Criticism about female characters led to playable Emily in Dishonored 2

Sauce

‘That was not our intention’

They should have work on optimization and make corvo a sole protagonist and icon of dishonored series instead of making games about selecting between corvo and emily.

could have been much better.

So...they blame adding a female for the weak game?

@Ant_17: No. That's just what Ghosts is asserting.

I liked that we got to choose between Corvo and Emily. In fact, I liked Emily's character as a whole.

I knew you'd taken that outta context :D

“At first you take some criticism and you go, ‘Wait a minute,’ and then you go look and it’s like, ‘Wow, every woman in Dishonored 1 is either a servant, a prostitute, a witch, a queen or a little girl,’” Smith said. “Or a mistress. We had a mistress. That was not our intention.

“When something like that pops up, you can get defensive if you want, or you can say, ‘Guys, let me just ask this: Did we mean that?’ And the answer is no, we did not mean that.”

Smith, who was being interviewed by Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian, told her it was one of her videos examining the role of women as background characters in games that led to Arkane Studios having a conversation about Dishonored.

“We internally sat down. ... Your comment I will always remember, and I will take it to my grave,” Smith said. “It was something like, while Dishonored is a game that does many things very well, the roles that it has for women are very narrow.”

@mjorh: That is very admirable and they returned with not only 1 excellent female character but 2. :)

@jumpaction: Everytime i played this game, i just wanted to play either Bioshock or Deus Ex. I don't know why, but i never like the games.

It got an 8 here and holds an 88% on metacritic. Wouldn't call that weak.

No, it was not their intention for women in the first dishonored to have such a narrow role

‘Wow, every woman in Dishonored 1 is either a servant, a prostitute, a witch, a queen or a little girl,’” Smith said. “Or a mistress. We had a mistress. That was not our intention.

“When something like that pops up, you can get defensive if you want, or you can say, ‘Guys, let me just ask this: Did we mean that?’ And the answer is no, we did not mean that.”

Yeah, surprise surprise

@Ant_17: I love Deus Ex but to be honest, I am not too pushed on Bioshock. Worth noting that Deus Ex's original designer, Harvey Smith is responsible for the Dishonored games while System Shock designer did Bioshock.

I just don't feel personally that Bioshock encompasses the same level of freedom that Dishonored does in approaching situations. There's also significantly less roleplaying than in Bioshock than in games like System Shock and Deus Ex.

Yeah, I am more a Dishonored than a Bioshock man. I do love the settings of the Bioshock games and some of the level design is very nice but mechanically speaking and in terms of level design scope; Dishonored takes the cake for me - ditto Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I actually feel Bioshock is one of the weaker immersive sims I have played.

Its time for people like yourself to realize NO ONE gives a shit about your stupid exclusive agenda. The game is great and even Prey with its inclusion of a female is great. You are typing with your ass and its time to stop.

@jumpaction: Eh, that's cool. Maybe the 1st game felt a bit short to me so i kind of hate it for that.

@Ant_17: I definitely feel Dishonored lends itself well to multiple playthroughs (Ditto Dishonored 2). Not only in its length but the level structure, different rating systems and difficulty levels. It's a fun game to try and modify with different variables.

Dishonored 2 gives you even more variety with character selection, the ability to play without powers, difficulty levels, level selects, level restarts and, of course multiple ways of handling a given level.

Perfectly said.

Jesus these insecure kids think they are fooling people. First sign of a charachter that doesn't fit their demographic and the game is trash. Give me a freaking break.

I've actually read the article before coming here. Context is left in another galaxy, while here lies a mangled trainwreck of a thread.

This thread is bad and the OP should feel bad.

If you ask me, I think Dishonored is a FAR more impressive game than at least Human Revolution.

Why white female though? How about a Philippino African Asian huh?

I liked Corvo better. And I didn't mind how they gave you the the option to play as both. Its better then what most companies are doing which is strictly forcing you to play as a female and then asking for a pat on the back.

Or they should have canned Corvo to make Emily better

also full quote instead of taking something out of context

“At first you take some criticism and you go, ‘Wait a minute,’ and then you go look and it’s like, ‘Wow, every woman in Dishonored 1 is either a servant, a prostitute, a witch, a queen or a little girl,’” Smith said. “Or a mistress. We had a mistress. That was not our intention.

IMO problem with Dishonered wasn't how woman were used, if anything " servant, a prostitute, a witch, a queen or a little girl" lend it credibility to what was probably fantasy based off the 18th-19th century, you're main character "The Little Girl", the one we are suppose to be invested in, was terrible. She might as well have been a cinder block.

Having Chloë Grace Moretz who was hot property after Kick-Ass, arbitrarily used because she's Chloë Grace Moretz didn't help matters much either. She's regality, typically brought up with superior linguistic skills and different mannerisms to commoners, instead you have generic American girl haphazardly reading lines with the emotive skill of Stephen Hawkings.

Instead of making Xena Warrior princess, write better characters.

I'm happy to see everyone in this thread caught on to snipers bullshit early.

I thought the game was built for Emily and they added the ability to play as Corvo to calm whiny f*cks like OP.

