I swear those bastards at Bethesda are trying to catch me out every time they release a new game. So here is Dishonoured, a 'play your way' stealth em up developed by them lovely chaps at Arkane Studios who also developed Call of Duty W@W's multiplayer component, Bioshock 2's level design and the cancelled 4th expansion to Half-Life 2. Oh and it was Published by those cunts at Bethesda and uses the Unreal Engine like every other game on the face of the planet. Now as you can probably tell, because this game is in early 2013 and Dishonoured released late 2012, that I picked up the game cheap because I wasn’t too sure whether I would enjoy it or whether it could justify its £40 price tag. Well short answer is I am kicking myself that I didn’t pick this game up sooner because it is one of the best games 2012 had to offer, for the long answer just continue reading.
Dishonoured sets itself in the fiction steampunk city of Dunwall. You play as the protector to the heir of the throne Corvo Attano who has recently returned to Dunwall after looking for a cure to the cities plague. However on his arrival the Empress is assassinated in front of you and her daughter Emily; Emily is kidnapped by the assassins and you are framed for the murder of the Empress, you with me so far? So after sitting in jail for a couple of months you manage to break out and make it into one of the suburbs of Dunwall where you meet a resistance who inform you that the Empresses assassins were hired by her assistant, who has now taken the throne and is spreading tyranny throughout Dunwall. How must rescue dear little Emily and assassinate anyone who has helped the Emperor get the throne as well as the new Emperor himself. You must do this all while Dunwall suffers from a terrible plague spread by rats.
Dishonoured also includes a moral choice system to the game, hence the 'play your way' aspect. Now these usually feel squeezed in last second and usually provide nothing extra to gameplay besides to make you have to play the game again, and though Dishonoured does indeed include the latter of the two, the moral choice is incredibly well implemented and the game does genuinely hinge on it. You can choose to play it all ninja Rambo and kill every motherfucker in sight thereby making the plague worse, making the game harder and giving you the 'bad' ending. Or you could choose to be a good little Corvo and use non lethal combat, thereby meaning less rats, an 'easier' game or so they would make you believe and a 'good' ending. Unfortunately there isn’t really a middle ground in this situation so I ended up killing everyone I could see.
The game presents itself in a first person viewpoint and is a stealth game. By stealth game I mean genuine stealth game, whilst you can run into a crowd of 6 dudes and slash your way to victory the likleyhood is that you will then die from the reinforcements. So yes the stealth is slightly relaxed to compensate for the action but you cant just run in and expect to kill everyone without some form of stealth involved. You have primary and secondary weapons much like Bioshock has weapons and plasmids. In your right hand however you always have your sword, in your left you have a choice of a pistol, crossbow or the various magical powers Corvo has attained through his many years of being a magician. You can upgrade these powers by collecting Runes scattered round the levels, you can also collect Bone Charms to give yourself perks depending on your current situation. You dont get to carry much ammo in the pistol and crossbow so its vital you search for Runes and upgrade your powers early on in the game, especially if you play how I played.
The first 2 missions are extremely hard due to the general lack of powers and ammunition you have but once you get a good collection of Runes, Bone Charms and upgrade your ammo packs you can storm through the rest of the game with ease providing a 6-10 hour experience depending on how much exploration you like to do.
The game is not open worlded but instead contains several 'hubs' where you travel to to do missions. In these hubs are 3 or 4 different areas which may include significant buildings, a north/south divide or even a sewer system. The areas are usually have around 5 Runes/Bone Charms each and at least 1 side mission per area, most of which are little fetch quests or escort missions which are contained to their area. A main mission has a structure of go to the hub, get to the right area and assassinate the selected target. You can choose not to assassinate the targets and instead bargain with them to achieve the good ending but the assassination is usually the most satisfying part of the mission, watching the life drain from their eyes and the ensuing escape from the scene is one of the most exhilarating experiences I have had for a while. My personal favourite mission involved you going to a masquerade ball and trying to find your target in-amongst the party guests by asking questions to the guests and searching the house for clues.
The game looks visually impressive. Its amazing how old the Unreal Engine is and yet it can still perform extremely well. Colours are based around an industrial brown/grey but you do get reds, blues, greens etc involved with the mix. Lighting is good however due to the very strict narrative there is no day/night cylce, instead it is day or night depending on when the mission is supposed to take place; The night levels are a blast though, using the shadows to your advantage to slit a guards throat or sneak around the rooftops unseen. The only complaint I have with the visual presentation is the faces of people, they all look like the cartoons of Victorian Englishmen but this is something I found easy to overlook.
The sound is impressive and builds on the atmosphere however the background music often became too loud so I couldn’t not hear a target until it was too late. Plus the credits song was one of the best songs on a games credits since Dead Space 2's.
Overall Dishonoured is one of 2012's best, something that anyone who enjoys action games should play. The story is well written and engaging, characters are interesting and the endings are actually different, not just the same one with a couple of changes. The biggest problems with Dishonoured is the extremely short length for this kind of game, though it does have re-playability and that the console versions are significantly inferior in several ways to the PC version.
So congratulations Bethesda for once again tricking me into waiting for a game that I should have bought upon release, along with Rage & Fallout 3. I still wish they hadn’t tricked me into getting Brink on day 1 though.
Dishonoured – 9/10
+Story
+Graphics
+Easy Stealth
-Length
