Jerykk wrote on Aug 28, 2011, 19:36:
I played through the game on 'hard' with zero contact with any body who didn't need to be 'neutralized' as per the objectives.
I was surprised when on my next playthrough, I was getting Ghost even though I was knocking people out.
Yeah, their definition of ghosting is a bit loose. It just means that you can't be seen. You can still neutralize every enemy you encounter. While it's cool that you can still genuinely ghost your way through the game, the way XP is rewarded means that doing so will put you at a disadvantage. If you want to get the most XP, there's only one route to go: the non-lethal takedown hacker. Perform non-lethal takedowns on every enemy and hack everything you see, even if you already know the password or have found another way through. They really should have just retained DX's XP system, where you only get rewarded for completing objectives and finding secret areas. That way, there is no inherent benefit to any one playstyle and people can play the way they want without fear of losing out on XP.
Their definition of ghost confused me too. So I did the first mission in Detroit both ways. First, never seen, never alerted, never touched anybody. There was one part where a guard is standing on a balcony overlooking a room that was a bit dicey but other than that it wasn't that hard to do. Then I replayed it knocking out every single guard in the game (but still not being "seen") and ended up with a couple thousand more XP at the end (some of that was finding things I'd missed the first time though), way more ammo and way more money to buy Praxis. And I still got the ghost bonus.
I keep the highlighting on and use the third person cover system and don't mind the regenerating health one bit. All things I bitched and moaned about. For this game it works. The world is so much more detailed than the original DX that I can't imagine playing it without the highlighting (hated it Thief 3 though). But I'd be interested to hear others chime in on that.