T w e n t y S i d e d

I know everyone is going to want to talk about the emergent bugs that Josh discovers, but I’m content to let that stand on its own. Instead let’s talk about the Outsider. The Outsider says to Daud after a low chaos mission, “Surprisingly clean work for a man with so much blood on his hands. Did the Empress change you? Or do you think this will help you dodge what’s coming? You’d better hurry. You’re running out of rope.”

You know, that’s actually pretty good. Those are interesting questions. Why is this career assassin suddenly working so hard to spare lives? Like the question of “Are you the Nerevarine?” in Morrowind, it’s something the player needs to decide for themselves. It’s an introspective sort of roleplaying. I don’t know that this kind of fill-in-the-blanks-yourself approach to character could carry an entire game, but they do make for interesting little moments.

Too bad these questions came from the mouth of the God of Boring. I guess you can’t really fix that in the DLC.

Or can you? It might have been interesting to make it so the Outsider has a different face and personality to each person. Daud sees a little mischief urchin, Emily sees a crafty old woman, and Corvo sees Mr. Boring. I don’t know if that idea would “click” for the audience, or if people would just assume they were dealing with a different god.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

How many games use “Detective Vision” these days? The Arkham series is the first usage I know of, but now we also have Witcher, Tomb Raider, and Dishonored. It’s been years since I played Assassins Creed, but I seem to remember some sort of alternate vision in that game. I think one of the Far Cry games used it?

So then the developer comes to the problem: We want the player to be able to use “detective mode” (or whatever it’s called in this game) but we don’t want them to leave it on all the time.

I like the Tomb Raider solution best: It takes a second for the vision to fade in, and it gets canceled when you move. This makes it something you do to survey the space before you act, not something you toggle at will.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.