“Throw a grenade in the middle and post the results,”

November 29, 2016 6:43 PM

Diving Into One Dishonored 2 Player's Obsession With “Explosive Orgies” [PC Gamer] “Videogames aren't just for entertainment, they are also the foundation for scientific research. For years players have been asking questions like "How many tanks does it take to stop the train in GTA 5?" [YouTube] or "How many people can I lure into a pool of electrified water?" [YouTube] You know, the difficult inquiries that really further us as a species. But sometimes science goes too far, as might be the case with one player and their obsession with "explosive orgies." What started as a little joke has spiralled into a madness to test the limits of what Dishonored 2's physics engine can handle. His name is 'Fattydude66' and he originally posted a screenshot to Reddit entitled "Is this one of the orgies the Duke loves so much?" It was a morbid jab at Luca Abele, the Duke of Serkonos, an oppressive ruler who offhandedly mentions a certain affinity for orgies during Dishonored 2's story. Fattydude66 was so committed to his joke that he spent an hour piling up 80 unconscious bodies, four dead ones, and two wolfhound. But that's where things got a wee bit dark. [.gif]”
posted by Fizz (23 comments total)

Orgy E X P L O S I O N 2 The Second... Coming [YouTube]
Orgy E X P L O S I O N 3 [YouTube]
posted by Fizz at 6:48 PM on November 29, 2016

"Everywhere I looked, there were piles of bodies. And then the explosion struck!"
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:50 PM on November 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I like this. I only wish I could play the fucking thing on my PC. But from all the reviews [VG24/7] I've read, it's not worth picking up unless you have a console. Apparently a patch has been released that fixes some of the problems facing this terrible port. As much as I want to play, I'm going to hold off until a sale hits Steam. Maybe next summer.

Also, yay for explosions.
posted by Fizz at 6:52 PM on November 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

That '.gif' link in the FPP is actually a webm file. In case you're using a browser that refuses to open it.
posted by ardgedee at 6:59 PM on November 29, 2016

Apologies if I mislabeled that.
posted by Fizz at 7:00 PM on November 29, 2016

yeah i like to choke out lots of guards and then arrange them in amusing tableaux vivantes with empty bottles all around them like they fell asleep at a party in the hopes it will make easily panicked civilians less terrified, but it never works so i end up grenading them all instead
posted by poffin boffin at 7:02 PM on November 29, 2016 [12 favorites]

Of course the train didn't stop. It's on rails.
posted by sanedragon at 7:13 PM on November 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

This sort of chicanery is also possible in Hitman, which has the added advantage of being playable on the personal computer.

As for Dishonored 2, I've given up on it until next year and I'm currently playing Volume, which is basically MGS VR missions and is relaxing stealth puzzle fun.
posted by selfnoise at 7:34 PM on November 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Man, I looooooove Dishonored 2. I'm not going to spoil anything, but about halfway through, 2 levels have been some of the most inventive FPS experiences I've ever had. It takes the already polished mechanics of the first game, and does a lot with them.

I have to appreciate the single mindedness that the guy in the FPP seems to have for bathing in carnage. I always feel bad whenever I have to kill a guard, especially when I then find out some personal detail about them that the devs left in a note. Sorry I killed your husband/wife and doomed your family to a Karnaka poorhouse, guard-wife-husband.
posted by codacorolla at 7:54 PM on November 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

realizing that the heart will tell me who is good and who is bad was a realization my high chaos murderin ass didn't need
posted by poffin boffin at 8:07 PM on November 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm crossing my fingers that someone in the modding scene will add some of the great John Deere farming implements from Farming Simulator 2017 to really make these kinds of scenes complete.
posted by mrdaneri at 8:35 PM on November 29, 2016

I'm letting Emily be my low chaos goody-two-chokes, and Corvo is going to be my avatar of raw, stabby death.
posted by codacorolla at 8:44 PM on November 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

all of emily's high chaos voice lines sound like me irl playing overwatch
posted by poffin boffin at 9:04 PM on November 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

For some reason, I got really into a similar activity in the game Destroy All Humans! for Playstation 2. You play a little green alien running around a 1950s town, harvesting brains and fighting off cops/men in black/etc. The more active you are and the more you alarm the townspeople, the more cops and agents start coming after you. Eventually you develop telekinesis and you can levitate cars and tanks and stuff.

