Dishonored (2012)

I took this picture in my kitchen. Please excuse this amateur photography. I'm a broke college student.

A while back in December (that feels like a looong time ago now doesn't it?), I bought myself Dishonored for the Xbox 360. Truth be told, I bought it because Amazon was having a sale where it was like 30 bucks and a friend of mine kept pestering me to buy it. Well like I said I bought it and I finished it roughly a month ago. Now you may be asking yourself why I picked NOW to review this game. Simply put, after I finished it I didn't really know how I felt about it until further reflection. I won't say I hated it. But there was a lot about it that bothered me.

Dishonored was made by Arkane Studios (a developer I am not familiar with at all) and published by Bethesda (Fallout, Elder Scrolls, you know pretty much any RPG where you can possibly kill everything that moves) which to me, means that it's a first person perspective. Now I personally am tired of the overuse of first person perspective in today's gaming. I don't really like it all that much especially since nine times outta ten, I also have a gun in my hand and I have to take orders from people. But thankfully, Dishonored does not play like a traditional first person game.

Dishonored's setting is a steampunk industrial city called Dunwall where The Plague has ravaged its inhabitants. There is a hierarchy in place and the people love their queen. You play as Corvo, a dude who's job it was to protect the queen and her daughter. Then these assassins appear, or warp in, and kill her right in front of you and then you get blamed for it by the new corrupt regime that takes over after the queen (he's been DISHONORED get it?? GET IT??). So after you break out of confinement and meet these rebels of the new regime, you have to now assassinate everyone responsible for the death of your lovely queen.

The gameplay, as I said, is in a first person perspective and although you have a pistol (the only gun you actually have), you have a plethora of other items and weapons to help you towards your goal of bloody vengeance. This includes crossbows (with different bolts like sleep dart and incendiary bolts), your blade (which is a pretty badass lookin sword), grenades (which exist for some reason in this world), and a trip wire to set to kill foes. Now along with the weapons, you have these unique magic spells. These spells allow you to slow down time, turn dead bodies to ash, be able to see where your enemies are, turn into a rat (I'm not sure why there is a rat obsession in this game), summon rats (again why the hell are there so many rats in this game? I hate rats in real life), and a whirlwind spell, just to name a few. The most useful skill in my opinion is called Blink. This spell lets you warp/teleport to a given target. Think of it this way: when activated, there will be an orb-like energy floating. You move it to where you wanna appear and then BAM you're there. It's pretty awesome and the game definitly makes you use it quite often. It's especially important if you wanna play the game stealthily. Ahh the stealth aspect. Let's talk about that for a bit.

Dishonored is labeled as a stealth game. Now to me, this means that the goal of the game is to proceed through it without being seen by your enemies. If you are, then more enemies should converge onto your position, thus making your mission extremely difficult carry out. Now for a game that gives you stealth as an option of play, I feel it does not encourage it. Look at the weapons and spells I listed. Do you really feel like you should play the game stealthily? Given the game's setting, I feel that no, it isn't encouraged. If anything, it's discouraged. Now as a fan of Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, and Assassin's Creed (I know the game barely counts as stealth but you do have some missions where it's required) I feel like I have some general experience when it comes to being stealthy. You see, in those games when you were being stealthy, it was awesome and badass. You felt smarter than your enemy and you felt like a pretty cool strategist for not even being seen. Dishonored is a bit of a drag to play stealthily. It's boring and you constantly have to wait around for guards to move. Now sure, you can knock them out or kill them unnoticed, but the second blood is spilled, two things happen 1) an achievement/trophy is missed out on for not killing and 2) some character  may say something to make you feel like a dick for killing.

This is where Dishonored gets a little more interesting. It's described as a stealth game, yet you can choose how you want to play it, stealthy or not. I honestly feel that after finishing it that Dishonored does not encourage you to not kill or to be stealthy. I say this because 1) The game is not built to support nonlethal combat and 2) The game is such a drag without its combat. Allow me to explain -ahem- Take Metal Gear Solid, Snake has the ability to use CQC (or punch people in the older games) which allowed him to keep his cover and eliminate a guard without killing them. If Corvo gets caught or spotted by a guard he instinctively draws his blade and you have no choice but to kill them, unless you blink away and then wait for the guards to leave, which they will not do without taking forever to investigate. Of course you could save every 3 seconds and then reload your save file every time you get caught. BUT THAT ISN'T FUN. It's tedious and it doesn't make you feel badass so much as it makes you feel like you're being cheated out of playing stealthy or not wanting to kill. The key difference here is that stealth and not killing are being intertwined since Corvo doesn't wanna flip his blade to beat people instead of murdering them. This is what makes the game so frustrating in my eyes.

To be honest if you throw stealth out the window and embrace the combat, Dishonored is a very fun game. It's entertaining but its also short. So I guess the game wants you to learn it so that in future playthroughs, you can perform stealth tactics more easily. But in my opinion, if you're gonna be a stealth game, then reward stealth. Otherwise you're a first person adventure game with shooter and fantasy elements. Give it a shot if you're into that sort of thing. Otherwise if you're curious, rent it or borrow it from a friend. Well I hope this helped you in deciding on Dishonored. Thanks for reading!

The Reverse box art is pretty damn good. It looks epic as hell. Wait he has his blade drawn...THE ART WORK OF THE GAME WANTS YOU TO KILL see what I mean? Again please excuse this amateur photography. I wish I could record footage and make screenshots but I don't have the means to do so. Hey wait a sec I just realized the game takes place in a world where the plague runs rampant. So why the hell does Corvo not have gloves on? What kind of shit is that. It's like he's asking to be infected. I dunno maybe I'm nitpicking but if I were an assassin I'd at least have some gloves on. Especially if the world were infected with DISEASE.