Dishonored - Definitive Edition

This is a review that lambastes this game, and I offer no apologies for it. As a person who studied game design for some time, I want to say the devs made a huge mistake because they manipulate your play style with a morale system. Here's what I see as a false premise being sold: You're an assassin. If you use all the toys we give you, you will likely kill a lot of people. And if you do that, you'll get a depressing ending. Sounds fun, right? The alternative (the one they want you to take) is that you play as a near-ghost and you avoid killing as much as possible which nets you a good ending and happier reactions. So, what's wrong with playing as a ghost? First of all, nearly all your upgrades and weapons are useless. The devs insult your play style further by capping your crossbow's sleeping bolts to 10. I don't really understand the logic of this, but ok. Next, difficulty flies out the window. It doesn't matter if you play on easy or very hard (I'm playing very hard). In the end, it comes down to three things: 1. Observe enemy patterns to single them out. 2. Blink ("teleport") behind them to choke. 3. "Kidnap" the body out of sight. If you get caught, not a problem: run away and wait until they all calm down. Rinse and repeat until the whole level is just unconscious bodies. Take the Golden Cat level for example. I also managed to get to the two brothers you're supposed to "kill." I took out all the guards with choking. When I got to the brothers, I didn't do anything to them because I went the pacifist route. Was it fun? No. But I'm doing it! Why? Because I don't want to be punished for being an assassin, which is what I was supposed to be... I think up to this point so far, I've only killed a couple of assassins while leaving everyone else untouched. I can't say I feel challenged, unfortunately. Nor can I say that I think this is "fun." I'm unlikely to play any other Dishonored game after I beat this one because now I remember why I quit the 2 times.

GOG twisted my arm and forced me to buy this game. Arm twisting as in offering a very good discount that I could not refuse. I'm running this on a Dell Optiplex 780 with four cores at 2.83 GHz and a GT 1030 graphics card. No problems. Now this is a First Person Shooter set in a Victorian type era. It has weapon upgrades, loot and secret areas, just like any good old fashioned FPS ... but if you go in blazing away you get the bad ending. To get the good ending you have to have minimal body count. Which alters your game play and makes it a very different adventure ... Story is good, graphics are good, characterization OK, music I didn't really notice while playing the game (did some playing of it on YouTube and it fits the game OK). Replayability excellent. Must emphasize this replayability, alternative paths to finish the levels exist and going back and finding the alternatives is a game to enjoy. Negatives? I found the keyboard and mouse control a little awkward but that could be me. Totally recommended. And GOG you are forgiven for twisting my arm.

I speak as somebody who's played through Dishonored a good one-to-two times while also having played it extensively on my PS3 before getting it on PC. I bought the trilogy bundle because it was on sale for $25 (seriously, that's a steal considering the bundle usually goes for eighty bucks!) with the intention of really playing through the second and third installments. What I can say about the original Dishonored is that it's easily one of the best games of its generation. It revitalized the Immersive Sim while being accessible to newcomers and, almost ten years later, still holds up tremendously. It's incredibly replayable, to the point where I don't think you can say you've beaten it until you've played with all it has to offer. The stealth isn't completely in-depth, and hardcore stealth game fans might some grievance with this, but it hits that sweet spot between streamlined and niche so I don't think it's that bad. Where this game falls apart is its story. Dishonored, undoubtedly, has some fascinating lore and an interesting world to boot. But the tale it tells with that lore and world is an uninspired revenge tale with pretty flat characters. I guess that I should note that I don't like fantasy settings too much (I'm more of a Cyberpunk kind of guy). Even if I did, though, Dishonored's Steampunk-Fantasy setting still wouldn't be enough to offset the bland story at its heart. What makes things somewhat interesting is that the moral choices here are bound to how often you kill people and what playstyle you choose. They really went all out, though; you can tell a high-chaos playthrough apart from a low-chaos one just through the level design, and I wish more games with these kinds of systems did this. There are probably more problems with this game than the ones I've outlined, but the general gist of is that this is a modern classic that shouldn't be missed.

Dishonored is a game that feels at odds with itself. You're given one heck of a power fantasy, but you're rarely allowed to use half of that power if you want to use it for good. By structuring the entire game around chaos, and how violent actions will give a bad ending, the gameplay sure doesn't let you be non-lethal unless you do the same old crouchwalk and choke technique. This is a problem rectified in the sequel game, which gives you way more options of keeping your hands clean. But apart from that, this game is very good. They absolutely nailed all the fundamentals. The traversal feels satisfying as hell, the AI is exactly the right amount of stupid, and the way the game responds to player actions (both within and outside of scripted events) feels very robust. For these reasons alone Dishonored becomes a game more than worthy of the time and money it asks of the player.

I was very eager to play Dishonored. I did, and I had a lot of fun. It was good. Very good at times, but in comparison to Arx Fatalis and Prey, it was probably the “weakest” of the three Arkane games I played so far. Which is a testament to how good of a studio they are, since to have something that’s”weakest” still be on that good of a level is nothing short of amazing. The story of Dishonored is... okay. Just that. Okay. There are no particularly interesting characters to speak of, they are all pretty flat, and Corvo himself is basically a blank slate for the player. You can guess major story beats before half way of the game if you read the notes and listen to the dialogue. A novel feature of the game’s story is that it react to your levels of violence and how lethal you are in dealing with your enemies – changing appropriately. It’s a fine concept that I enjoy and respect a lot. I wish more stories had non-lethal options of dealing with opposition. Speaking of positives, one has to definitely mention the art direction – the whole game has a rather unique, oil-painting-esque aesthetic. It doesn’t go for a very high realism portrayal, which defintely caused it to get older slower on the graphical front. The level design is nice as well – the levels are often quite spacious, with numerous alleyways and routes to approach your target, suited for different playstyles. That being said, I think Dishonored falters a little bit by not providing a non-lethal option to deal with hand to hand combat. The result is that if you want to go non lethal, as I did, after you get discovered you might as well reload the game, because in a direct confrontation you HAVE TO kill people or be killed yourself. If you are interested in seeing me go through the game blind and seeing me discover it’s world and comment on it, you can see me playing it on my youtube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZT5DzcyEZo&list=PLp4TpsJ7HUWVXdu09GfDWo3xdneIcaGLZ