ho visto un paio di cose che mi han colpito in positivo, tipo il combat style tipo dark messiah, la storia del caos sia come aumenta sia gli effetti (anche se mi sembra una sparata tipo radiant ai di obli e skyrim, ma staremo a vedere) i poteri combinabili in vari tricks... Si, potrebbe essere il mio prossimo gioco preferito anche se penso che se ne parlera' nel 2013 inoltrato o dopo? Insomma c'e' una minima idea della data di uscita?

[BadFox]

mi intrippa parecchio, spero venga ben curata la parte stealth... e che non faccia la fine di "the crossing"

[Bishop76]

primo trailer: