Dishonored: After the Quarantine Shall We Meet for Whisky and Cigars?

Well that's encouraging...

Over my spring break I got around to playing Dishonored, a game that's been sitting in my Steam library for maybe six years. A stealth-action game, Dishonored has you playing as a dishonored assassin/bodyguard on the hunt for those who have wronged him in a quest to put things back in order. I'm not a stealthy person, but I admit I did have a good deal of fun sneaking in the shadows in this game, certainly more so than in Thief (2013). I've heard a lot of praise for this game over the years, and while I don't fully think it's all deserved, there's still a lot of genuinely good things to talk about here.

To begin, Dishonored's plot is pretty typical of these stealth-action games, it's almost like it was written around a blueprint. Story events don't feel built up at all, one second you're chums with everyone, and the next you're drugged and left for dead. It feels very disconnected, which is particularly ironic given how connected and consequential the overall setting feels. It also feels very much like a product of the time, complete with a brothel level (sigh). I wonder why this was something that seemed to be in every game at around this time, it's honestly quite strange. Those complaints aside, I think that the game itself handles morally grey actions (that are part and parcel of these kinds of games) pretty well to tell the truth. Obviously you kill everyone to get the bad ending, but taking the nonlethal approach, which in any other game should make you feel good somehow made me feel worse than if I had simply killed them. For most of your targets if you 'deal with them' you simply never know what happens to them, but some are pretty bleak to say the least. Finding the zombie-like form of one of my targets in a lonely corner of some ruins after he succumbed to this plague that forms the major overlying threat was pretty unsettling, but it wasn't the worst. The worst is essentially kidnapping this woman and delivering her to this guy who seems to obsess over her, though what variety of obsession this is is never stated outright (the parting phrase "She will be safe with me, forever" didn't give me much confidence). You do hear back from her, though it is a very strange letter that again made me feel like I arguably did the worse thing than simply killing my target.

Something I especially like about Dishonored's gameplay is how rarely  control is removed from the player, and how often new information is conveyed without cinematics. I better avoid those rats...

The gameplay of Dishonored is essentially built around player choice and expression in how they navigate through obstacles and enemies. There's never just one way to deal with problems, there's several. Killing enemies offers the most options from a variety of powers (including a swarm of rats to eat enemies alive), gadgets, and the environment. However, the drawback to this is that later levels will have more enemies and the general situation of the plague will get worse because nobody cleaned up those guys you knifed in the alley a few days ago. The nonlethal options at your disposal are very limited though, and you're really limited to simple stealth, choking out guards, and sleep darts to get past whatever you face. I decided to try playing as peacefully as possible, but I felt really constrained throughout. I wish that I had a few more options at my disposal, maybe a smoke bomb? That said, despite feeling constrained, there's quite a large skill cap to be found here, and even on the final level I was still finding new ways to avoid dangers that I never though of before, like possessing a rat to sneak through a vent. Some of the speed runs I've seen on YouTube before playing this were nothing short of mind-boggling (Rabbit's Respawn is a great one). Levels generally also offer up a large number of paths and routes throughout, and really you're only limited by your imagination. Near the end of the game there is a drop in quality where the levels are far more constrained, often only having a single path or single way to reach the objective, and these I must say are the weakest in Dishonored.

A low chaos playthrough felt to me like a game of hide and seek, except with attempted murder.

In terms of atmosphere Dishonored is none too shabby, and the setting is pretty iconic despite (to the best of my knowledge) it being the first game in the series. To best describe it would be as a Dickens/Verne/(slight) Lovecraft setting where the Industrial Revolution is starting, yet instead of steam or electricity, mankind relies on whale oil to power these crude and mystical machines. It's simultaneously awesome and kind of unsettling. In the background and with some exploration I found these forgotten shines to some eldritch god called 'The Outsider', and these combined with the largely unexplained magic system are each somewhat creepy, especially with characters' reverence for these places. Characters are also unsettling due to their slightly cartoonish appearances with exaggerated jaws chins, and eyebrows on men and porcelain doll-like faces of women. It's not on my top ten list of great settings, but it's both iconic and enticing at once, and I'd like to see more of it. I didn't really find the music noticeable at all (hell, outside of a few moments I forgot it existed), but the musical cues to indicate generally when shit has gone south (someone found a body, guards on alert, you've been seen) is all really solid and captures the mood. When you've been seen and combat has begun it literally sounds like someone's hand slipped while playing a piano, which is basically what you did in these situations.

Obviously the city of Dunwall isn't a very happy place, one look is really enough to see that.

On the whole I'd say that Dishonored is a pretty good game, not quite my speed and a little short, but I still had a good deal of fun skulking though its decaying fantasy-industrial environments, so if that sounds fun to you I'd recommend it. Probably the optimal way to play would be to do whatever you like, but at the end of the day there's really no wrong way to play as long as you complete the mission. I didn't get around to the extra DLC chapters so I don't know if they're any good, and besides I felt pretty satisfied with my experience after finishing the main story. I may get around to the second game sooner rather than later, but since I don't have it and I'm trying to avoid buying more games that may be a while yet. Dishonored is perhaps not the best game to play in these times, but escapism is a pretty big deal.