So you want to kill the people who framed you for murder?

First off, I love that the Label for "Aweosme" Games is spelt like it is XD

Recently, I picked up a copy of Dishonored. And more recently, I completed it. I know, I should be focused on my studies, but c'mon, when was the last time Bethesda made a decent game? (I know, there are hundreds =P)

 

The trailer is suprisingly close to the finished game.

So, is it good. The short answer: yes.

The long answer: BLOODY HELL YES, GO OUT AND BUY IT TOMORROW BY SELLING BOTH YOUR ORGANS AND YOUR BODY AS A PROSTITUTE.

Storylinewise, the game can't be faulted. You play as Corvo Atticano, resident mute protagonist and Royal Protector to the Empress of Dunwall.
... Or you would do, if the Empress wasn't ruthlessly murdered by teleporting assassins 5 minutes into the opening credits. Suffice it to say, 6 months later, the man who ordered the assassination is on the throne, and Corvo wants retribution. He's been dishonoured (see, see where that title comes from?) and he wants a slice of revenge pie. With a vengeance filling. And a bloodlust custard poured all over it. And chocolate sprinkles. That's not part of the metaphor, he just has a sweet tooth.

So, casually breaking out of prison with the help of some Loyalists who want to put the Empress's kidnapped 11-year-old daughter on the throne (cos that makes all of the sense, "Your Highness, what do you plan to do about the army attacking us?" "BRING ME A PONY!"), you pledge yourself to rescuing the girl, defeating the tyrant and restoring peace to the Empire. Meanwhile, the entire city is being besieged by plague, and the city guard (basically this game's version of Skyrim's "Took an arrow to the knee") are trying to keep the peace.
By butchering everyone who looks even remotely poor. With fire arrows. Yeah. Good guys right there.

Into this, the game gives you a range of magical powers, from Blink (teleporting), through Bend Time, to Possession (there's nothing better than walking right past some guys by possessing their mate). This range of powers can be bought at any time with runes found throught the levels, and each one gives you more control over the environment. The game is designed for people to explore and find creative ways of reaching their targets. Needless to say, once you get the hang of how to use the powers to the best of their ability, you hardly even bother with the knife anymore, and just bounce around the map while everything else is stuck in slow motion. The only thing that stops me from jumping for joy at the originality of this is that most of the powers are ripped off. Bend Time is nice, but in all honest it's the same thing as Slow Time in Skyrim, just done a bit better. And you might as well be given a lightsabre given Windblast. I mean, Possession could be renamed "Jedi Mind Tricks" and the mechanic wouldn't really change. "You want to forget you ever saw Corvo." "I want to forget I ever saw Corvo." "You want to take your sword and distract your guard friends by removing their spleens." "I want to-" You get the idea.


The game is both drawn beautifully and designed expertly. The steampunk, gothic era the story is set in gives off a perfect vibe for the assassination backstory, and the placement of vents, ledges and external pipes provide plenty of routes to your goal. Most games get stuck over linearity and either fall into the trap and make the game nothing but one way corridors (see Call of Duty), or throw out the straight line from Plot Point A to Mission Start B by making the game a huge area of nothing but sandbox gaming (see GTA). But this game has found the niche: every mission only has around 2 or 3 ways to complete your mission, and the game flows from one mission to another no matter which way you choose, but the paths to get to those points are completely up to you. Running straight through guards to get there as fast as possible, although frowned upon, is still an option. But with around 5 or 6 different sets of ledges to move around and buildings to sneak through, and factoring in the number of powers that you have at your disposal, there's almost an endless number of ways to get through to your target. There's no better feeling than finding a pipe that conveniently lets you skip a few dozen guards and line you up perfectly for a crossbow bolt to the back of your prey's head.

But where the game really comes into its own is in the core concept; it's a stealth game first and an assassin game second. The game congratulates you on getting through levels completely unseen, and the more people you kill, the harder the game gets later on. The city watch get paranoid and begin using more and more technology to boost their arsenal. By the time you hit the last level, based on how bloodthirsty you are, the final area is either pretty open and casual, or reinforced like Guantanamo Bay. There's even a group of achievements (or if you play PS3, trophies *ergh, I feel dirty just mentioning them*) that are given to you for finding ways to eliminate your target without killing anyone, even the targets themselves. For example, at one point you are tasked to eliminate Lady Boyle, the main antagonist's lady friend. A guy walks up to you at one point and offers to "take her off your hands". If you carry her unconscious to him, he'll pretty much kidnap her and leave without a trace. Creepy, but success.

So, problems? The only one I ever found was distances. Mainly, there's very little room for error with how far behind a guard you have to be before you can either silently slit their throat or choke them out. If you happen to be too far away, the game says "Oh, he must want to block in the loudest way possible", leading to said guard turning round and going, "Oh wait, he's the guy I'm supposed to be killing on sight." That's another thing, the game is pretty bad on realism when it comes to guard vision and hearing. You can happily squat on a clearly visible awning with guards walking underneath you without looking up in case it damages their fragile necks (I say fragile, I mean highly slashable >=D), or spend 5 seconds choking a guy out about 3 feet from his friend, and the guy won't be able to hear the gurgling, or the "Help me, I'm getting murdered, oh, that's right, we all took that course in Deafness 101, well down I go". Honestly, you'd think that after they noticed 4 or 5 guards had gotten knocked out from behind, they'd start a buddy system.

Another thing that was mildly annoying was the save system. In Dishonored, you get the standard thing where you can save as many different files as you have console memory. However, the game autosaves every few minutes, pretty much everytime you hit a new area or particularly hard bit of assassineering. For the most part, these get overwritten every time. But for every new level, the game starts a new autosave. This helps the game to remember which powers and upgrades you bought when, which is pretty awesome if you're playing the game start to finish. But when you come to load a file, and if like me you try to keep the number of different save files to a minimum, you get bombarded with about 40 different autosaves of different levels, including ones you've gone back and replayed. And replaying isn't as much fun as you think: you go back to Level 3 to try to get that one achievement (or trophy *blergh*) you missed, after playing around with maximum Blink, Bend Time and equiptment upgrades on Level 9, the game reverts you back to the crappy, blundering, murder every guard you see just cos you don't have any experience at stealth douche of an "unseen" assassin you were back then. In honesty, when I bought it, I thought you'd at least be able to jump back in time and go "Oh, I remember when this was difficult, but now I've got an entire arsenal of magical powers to back me up, I can do it in seconds."

Overall, the game can't be called bad, in any way. Sure it could have a few tweaks to the mechanics, but there are no other games that have ever come as close as this game to mastering first-person stealth and movement. Mirror's Edge stumbled on jumps and Deus Ex: Human Revolution came close, but Dishonored blows both of them out of the water with a well-placed Force Push... I mean, Windblast (Cos they're so different). Seriously, any game that can convince Carrie Fisher (aka Princess Leia) to provide her voice for 5 minutes worth of propaganda speakers in the background must be pretty friggin awesome.

Baker Rating - 9/10 knives bathed in the blood of your enemies, 1 still clean from a couple of minor irritations