Developer/Publisher: Arkane Studio/Bethesda Softworks Released: October 2012

Played on: PS3 (also available on 360, PC)

I feel like I’m doing Dishonored a slight disservice writing about it having only played through it once. Each mission of this stealth-action game gives you free reign over how you wish to approach it, and playing through it again would be an almost completely different experience.

You play as Corvo, former bodyguard of an Empress you are now accused of murdering. You are tasked with with rescuing the Empress’ daughter from the new evil powers that look set to take over the country, so you team up with a resistance whose political motivations seem pure on the surface but eventually become quite muddied. The story and characters are interesting but nothing we haven’t seen before. The all star cast perform well with the limited script and help make the whole thing feel more believable. Leaving Corvo a silent protagonist was a great decision, amidst everything he remains cool and collected and the player can imprint whatever emotions they wish on this blank slate through his actions.

Unlike the bland story, the world of Dunwall is utterly fascinating. A steam-punkish 1800’s London style city with advanced technology powered by whale oil co-existing with supernatural powers, Dunwall is a grim place where derelict old brick apartments rub up against harsh steel guard towers. Dishonored’s visual design is striking and most effective in its artful world and environments which are fleshed out in huge spaces that you can explore both on the ground and vertically. You can find clues in the forms of notes, journals and voice recordings throughout the world that give you a sense of history and the struggle of political and scientific forces. You’ll meet some side-characters in your journey that may or may not have consequence later in the game, but give us an insight into the world of the commoners, criminals, leaders and upper class that inhabit the city. A mysterious plague of rats has befallen Dunwall, and your actions in the game change how serious this rat infestation becomes. Dunwall – I wouldn’t want to live there, but it’s a great place to visit from the comfort of your couch!

But enough about the story and setting – it is in its gameplay and level design that Dishonored excels. Corvo carries a trusty sword that could quite easily be the only weapon you use in the game, but Arkane Studio want to give you lots of options and lots of ways to play their game, so you can also use a variety of swords, crossbows and pistols in combination with your supernatural abilities that include the invaluable “blink” that allows you to instantaneously teleport a short distance, “possession” that allows you to inhabit the body of certain animals and humans and a bunch of useful attack powers. While all of these abilities can be upgraded, you can’t upgrade them all in one playthrough, so need to make decisions based on your play-style. Another playthrough with different powerups would result in a very different approach to a level.

There aren’t a whole lot of levels in Dishonored, and you’ll visit the same locations a few times, but the overall level design takes all your potential abilities and play approaches into account and builds a world where any of those is possible to win. Most games funnel you towards one way of playing which makes an environment feel unrealistically constructed and linear, but Dishonored’s more open level approach, while obviously carefully constructed, has the feel of an open and natural environment more akin to what we’d expect in real life. In an age where triple-A games are full of tightly scripted moments and huge linear setpieces with regular checkpoints, Dishonored’s open level design and willingness to let a player finish the mission the way they want is a welcome change.

At its core this is a stealth game, and you can playthrough the entire game without killing anyone. A more violent approach has a more chaotic effect on the world (I think it might even be called a “chaos level”) and changes the game’s ending. I elected to play as stealthily and non-lethally as possible. The game rarely checkpoints your progress, so you need to deal with the consequences of any mistakes you make, but it does allows you to save at any point allowing for experimentation and reloading. In a more poorly balanced version of this game, the lack of checkpointing would be a huge frustration as you can imagine that you get caught by a guard while sneaking and die in combat. Dishonored avoids this by making Corvo one of the most overpowered heroes in recent memory – his bursts of blade swinging violence are shocking and highly effective, and while you probably couldn’t massacre your way through an entire level, screwing up a stealth section is usually fixable by a little awesome combat engagement and a quick retreat. Even though I was opting for a non-lethal playthrough, I would often find myself stuffing up a stealth sneak through an area, killing four or five guards with graceful speed and precision, scoping out the area a bit to work out my new approach, then re-loading my last save point and trying to stealth my way through again. A non-lethal playthrough can be highly stressful, I found myself saving and reloading a little too often at points and occasionally wished the game would punish me for my obsessive approach.

Sneaking up behind guards allows you to knock them out, but you can get to them in so many ways – crouching and hiding, using your blink ability to appear behind them, using your bend-time ability to slow down time and knock them out before hiding, or possessing a rat to sneak into the next room and avoid the guard altogether. One of the more frustrating moments I had was when all the guards at a party I infiltrated knew who I was and I had no idea how they’d worked it out – I was so stealthy!! This wouldn’t have broken the mission, I could’ve still accomplished it but not non-lethally. Restoring an older save game was all I could do. (That is also quite an awesome level in the game, going to a fancy dress party and disappearing one of the hosts, so many different ways for it to play out!)

The game ends abruptly and the supernatural fiction feels silly leaving the story a bit unsatisfying, but all the world design and gameplay around it is a stressful, liberating treat.

Verdict: An outstanding stealth-action game with deep level design allowing for unique replayability. A well realised steam-punk world is let down by a slightly typical story. Playing as a well armed and superpowered Corvo is super-fun!

Should Bradley play this: Yes.