Dishonored

Dishonored is a mainly a first person stealth-action game brought to you by Arkane Studio’s and Bethesda Softworks. In dishonored you play as the Corvo Attano. His job as the Royal Protector is to of course be the bodyguard of the empress however this is short-lived. Without giving out too much story spoilers you end up being an assassin who has the mind-set of saving one person and getting rid of the one responsible for taking her away from you. As you continue in the story you meet the main characters in the story as well as gain some supernatural powers to aid your cause. Now, lets see what makes this game get the score it does.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Dishonored is going to be different for each play style. some leading to trickier ways to complete objectives than others. Throughout the game one thing is persistent the choice to kill or not to kill and with this choice will greatly affect the outcome of your story. The more you kill the more rats that are plaguing the city will appear in the end and coming with that a darker outcome to the story. On the flip-side choosing to merely knock out or otherwise incapacitate your enemies without killing them will lead to a brighter and happier ending. Along your journey are side quests that might ask you to do terrible deeds like poisoning a source for the cure for not just those you try to directly effect but others who buy the elixirs from them. Your choices seem to always have ripple effects.

With that said I still felt that the story seemed rather predictable, short and, it never really sucked me into it and made me NEED to see what’s coming up next in the story to me in a Single-player only game that is especially important. However I did in the end stick to the story for one reason. I actually wanted to save Emily and killed many people to do so.

Fighting mechanics in Dishonored we’re fun. You are given a small arsenal of weapons some partially lethal and some fully lethal to work with as well as a bit of magic. First comes Corvo’s blade not something I would want to be on the other side of but when I needed to do some backstabbing or close-quarter combat it was my go to weapon. Secondly you get a Pistol a Lethal weapon with a medium range and a slight area effect in-front of you also great for close quarters but it will make a racket so be careful. The last weapon you have at your disposal is the hand-crossbow with the longest range, being completely silent and having the option of being non-lethal with a sleep dart makes it the perfect weapon for taking out lookouts and even groups of people from a concealed area. Like said before though you have access to a small arsenal of magical powers I won’t go into detail but you get abilities that can allow you to jump distances instantly to summoning a small swarm of rats. Even with all these tools at your disposal if you alarm too many enemies you can end up hurting really quick.

Graphics

The graphics in Dishonored tend to be pretty much just outstanding. Characters we’re always textured with a quality higher than most games that have recently come out. Weapons when upgraded change their looks slightly but spectacularly letting you know you have that extra range or firepower. Every place you visit changes but keeps that industrial steampunk look that is very popular now days. Most of the game looks pretty amazing however with the theme of the game comes one downside. It’s ALWAYS dark so the game can get a bit samey at times.

Replay Value

The Replay Value of Dishonored can be quite high or low. Seeing as some playthroughs can take longer than others (Like stealth ones) the length of enjoyment your going to get out of the game will depend on how many endings the game actually has along with how many times you are willing to replay through the main story parts over and over. I would assume that one would get about 20-30 hours or so out of replays if you play a bunch of different styles like full stealth but killing, full stealth and pacifist, or like i did and just half stealth it and half murder everyone! There’s also DLC that will be for sure coming out however we have no details of when and about what.

Overall

In the end Dishonored did slightly let me down in terms of how long it was to get through the main campaign even though I may have took one of the shorter ways for sure it was only around 6-8 hours of play time. However if you are one to play through a game like this multiple times to see different endings or just experience the different play styles then this is a great buy for you. On the other side if you tend to play the game once then not play it again then this game might not be worth the $59.99 that it’s currently at maybe wait for a sale and perhaps by that time some DLC would be out too.