Review: Dishonored

Dishonored is a first person action-adventure game with heavy Western RPG and stealth elements for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. It was developed by Arkane Studios.

Corvo fighting a few higher members of Dunwall's police force.

You are Corvo, the personal bodyguard of the Empress, the ruler of the city of Dunwall. Dunwall is going through an industrial revolution, but is also overrun with a mysterious plague that is killing everyone in the city. One day Corvo is framed for the murder of the Empress by Spymaster Hiram Burrows and a group of conspirators, who also abduct the Empress’ daughter Emily. Corvo is thrown in jail, but escapes with the help of a group of loyalist who want to overthrow Burrows, who has seized power, and put Emily on the throne. With the equipment provided by his rescuers, including a skull shaped mask, and powers provided by the mysterious Outsider, Corvo decides to wage a vendetta against all those involved with the murder of the Empress as Dunwall falls apart around him.

As Corvo you are assigned targets by the head of the loyalists, Admiral Havelock. You start off at the loyalists’ headquarters, where you stock up on ammo and health potions and upgrade your gear, and travel to the location of the person you are supposed to assassinate.

Corvo has a ton of weapons at his disposal. He has sword and a pistol, and a miniature crossbow for more silent kills, which can also fire sleeping darts for nonlethal attacks and explosive darts. He can also use grenades, proximity mines, and choke people into unconscious.

Levels are designed so that you can go through fighting everyone, use a more stealthy approach, or a combination. There are pros and cons to fighting your way through or taking a stealth approach. Fighting people head on is exciting, and while most of the guards are not too resilient to swords and gunfire, neither is Corvo, and he can get overwhelmed by superior numbers, though with the numerous health potions lying around you can still fend off most groups.

Sneaking by people can get tedious, what with having to wait for everyone to turn around, moving slowly past their fields of vision, making sure you headshot people so they do not notice you, hiding the bodies, and if you overlook one guard you only got a second before he calls in reinforcements. But it can feel rewarding finding a path past all the guards and reaching your target without anyone else knowing.

You also have several magical powers given to you by the Outsider, a mysterious god. You have powers that can help with both sneaking and fighting, like the ability to stop time or teleport or see through walls. You buy new powers with runes, which are hidden in levels or given to you for completing additional tasks, like killing an extra person.

Corvo's arsenal gets really impressive as the game goes on.

Even though you have a lot of choice in how approach a level, I would have preferred more interaction with the world. My favorite level is the one where you sneak into a party as a guest and look for clues on your target’s identity. This level is different from all the others because you have the option of walking around normally instead of either fighting or avoiding everything. I enjoyed having that option instead of having to sneak by all the time.

Possessing rats and scurrying through the ventilation is another option.

However you approach a level, you will not find it difficult to do what you want since the controls are very intuitive. Corvo moves quickly and easily over walls and buildings without ever getting stuck. Anyone playing will be darting in and out of hiding areas and easily fighting guards in a second.

Dunwall starts off as an interesting place to explore, but it gets boring after a while. Thanks to a new fuel source created by whales, Dunwall is going through a transition period. So you have buildings that look like they are from the Victorian era for the most part, but then you run into giant metal walls and trains. While the concept is cool, the actual level is a lot of grey and brown buildings and streets, filled with rubble and garbage. The building where your target is located though is usually more interesting to move around in, but until Corvo reaches it you are stuck with boring streets and alleys.

Plagues of man-eating rats make some areas difficult to traverse and highlight how disgusting Dunwall has become.

While the aesthetics are boring, the levels are interesting from a gameplay perspective. They are always several paths to the target, vents to crawl through, balconies to jump across, and apartments to sneak through, if you do not want to run down the street. They all look different too, no copy and pasted rooms here. The buildings the targets are hiding are are especially nice, they are usually large mansions or similar buildings that have multiple rooms and hallways that lead to the target. Sneaking around those is the best part of Dishonored.

The main story is kind of bland. Corvo goes around assassinating people and disrupting the social order of Dunwall, there is a plot twist two-thirds of the way in that you can see a mile away because apparently you cannot have a story where a plan runs smoothly, all the while the game is beating you over the head with its morality lessons about the evils of murderous revenge.

What is frustrating about it though, is that you get snippets from books and overhearing conversations that make the world you are not experiencing so much more interesting. You hear about other places in the kingdom, the two warring religions in Dunwall, hints of a lost civilization, other hints that the plague might be unnatural, but never get to interact with any of these stories. The only subplot you have constant interaction with is the socio-economic effect you have on Dunwall, which is interesting if you are into to that sort of thing.

Even though Dishonored gives you many ways to go through a level, it does not like it when you kill people and take the lethal approach, even though it gives you many weapons to do so. The game keeps track of everyone you kill, and the story implies that the number of people Corvo kills is messing up Dunwall and causing the plague to spread, and eventually affects what ending you get. The game even gives you a nonlethal way to dispose of your assassination target every time, usually some form of blackmail or humiliation.

Stealing everything from everyone to buy new gear is fine though.

I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I like seeing that your actions have consequences which make the world feel more fleshed out and real. On the other hand I do not think it is fair to punish the player for not wanting to play the game that way. And the game does consider it a bad thing, based on the ending you get if you kill a lot of people. I also find it ridiculous that Corvo is doing that much damage to Dunwall compared to the people that he is killing, and that letting them lives automatically improves the city.

Dishonored is a good game, but it feels like it could have been so much more. Still, it is fun, especially if you are a fan of stealth games, and there are no serious issues in the game that would keep you from liking it.