Dishonored (Review)

You’re crouched on a rooftop and look down on the guards patrolling the area. You have a mission. You have a target. Those men below you are directly in your way… how you decide to get past them? The choice is yours. Will you drop down and silently slit the throats of the unwitting muscle men? Will you use your supernatural abilities and flit across the skyline never once arousing suspicion? Or will you hurtle a grenade as a distraction and wreak havoc with crossbow bolts and bullets? You take one last look at the clear night sky above you and smile. You are an assassin… and you are in complete and utter control.

Dishonored, released in 2012 and published by Bethesda Softworks, is an action-adventure stealth game developed by Arkane Studios. You assume the role of ‘dishonored’ bodyguard Corvo Attano. Framed for the murder of the Empress you were sworn to protect, you are quickly thrust into a story of politics, betrayal, class factions and revenge. Played in a first-person perspective, you are essentially tasked with assassinating key targets across 9 missions and you can play the game however you so choose: all stealth or guns blazing. The game itself is visually stunning, while close up the textures may appear bland and less polished than a linear title that can focus on such minutiae, Dishonored is a game that is all about the bigger picture. With an art-style that is cleverly designed to have you sit back and let it all sink in, the game looks eerily and miraculously like an oil painting in motion. There are moments as you traverse the levels where you will look down at the pathways available to you, and as they all look as enticing as each other, the details of the game are evident in realizing that every option you wish to take has been made available to you to the same excellent pedigree of the last.

The backdrop of the intriguing and often surprising story is the even more intriguing and surprising city of Dunwall. A victorian-era meets steampunk locale, Dunwall is a truly unique world that for the entire time I was playing I never once questioned it as it came to life around me. The place is infested with a rat-born plague that has meant that the once vibrant port-city has become grimy and decayed. You can see glimmers of what once would have made the place shine, but the plague has meant cordoning off the poor and helpless as they are overcome with sickness. What were once common civilians are now known as ‘weepers’, one of the many enemies you will come across in the game, and you will often feel compelled to simply put them out of their misery as they wander, blinded by their tears of blood, wailing in pain and confusion. The noblemen and women of the city are naïve of the suffering around them, as you will at one point find yourself attending a noblewoman’s party and you can discern how the other half live in their ivory tower. You can pass judgment as you wish, sparing those who you pity, and killing those who offend you. As Corvo, a stoic and silent protagonist, you may think yourself above the needs and wants of the city, but in fact your actions have a much greater influence than you may initially realize: A higher body count will mean more rats will swarm the streets and a darker tone will be set for almost all of the characters you will come into contact with throughout the game. The games conclusion will also be considerably darker if you choose to be ruthless in your actions; it is in fact possible to complete the entire game without alerting or killing a single soul, thus ensuring a brighter future for the city and its inhabitants.

Figure 1: The outset of The Hound Pits Pub, your base of operations (IGN.com 2012)

The game wears its influences on its sleeve, and it does so proudly. First and foremost it is the best Assassins Creed (Ubisoft Montreal 2008) game that will never get made. The ultimately empty promises made to gamers in 2008 when Ubisoft Montreal released their first Assassins Creed title you can finally see have come to fruition when you get to step into Corvo’s agile and stealthy shoes. You see, in Dishonored, you truly feel in control of your actions and you are not constrained by the choices the game wants you to make or that its story needs you to make. You are given the toolset of an assassin, the skillset of an assassin… and then you actually get to be an assassin! Whereas for example the Assassins Creed games will give you various gadgets and knives and allow you to stab the people that the game wants you to stab, ultimately the game (at the very least its more recent sequels) isn’t really about that much stabbing, you’d be funneled down a series of story missions and set pieces and you would have to conform to the actions and choices that the game wants you to make – kill this person, oh no not that person, oh you killed them anyway? Well you have to start again… and then don’t kill that person kay? The 9 story missions in Dishonored each act as a mini-sandbox for you to play in. No strings, just go nuts and try not to hurt yourself. In fact, only after playing through the game multiple times do you really start to appreciate just how open-ended the gameplay is. There are a variety of supernatural abilities that you can choose to level up, allowing you to blink across rooftops, freeze time, summon swarms of rats and see through walls. There are equally as many combat upgrades and devices such as pistols, razorwire traps, sleep darts, sticky grenades and more that really let you cater to your play style. And sincerely, no two play-throughs will be the same.

Figure 2: How will you play? Dishonored gives you so much player choice, you won’t know what to do with yourself (IGN.com 2012)

When playing Dishonored there were frequent moments where I felt like I had been there before, Dunwall was of course new and exciting to me, but there was still something familiar about playing. It wasn’t until I stopped to think about why this was when I started to see all the other games that have cumulated in this truly unique and wonderful experience. Just as I have grown as a player and I have learnt from playing a myriad of other games, Dishonored, a phenomenal example of the stealth action genre, has learnt and grown from the games that have come before it. It is because of this that I could see my actions and behavior in other games resonating through my actions in Dishonored, and the game works brilliantly because of it. At one point I found myself stalking a particular guard down a poorly lit hallway when all of a sudden a maid turns the corner in front of me and I have no choice but to immediately silence her with the weapon in hand. I had intended to spare the lives of any civilians I came across, but the trigger I had resorted to carried not a sleep dart, but a crossbow bolt. She fell with a thud, and as the guard a few steps in front turned at the sound, I silenced him without hesitation. I looked down at the collateral damage of my actions. The maid hadn’t harmed anyone, she was an innocent, and I had killed her. I was immediately taken back to my time playing Thief II: The Metal Age (Looking Glass Studios 2000) on PC, where I had, hiding from a guard that I was ill-equipped to face, murdered an innocent servant to stay hidden. This kind of player-centric narrative, not designed or intended by the developer is something that is truly wonderful to experience as it means that whilst playing, you are truly responsible for what happens around you. It was whilst replaying a mission, wherein the first time I had passively dispatched of my targets, that I found an entire new section of the level that I missed completely the first time. It was in this discovery that I was taken back to my time playing Deus Ex (Ion Storm 2000) and its 2011 sequel Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal 2011), where I would constantly attempt to see if I could accomplish my objectives faster and cleaner, the moment to moment gameplay driving my experience, and not the mere objective beacons telling me where to go. It is a rare game indeed where as much detail is put into entire sections that some gamers might never experience. And finally the final piece of this gameplay trifecta occurred when I decided to throw caution to the wind and jump into the fray of combat. Multiple guards descended on me and as one threw a grenade, I stopped time and fired multiple crossbow bolts at my targets, caught the grenade and threw it back, and I stepped back to watch the instantaneous massacre as time resumed its flow. The feeling of utter satisfaction that I felt as I looked upon the destruction took me back to the abilities and again, player choice afforded to me whilst playing the original Bioshock (Irrational Games 2007).

Dishonored is clearly heavily influenced by these titles and many more, but that does not make it any less than the sum of its parts. In fact, it has managed to cherry pick some of the best elements of these games and combine them to create a wholly rich and unique experience that you will want to relive again and again. I can play Dishonored and be 11 again, upset that I’ve just killed a maid who probably didn’t deserve it. I can be obsessed and ghost my way through the game, constantly forcing myself to try and do things better. And I can be powerful and blast my way through any and all that stand before me. Who will you be? What games will you play? Dishonored gives you everything you need to make your own way, and it does so in one of the richest and most interesting locales I’ve yet played in a game since Half-Life 2’s City 17 (Valve Corporation 2004). Hmmm… Half-Life 2… there’s another one…