Me and Bethesda are life long pals. Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3. These guys, know how to make a game. They also publish games as well. Other people's games. WET, Rage, Fallout: New Vegas, and now Arkane Studios' Dishonored.
Dishonored is a game about the bodyguard to the Empress, Corvo Attano. Coming home from a long journey of seeking aid from the other islands for the insufferable Rat Plague, Corvo finds him self in the wrong place at the right time. Assassins murder the Empress and kidnap Emily, the heir to the throne, and poor Corvo is accused as the murderer. He's sentenced to death and six months later, the night before he's sentenced to be decapitated, finds out it was a conspiracy by the Lord Spymaster and High Overseerer to take control of the city.
Corvo, with aid from Loyalists who believe Corvo innocent, breaks out of prison and joins the fight against the new Lord Reagent. Most of which involves sneaking around the City Watch and taking out key members of the Lord Reagent's inner circle.
You're given a choice between taking the utter stealth approach with nonlethal methods or seeking revenge in the most pure sense, silently (or brazenly) slaughter everyone. Dishonored is a first person experience with a combat system similar to Elder Scrolls. LT/RT controls the left and right hand respectively. Your sword in your right hand and either a power or ranged weapon in the left.
Stealth is, of course, the main mechanic of the game and is done well for stealth engines. Combat is hectic when it happens and things go south real fast in a fight. One minute you could be fending off two guards then suddenly six more join the fray. Now if you elect to take a nonlethal approach to things, be prepared for a real challenge. When not a key target, there are only two ways to go about a nonlethal take down. Sleep darts from your crossbow or coming up behind someone and choking them out by holding down RB. You would think that sounds reasonable, but when you only have TEN sleep darts and can't refill unless you're lucky enough to happen upon some in the field or wait until you get back to The Hounds Pit and see Piero.
Speaking of, Piero is your guy for equipment. Any restocking you need happens with him between missions. He also will upgrade your equipment and more upgrades become available as you find, fairly rare, blueprints. And no, Bolt Capacity doesn't include sleep darts. You need to find a blueprint for that. And in my entire run, I failed to find it.
There are also powers you can use. The most useful being Blink, Dark Vision, Blend Time, and Possession. I highly recommend upgrading Blink to the max as soon as you can. You upgrade them by collecting Runes scattered around the world. There are also passive abilities you can get by collecting Bone Charms. Each one has a different effect. But you can only equip a certain amount unless upgraded via Piero. To be honest, I didn't collect many Bone Charms .
Storywise, the game performs great. It's a truly interesting world and culture and you can learn loads from the many scattered books and notes. I don't want to say too much about it, but suffice to say, I didn't have a complaint about it.
My only real issue with the game was the low amount of ways to do nonlethal take downs. You always had a different option for key targets but normal guards you could hit with a stick or something. It was really frustrating keeping my kills to a minimum to get the ending I wanted.
Final Thoughts:
Coming into this game I had really no expectation. It was a must buy game for me, but I hadn't really absorbed any info or gameplay demos. So I was blown away on a basis of neutrality. It felt a lot like a mix of Bioshock and Fable. So is it worth the money? Well, if you have the patience for stealth then I say yes, it's definitely worth the $60. All I know now is that I'll enjoy the game even more, taking the lethal path after all that built up frustration in the nonlethal run.
Final Score: 8/10
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