@nintendoboy16:

I enjoyed both Dishonored games more than either of the new Dues Ex games, and it isn't even close. Dishonored has scratched my itch for stealth/assassin games that used to be filled by the AC series pre-AC3. Personally I played Emily low chaos and fully intend to pick up the expansion.

I just don't fucking understand the GG mentality. I play a straight, white, middle-class guy every day of the week, it's kinda refreshing to jump into other perspectives IMO. This shit has started infecting the sci-fi community too, which is really disheartening IMO.

Granted. I only like Deus Ex 1st 2 levels.

Both characters are paper thin as hell, and it doesn't help that the studio's writing team is suspect at best. Luckily not exactly what I play Dishonored (or most video games) for, as the gameplay had some great moments. I still think the game lacks the proper depth of a stealth, it's more of a complex game with redundancies than a game of depth, but it's still plenty enjoyable. The level design genuinely has some cool ass moments, and it's not a by the numbers game for this current era of games either.

I get that the port wasn't the best thing ever, as it did run weird, but I'm also not agianst lowering my fucking graphics settings for a game that plays well. I care more about my framerate being 60, and the resolution being native to my monitor as far as all the tech shit.

I bet the next Doom's protagonist will be a female... it's like a trend.

I really liked playing as both Emily and Corvo. It didn't feel as a last minute addition as it feels in say AC Syndicate or COD WW2.

ITT: Ghosts hidden agenda.... Welllll hidden ? Not so much.

#YuckFemales

@jg4xchamp: The last beta patch fixed the optimization problems.

I was forced to play with textures on medium at launch because otherwise the game ran like crap for me. Game still looked mindblowing.

Yesterday I tried out the last beta patch, turned everything on max, and honestly didn't notice much of a difference. Tried comparing th two and saw no difference between medium and max textures.

Part of it was Dishonoreds crap optimization. Part of it was people PLAIN refusing to lower their settings.

Glad they added Emily. Corvo is a crappy character and his voice acting was atrocious

The vast majority of the times there isn't a difference besides massive hits to the framerate. That's why I laugh at people touting "Ultra" as some magical upgrade in visual fidelity when its not. Its possibly the most useless preset in a game.

OMG, females in gaming! The humanity! Grow up...

The most badass fps protagonist is Samus and she laughs at girly men like the doom guy

As someone who always used to max his games (speaking about a decade ago) I just don't see the use anymore.

Max shadows: great performance hit and you can't even tell the difference from high shadows.

Anti aliasing: massive performance hit and sometimes I can't even tell the difference in the middle of gameplay.

Bloom, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, Lens flares: bullshit features

Now there are many graphical features that do cause for a game to look way nicer, but so many features that just eat away performance that give nothing in return.

Honestly I thought the voice actor for The Outsider was way worse in Dishonored 2.

Glad I'm going to kill him in the next DLC >:D

@R4gn4r0k: unless they patched again in May, no, it just made them barely competent. Still runs poor on systems that should be able to run it flawlessly.

@R4gn4r0k: I never understood the outrage. I thought he was fine. I didn't even notice the voice was different until people pointed it out and I played through the first game like a month before Dishonored 2

They patched it again in June.

I checked the latest beta patch yesterday and the optimization is perfect now.

Maxed out on GTX970, runs fine.

I'm not outraged :p

I just think the original performance was delivered way better than the second actor did.

I enjoyed playing as Emily and enjoyed her powers so works for me.

@R4gn4r0k: well time to put that shit back in my steam wishlist then.

Fair enough. I can't stand Anita Sarkeesian though.

My first playthrough was with Corvo because as Harvey Smith said it gives you the nostalgic experience. Emily's addition is welcome though as it adds replayability to the game. I'm actually downloading Dishonored 2 again at the moment for my Emily playthrough.

My first playthrough was with Emily, because I was all for seeing the new powers (the trailers had my hyped !)

I really enjoyed some of her powers, but on the other hand missed some of Corvo's powers too.

I finished the game twice with Emily and one time with Corvo. I'm definitely going to finish the game a few more times :p

The game definitely offers great replayability. Playing with Emily, Corvo, with either of them without powers, New Game+, high and low chaos, lethal or non-lethal. I usually play games only once and then move on to something new but I just have to get back to Dishonored 2. :D

Dishonored 2 is a great game. Wtf you're talking about?

That whole thing even makes me angrier... f*ckin Anita Sarkeesian messin up with game design... They're basically saying "feminists didnt like our original vision so we changed it", but with a more politicaly correct speech...

I still need to play this, but I also still need to replay the Definitive Edition I picked up a while back. I remember almost nothing from the first game so I'll have to revisit it. Anyhow, so you can pick who you play as in the game? Is it the same game regardless who you play as, or is the story and how it plays different depending on which character you use?

It's pretty much the same game and story. What changes is the protagonist's commentary on the world around him/her, how other people talk to you and of course the different powers Corvo and Emily have with which you can tackle the missions.

Yeah same here, plus all the different routes you can take through a level... :D

I saw some interviews with Harvey Smith recently, and he said: yeah we included this fuction now in Dishonored 2 that you can execute someone through a window. And I hadn't even seen that fuction in my three playthroughs of Dishonored 2 :P

That's pretty cool, I'll be sure to check it out.