The game had some pretty entertainingly craptacular ragdoll physics, and the graphics engine of the Playstation 2 couldn't really handle it when you got more than 10 or 15 enemies all on screen at the same time. My goal was to get as many of them as possible driving cars to the scene, firing weapons, running after you, whatever. You could get a ton of cop cars racing towards you and turn it into a demolition derby, levitating cars, dropping them on people, etc. The framerates would start to stutter, the action would bog way way down, eventually the physics would start to break down and you'd get enemies stuck halfway in the ground, or through car doors, whatever. My goal was to get the computation as complex as possible, and a few times I managed to freeze the game up entirely.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:07 PM on November 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

See also: Wow, Dishonored 2 sure does have a lot of ways to kill this one guy Some more fun with freezing time and looking at crazy graphics at the end of that long video linked from within.
posted by NikitaNikita at 12:52 AM on November 30, 2016

someone in the modding scene will add some of the great John Deere farming implements from Farming Simulator 2017

Coming Sneak Peek at E3 the next gen dynamic sim extravaganza: Bodies & Backhoes.
posted by sammyo at 4:10 AM on November 30, 2016

Oh, hey, is the the impromptu FanFare thread for Dishonored 2? Because I just beat it last night, but watching this makes me a little nostalgic for playing as Corvo, whose ability to stop time creates some of the most absurd gallows humor I've ever seen in a game. *sigh* Back I go for a high-chaos run. The level with the time machine is going to be the most blatantly unfair bloodbath in the history of FPS's.
posted by Mayor West at 5:24 AM on November 30, 2016

I can't (yet) bring myself to watch the Dishonored clips, too gross-sounding...

but the GTAV tanks one is hilarious, SO MANY TANKS littering the riverbed. it seems the train is the true vehicle of destruction that you apparently really-really need to be driving in GTA, it will crush all opposition. well, as long as they are standing on traintracks somewhere, and aren't wielding sticky bombs?

and it's taking all of my willpower to not keep re-watching the Hitman one all day long. there are just so many aspects of genius and crudeness, brilliant and lowbrow commentary, spoken humor and slapstick, all at the same time - it's nearly perfect.
posted by dorian at 8:55 AM on November 30, 2016

Psi-Ops was my first great ragdoll game. A game in which you get telekinetic powers and no pesky morality system to stop you from using them to their glorious extent. Good times.

I have a hard time playing bad guys in rpgs. I'm playing Emily and mostly low chaos, but that first scene escaping the palace, I killed a lot of guys, because they just tried to kill me, man.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:46 AM on November 30, 2016

my favorite sports video game was (wait for it) Dark Souls

ragdoll touch football in the Parish with dead hollows.

crank some Frankie Valli to set the mood, good times
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:51 AM on November 30, 2016

sans doute I've seen it in something earlier, but my most vivid memory of ragdoll physics is HL2:E1 - you know, where Dog stuffs Gordon and Alyx into a car and tosses it over into the Citadel in City 17 - where the Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator (*cough*PortalGun*cough*) !!!goes all nuts!!! and not only can you pull orbs out of the StarTrekPlasmaConduits and mow entire squads of dudes down with said orbs, but also using said gun to pick up resulting Combine carpses and fire said carpses into oncoming traffic. man, now I need to go re-play that for several hours.
posted by dorian at 10:53 AM on November 30, 2016

As a person who has loved FPSes since the release of Wolfenstein 3D and who still plays them to this day, I still at times get weirded out by how much technical progress has been driven by a specific desire for more accurate* murder simulation. The explosions video manages to be both impressive and also disturbing in a way that I'm not sure the guy creating it is reflecting upon.

* Or accurate-ish. Often ragdoll-y in ways that are impressive but not really what would happen in real life.
posted by tocts at 11:29 AM on November 30, 2016

FWIW I've been running this on my mid-range gaming PC (3 year old graphics card etc) and it's totally fine on max settings. Sometimes the frame rate drops a little on large scenes (mainly outdoor cityscapes and such), but I haven't had any problems with combat, explosions or with lots of enemies on screen. Obviously results vary dramatically when it comes to PC gaming, but I'm totally satisfied.
posted by skintension at 3:00 PM on November 30, 2016