As of this writing, I'm sitting at 41 of 80 achievements completed in Dishonored. I can tell you already that it's going to be a long and very... unpleasant, shall we say... breakdown, once I finally finish. That may not be for some time, however. It all depends on a number of things going my way and, as anyone who's ever tried to perfect or speed run the game could tell you, the RNG in Dishonored does not like you. What's the holdup? Well, where do I begin?
I beat both Daud DLCs finally. The second is better made than the first, but both are incredibly sub-par in comparison to Corvo's campaign. I fully understand that I am in the minority when it comes to that line of thought. The Knife of Dunwall (the DLC, not Daud) has very poorly constructed levels, for one thing. I'm not entirely sure what the developers were even going for with Daud. His Blink pauses time as long as he's standing still. It's Baby's First Stealth Game mechanics. But then it gives you these buildings with multiple floors and very cramped quarters, completely choked with dudes. From my perspective - someone who will play the Rogue or the Thief when given the chance - these levels were not designed with stealth in mind. At all.
The most apparent level in that regard is the final one in Knife of Dunwall. You're revisiting Daud's hideout. That's the one where you can either swipe Daud's key or assassinate him as Corvo. It's clogged with Overseers and music box guys. The music box guys block your Mystical Emo-Dude Powers. This wouldn't be too bad if the level wasn't a half-destroyed building filled to bursting with guys you won't be able to see in most cases. You have to rescue four of Daud's men during the second part of the stage. I'm not sure how the final bit plays out, as I was thoroughly unable to do Low Chaos. Try as I might, everything just went pear-shaped and so I ran with it. I killed more guys in that mission that I have in 2 full playthroughs of the main campaign, no joke.
I got Low Chaos very easily in Brigmore Witches, on the other hand. And while the levels are a little more lenient in regards to slipping through undetected, I'm still puzzled at how I'm going to do certain things. I'll say this - priority 1 is going to be Time Stop. I have to get it as early as humanly possible. The third stage of Dunwall and the second of Brigmore (hell, the third's pretty bad too, but I was able to choke/dart/Blink dudes with little issue) are going to be a nightmare if I can't.
But that's the DLC, and it'll be awhile before I return to it. Let me talk about the main reason I'm writing this up. Partly it's to vent, because I just wasted a little over an hour with nothing to show for it. I did get through Coldridge without being spotted, and I remembered to make a save there specifically so I never have to watch the intro sequence again. It got me an achievement, and that's likely to be the last one I get for a good while.
I'm trying for a number of things this playthrough. Mostly, I'd like to end up with Clean Hands (complete the game without killing anyone), Shadow (complete the game without alerting anyone), and Ghost (complete all missions without killing or alerting anyone. Seems redundant but okay).
Surgical, the achievement for getting from the prologue through Kaldwin's Bridge (roughly the halfway point) without killing anyone will come as I work on those others.
Holy hell, is High Overseer Campbell a pain in the ass. I sounded 2 alarms and I'm not entirely sure how. If it wasn't from spilling the wine glasses, then I'm baffled as to when it occurred. But I spilled them and so Campbell went with Curnow down to his Secret Room of Music and Trash. This involves going down a squared, spiraling staircase that typically has two guards. One that paths up and down the stairs, and one that paths in, looks through the keyhole of the door that Campbell goes through, and then goes off into a different room.
So you avoid those two guys, slip through the door (and close it behind you so peephole guy doesn't get suspicious) and then things get fun. You have to wait until Campbell opens the secret door to his back room (because there's a Sokolov painting in there, and collecting those is its own achievement), choke out Curnow, then Sleep Dart Campbell. Go in, grab the loot you want, and then buckle yourself in because it's a long haul from that point forward.
See, you have two goals here - to transport Curnow's unconscious body somewhere safe (read: A Dumpster) and to stick Campbell in the torture room's chair (and optionally Brand him). So you grab Campbell's body and go back upstairs to the peephole door. Trigger Dark Vision to see where the guards are, then try your damnedest to slip past (while closing the door again) and back upstairs, and maneuver through the rafters until you reach the room in question. ...Which does not have a door on one side. Strap Campbell in and Brand him or not. Either way, back into the rafters, back across the level, back down that spiral staircase, back through the peephole door, and hey it's Curnow.
