How Dishonored could make player expressivity better!

Hello all.

Dishonored and it's sequel are well developed and well built games for being able to play the way the player wants. The creaters have done a very good job at letting the player express themselves and the tools to build you skill in doing so. Dishonored also has a following of the trick shot player base that like doing weird, crazy, difficult, obscure, and impressive shots/kills in games, and Dishonoroed is a great game for this.

Although Dishonored is very well built to have it play the way you want, use the moves you want, be good or evil, but where it is strong on these factors it falls short on a few others when it comes to game play. When you play Dishonored the character holds their sword in the right hand and everything else in the left hand. This is a restriction to game play. With both your powers, equipment and gadgets being in the left hand it can be hard to chain or pull off certain tasks with out having to open the quick access wheel. It is understandable why powers can only be used with the left hand because that is where the outsiders mark is that grants you these powers.

It would be nice to equip other weapons and gadgets in the right hand instead of just the sword. If you were to do a nonleathal play through and be stealthy you really don't need the sword because your not killing anyone or fighting. The times the sword would be need is when your fighting off rats, bloodflies, or breaking stuff. It would be nice to be able to have blink equipped in the left hand and a rewire tool or stun trap in the right. This would allow you to blink into a position that lets you do something effective and then blink out really fast with out opening up a quick access wheel or using the directional buttons to quickly select a new item for the left hand. With the quick access wheel open time does NOT STOP but only slow down. This can leave you in a position of vulnerability where you will get hit , shot, killed by an arc pylon, or have a higher chance of being detected. By having the right hand equip more than just the sword it would also allow the trick shot or skilled shot communities to try and do new things and pull off even crazier things.

This would also allow for a more stealthy interaction, the NPCs would react different than if you were to walk in holding a sword and your other hand is a power, which the NPCs would perceive as nothing. Now say you had blink in one hand and the heart in the other or left it empty if possible, leaving you with just the power in the left hand. In later games in the franchise we may acquire more equipment that wont look like a object to do harm and this will let you go about some situations differently. You wont have to have the sword out and NPCs wont feel threatened.

Now keep in mind that there would be need to have a quick access wheel for the right hand now but that can be solved by using a toggle in the already used quick access wheel. Also you would want a button to quickly switch to your sword for those fast situations where your being attacked and need to defend or attack. The block button can be used as this toggle. If the sword is not equipped you could tap the block button to do a very fast switch to the sword. If you hold it then you would draw the sword into a parry and then block stance. If you press block and then attack in a quick succession you would draw the sword into a quick draw slash at what ever is in from of you. Lastly if you tap block and hold attack it would draw the sword into the held back position to stab forward upon releasing the button.

The other thing is the slide mechanic. Now this may be a nit pick for me because of an animation background that I have but I would like to have better animations that work off of the slide. If you slide into a NPC and use an attack to assassinate him/her it would be nice to see certain animation that deal with the slide and being low to the ground other than standing up into the normal assassinations. This would make it more fun to slide in to assassinate someone due to it being more unique, say you slide by and stab a NPC in the stomach or slide by chopping a leg off to then spin around to stab the NPC through the torso. This would give the slide a bit more flavour and make it more fun to use

Now I don't want people to think that I'm saying Dishonored does a bad job about player expresivity, because Dishonored actually does an amazing job. I'm trying to point out that there is more that they can add onto an already amazingly built game to give players a bit more freedom to do as they please. This and maybe some power balancing. (Could be that I'm not very good at the game but I feel like Corvo's powers are better built to be more of a lethal play through while Emily's are better for stealth.)

I hope you all enjoyed reading and that this gives you something to think about.

Until the next article, have a wonderful gameing session!

#Dishonored #gamplay #stealth #Balancing #Mechanic #Design