If you’ve been worried that Dishonored 2 won’t feature the same crazy, system-based gameplay that made the original feel special, you may be able to breathe a sigh of relief. Game director Harvey Smith told OXM its playtesters are already using the game’s new abilities in ways that hadn’t been predicted. It’s a sign, he claimed, that the sequel will support the same creative problem-solving — and inspire the same level of adoration from fans — as the original.
“We already have some startling ways that people have combined them that have shocked us,” Smith said, according to GamesRadar. “This is the emergent gameplay thing that we all love.”
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The first Dishonored offered players access to large environments and provided a set of supernatural abilities that allowed them to infiltrate and assassinate their targets in many different ways. In an early level of the original, for example, players could infiltrate a brothel by teleporting up to an open window, or possessing a fish and swimming through a sewer grate to access the basement. Long after the game’s release, players were still playing with the systems related to protagonist Corvo’s powers, finding new and increasingly inventive ways to stalk and dispatch enemies.
What took players weeks and months with the original is already happening with Dishonored 2 before the game has seen the light of day. Smith explained that, for example, one tester playing as new protagonist Emily Keldwin combined the “Domino” skill, which allows players to link and kill a group of enemies by assassinating any one of them, and a Doppelganger ability, which creates a clone intended to be used as a distraction. Rather than distracting, then killing the guards, the tester linked the enemies to her clone, then assassinated it.
“We had no idea this was possible, we never planned this,”Smith said. “It’s just one of those systemic game mechanic interactions that clever, creative players figure out as they start to experiment.”
Dishonored 2 is on track to launch November 11. In the meantime, you can expect to hear a lot more about the game at E3 later this month.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.