#it feels like dishonored in that its so endlessly creative & unique

[marshmallsy]

Some things from Prey (2017) that make me go absolutely insane (based off my recent twt ramblings)

the fact that the player character is asian. it’s not a choice. the default isn’t a white guy. you literally are a mixed-race asian person & that’s IT.

(and also like yeah, smth smth hints of yellow peril whenever the only asian rep we get also comes with scifi futuristic evil unethical-experimenting tech corporations, but WHATEVER, it still made me extremely happy to see so much diversity & representation in a cool rpg)

the fact that mikhaila’s gender doesn’t change so i, a queer half-asian woman, found myself playing a canonically queer half-asian woman. the joy was real.

the WORK put in by devs to make TALOS I genuinely feel like a place people worked and lived in. the ttrpg sessions in the rec room. the whiteboards scrawled with both scifi mumbo-jumbo & dumb jokes from bored scientists goofing around. reminders of garbage days & food in the fridge. mr. glooey mcglooface. the entire existence of the huntress boltcaster being mostly used to annoy coworkers & play silly games.

on the subject of the people, how utterly BATSHIT it is that every single corpse has a name & you can theoretically track every single person down. that they all have full names, their own personalities, that you can read emails or listen to audiologs of them interacting w/ each other, asking each other out on dates, arguing, sharing secrets, making plans with friends. and with very few exceptions, you find them all already dead or brainwashed or turned into phantoms. the premise makes me go feral every single time and I can’t get enough of it.

the fact that this game in general really rewards you for exploration & also requires it on some level, given that by exploring you can find notes/clues to get into safes or locked computers, or keycards to access other areas of the map.

danielle sho and abigail foy. danielle’s last actions being to help you find her lover’s killer before she suffocates out in space. need i say more.

ok, this one really makes me go wild. emmanuel mendez. a single audiolog, a single email, in a dangerous room you technically don’t even have to go in. 

“let’s say you discovered something dangerous. something everyone ought to know about.”

“i’d go out to that billboard and flash it big as vegas on the screen.”

again. this is optional. it’s not even technically a sidequest. you don’t EVER have to do this.

but you can. you can go out into space and fly yourself out to the giant billboards that orbit the station. you can find emmanuel’s corpse and the half-finished data he risked his life trying to transfer. you can choose to finish the upload.

ESCAPE PODS ARE FAKE

and for the rest of the game you see that flashing on the billboards every time you look out a window.

a top-of-the-line space station. conducting secret unethical experiments on human prisoners and aliens. and they sabotaged the escape pods.

god this game is good.

[greensaplinggrace]

What makes Dishonored your favorite game?

The biggest thing for me was the lore and the atmosphere. No game I've played has ever had such a well-incorporated feel and sense of immersion to it like Dishonored except for Bishock 1, which is incidentally my second favorite game of all time lol. The lore is brilliant, the world is creative, the atmosphere is spectacular, the soundtrack is to die for, and it taught me a lot about how to create a city and a world and a system of myths and religion and tales and perspectives.

The way it's set in a steampunk/clockpunk/fantasy world where whaling is the primary source of energy is brilliant. The books and papers and notes you can read throughout the game are endlessly fascinating, and the different perspectives you come across in writing on certain characters throughout is especially interesting to me. Granny Rags is amazing, Slackjaw is great, the Loyalists were quite a unique set of allies, and Daud is probably my favorite antagonist of all time.

The stealth and magic system is the only one of its kind I've ever come across, and literally no other game compares in quality to stealth missions and chaos systems and gameplay except maybe Assassin's Creed, and that depends on which game we're talking about. After playing Dishonored I legitimately scoured the internet for games like it that had good stealth/magic and nothing else was as good.

Also, I love the exploration of classism and the critiques on society. The main antagonist is the game is vile, and the reveal for why he did what he did will always stick with me. The Boyle party is my favorite part of the game despite my beef with the low honor choice. Largely because of a) the aesthetic, which is breathtaking throughout the entire game but especially on this mission, b) the boyle sisters themselves, who are very complex and who you can learn a great deal about through exploring their home before even meeting them, and c) the fact that even in this rich person's mansion, as all these wealthy and privileged people dine on a vast amount of food making small talk while the rest of the city starves and dies and bodies pile like mountains in the flooded district, there is still blood on the floor.

The disconnect when hearing the rich wonder why they're also dying to the plague is well done, too. The fact that they never even considered they would be vulnerable because they judge the lower classes so much.

The heart, which is probably the greatest part of the game, spilling secrets and giving you knowledge. A horrifying companion that tells you everything about the world you're in. It's such a great way to incorporate more lore as well as highlight the complex lives of the characters you're surrounded by. Even a random man wandering the street has a story the heart will tell you. I like that. I like how even the side characters feel fleshed out. There's no part of that world or that city that doesn't have a purpose. There's no piece of that game that feels worthless. You point the heart not even at a person but at a place and it will tell you the secrets of the world. That's the type of worldbuilding I admire. That's the type of lore that means something to me.

The religion is cool. The Outsider is interesting. The void as a concept is genius and the way its explored is so incredibly compelling. I love the way magic and religion are tied together. I enjoy the way cultism is explored. I ADORE the abbey and the religious corruption and how tied it is with the government. Just the entire setup of the government/accepted religion/'heretical' religion is really great.

There are dozens of ways to complete the missions and explore the city. Playing the game without powers is fun af. You are a rat bastard. I love the rats in this game. I love the powers in this game. You can have charms made out of bones and you can find shrines to the outsider and you can teleport in front of your allies without them even going "hey! why does this dude have a strange heretical marking on his hand?!" The powers are fun, the void is fun, the dynamics of the game are fun. It's just fun. I mean, maybe a bit too easy now, imo. I have to set it on very hard and make sure its basically unbeatable to really have a challenge anymore.

Corvo as a character seems dull at first when you don't get much of his story in the first game, but his potential and the pieces of his history that are dropped occasionally by npcs and his relationship with emily make him pretty fucking stellar, imo. You learn more about him and his relationships with people as the game progresses. The way the world changes is so interesting.

Like idk, I could go on but this is already enough of a ramble. It's just... really good. It was also the game that got me back into videogames. I had a massive gaming slump for about five years where nothing interested me. I gave Dishonored a try and loved it so so much I started playing other games again. Luckily I then played Bioshock 1, and that passion didn't immediately die. So really it just holds a sentimental place in my heart as well. Also I majorly shipped the Corvo/Jessamine/Daud OT3 you guys have no idea.

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