Back up the stairs and through the peephole door. Back up the spiral stairs and through the rafters to the room where I spilled the wine glasses, outside onto the ledge, along the building, and down to street level where two guards path to chuck the idiot into his Safety Dumpster. Then you have two options, neither of which are any good.
Option A) Go through the door near the dumpster that leads back to the first part of the stage, where Samuel the Boatman is waiting. This is difficult because it spits you into a back alley with nothing high to Blink onto, just behind a series of guards that are harassing some civilians. One has his back to you and, at least judging from Dark Vision, one or two more guys down the little alley staircase. No idea how to get past them. So for the next time I get to do Option B) Going back up into the building, back down the spiral staircase, past the patrolling guards, and through a door one wall away from the peephole door!
Going through that exit puts you in a more advantageous rooftop position and you can Blink your way to Sam unmolested. It's an extra 5 to 15 minutes, because unless you've upgraded Blink's range, then you're not going to get back up onto the building from the dumpster you lob Curnow into.
The obvious solution is to stop trying for multiple challenging achievements at once, but I don't want to replay the game a dozen times to get everything, ya know? I'll need a High Chaos ending run, and that's the one I'll get all the achievements for killing dudes with gadgets and using Stop Time to let a guard shoot at me, Possess him, then run him into his own bullet. Mostly Flesh and Steel, an achievement for never purchasing any Powers, will be its own run.
It's aggravating in a way that simply won't make sense to anyone who doesn't achievement hunt, I don't think. It's a level of frustration you'll never see just playing through the game like a normal person would. There are guides out there, but I'm trying to refrain from doing that. At least until Dunwall City Trials, which is going to do bad things to my mental condition. Not really a good time for that to happen, to be perfectly honest.
I'm calling it right now: Void Star will be the final achievement I get in Dishonored. That's for completing all Normal and Expert Challenges with a 3-star rating.
There's that word again: Challenges. And these Challenges, as with all Challenges, will be what I mop up last and what will likely cause the most anger out of everything. I'm just over halfway done, but I've got most of the mountain ahead of me. I've just climbed a small hill to get to that mountain. And at the top is a flag. The flag has a picture of a middle finger and it's signed by everyone involved with Dunwall City Trials being made.
Later today I'll start work on High Overseer Campbell again. Maybe I'll just accept the fact that playing the whole game just for one achievement will be faster than being stymied for hours on what should be simple tasks. I've hit the point in the game where I need to rearrange my doc on this game by runs instead of by category, just to sort out what all I can get done per run.
I'm sure I've said it before, and I'll openly say it again: Do not get into achievement/trophy hunting. It is bad for your mental health. And probably your physical health, as well. If you have OCD, you really should not get into it. It's a dangerous slope and the only thing you get out of it is the satisfaction that you beat the game, the game did not beat you. Very rarely is there a sense of joy at completing a game. Often there isn't even a sense of accomplishment. You're most certainly justifying the money you've spent, but is that always a good thing?
In the end, it all boils down to what type of life you have and if you need a way to extend a game out a little further. I've got an entire mountain range to cross here, and I have no idea what the other side looks like. If you have to do this as a pasttime, pace yourself. It's good to have two games to work on at once, so you don't fry yourself just beating your head against a wall over and over. Any more than that and you're just asking for trouble.
There's fun to be had in Dishonored. I know. I've had it! But this is not the part that is fun. This is the part that the struggle begins at. From this point to the time the 80th pops, it's work, and it isn't going to accomplish itself. That is what achievement hunting is, at its core. Work. I often equated raiding in WoW to having a second job. You go in for a set number of hours a week, you deal with complete assholes you'd never be caught dead with outside of the time you had to spend together, and you get absolutely no sense of accomplishment out of it, because your coworkers don't know how to do anything correctly.
Someone will always move when Flame Wreath is cast and the raid blows up. I'm not sure what that had to do with Dishonored, but it's 5:30AM and I'm trying to write a post about achievements. Making sense stopped a long time ago.
If I had to put an ETA on a breakdown article, I'd say two weeks? Give or take? Again, it's mostly dependent on how lucky I get in regards to the AI. I'll spend some time watching other people do Low Chaos/Clean Hands runs on both the base game and the DLC, and I'll most definitely watch people do Dunwall City Trials just so I have an optimal path set out. I work best on a tight deadline, after all. It's time to buckle down and get started.
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