The Case

With Assassin’s Creed cornering the night-supernatural people stabbing market, there’s not much room for competition. Unless said competition is supernatural to the max, lives in a steampunk universe and has a cool mask instead of looking like a Play-Doh sculpture of Adam Sandler. Dishonored is the teleporting and stabbing star of this autumn’s game line up and it deserves every bit of praise that it gets.

The Trial

You step into the shoes of Corvo Attano, the awesomely named Lord Protector of the empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Rat Plague has befallen the capital city of Dunwall and the monarch sent her most loyal defender to the other islands of the state to seek help. Alas, poor Corvo returns with empty hands. However, the Empress doesn’t get much time to ponder the bad news since she’s attacked by supernatural assassins who also kidnap her daughter, the lady Emily. This is no simple lady stabbing, of course, and a bunch of conspirators promptly accuse Corvo of killing the Empress. Luckily, he’s freed by the Loyalist conspiracy (they’d probably get more support if they called themselves anything but a “conspiracy). And, even better, he attracts the attention of the Outsider, a mysterious being who gifts him with amazing powers and gives him “the Heart of a living thing” to help Corvo on his path to stabbing-related justice and the eventual freedom of Lady Emily.

And that is going to be quite easy, since the control scheme is pretty standard for anyone who has ever played an FPS game. One mouse button controls the sword hand, the other the utility hand, that uses ranged weapons, gadgets, and powers. Simple, yes? Your favourites can be bound to quick keys and everything can be accessed through the inventory wheel. The only inconvenient thing is the binding of block key to “CTRL” (of course, you can change it), but a stealthy character won’t find much (or any) use for it.

Because, you know, Dishonored is one of those games that implores you to be not only stealthy, but also have Ghandi levels of forgiveness, even if the most guards that you see are grade A dicks. Ya see, the game flatout states that the more people you stab, the worse the ending. Since more corpses mean more rat fodder and more rats mean more rat plague - and the plague ain’t candies and lollipops. Still, that doesn’t explain why I can’t kill Weepers (the local zombie proxies with bleeding eyes), since the game also states that rats don’t eat them due to their advanced stages of illness.

Then again, it would probably be hard to explain your innocence when you’re standing knee deep in dead guards and civvies. And this is a great incentive to actually replay the game and see how the world and endings change depending on your stabbyness.

So, what’s left for you to do? A lot of sneaking, choking (you won’t get that intimate with that many men in any other game that I know of), carrying and hiding a lot of limp bodies. These tasks are aided the most by sleeping darts for the Deus-Ex inspired mini-crossbow and the “Blink” power, with “Strong Arms” charm of super choking power taking the second place. Time warp and possession also come in handy at times, when you want to single out enemies or choke a lot of guys at once.

Surprisingly enough, almost the same skill set can be applied by a shadowy mass murderer, since you can both stealth and kill people. And unlike in Deus Ex: Human Revolution - in which lethal melee takedowns were somehow loud while nonlethal alerted nary a soul - you can get a special passive power that disintegrates corpses when you kill unaware people. The Shadow Killer is probably the one that will get the most use out of such things as mines or security rewires since he’d be stealthy enough to place them before hand. Me? I was like Solid Jesus, so I my inventory was positively overflowing with various deadly implements that were useless for my cause.

Of course, you can go the stabby-shooty route and just straight up murder everyone you see without using any stealth whatsoever. It’s a bit hard, but possible - the whole adrenaline mechanic was made for that. And, of course, now you get to use the pistol that you upgraded from the one shot standard to a rapid fire killing machine. It will be hard, but with creative use of grenades, blocking and counter attacking (ah, the Assassin’s Creed school of fighting), local variation of “Force Push” and the power to miracle up flesh devouring rats, you may come out on top. You bloody wanker.

This still leaves the matter of targets to be assassinated. And, unlike Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dishonored goes out of it’s way to give you a non-lethal option for all of them. Of course, this means you’ll have to do a lot more sneaking and exploration, but with complaints about the short length of the game (it isn’t that short, by the way) you must appreciate that. Heck, in one mission you can actually accomplish the mission without actually seeing the targets. Of course, most of them are prime douchebags who deserve every stab they get, but the non-lethal ways have their own subtle cruelty.

However, there are a lot of guards between you and your target. The Heart supposedly tells their secrets and one person I know used it to judge their worthiness of stabbing, but I found it to be an unreliable tool. At any rate, most of the enemies will be composed of the various elements of the city watch - from the oft ridiculed members of the lower watch to the fancy and agile officers and Tallboys, who are so armored that they scoff at sleep darts. With the exception of tall boys, they are armed with swords and the occasional pistol. Overseers, the militant branch of the Abbey of Everyman also bring grenades and immunity to, uh, facial headshots to the fray - among other things. At any rate, the design of the enemies is superb and they are quite interesting to watch (and fight).

All this would be for naught if the City of Dunwall wasn’t such an interesting place. The level designers used their craft to tell the story of a city that has been lost half its people to the plague and is suffering from it dearly. You will find dead families in isolated apartments - or a couple frozen in their last embrace in the sewers. The streets are lined with condemned and boarded up windows. Desperate graffiti dots the walls. Squalor and decay is everywhere and the atmosphere is only aided by the plot twists and even sound bites. Oh, the wail preceding public announcements, how dreadful are you! And the texts you find about the world, especially the mysterious and maddening continent of Pandyssia, just only help to thicken the atmosphere. I hope they don’t make a sequel in which they try to give us more answers.

As you may gather, the visual design of the game is superb, with everything done to top notch quality. Of course, this is hampered a bit by the aging Unreal 3 engine, but if you forgive these misgivings, everything looks great! The steampunk (more like whaleoil punk) visuals are nice, as well as stylised people. And whoever came up with Corvo’s sword is a genius! The sound design is great as well, although I’d doubt you’ll remember the music. On the other hand, the PA system will stick in your memory!

The Verdict

Dishonored is the probably the best game we have this autumn and has the best and most endearing characters since the Darkness II. Which is funny, since D2 was about killing people in extremely gruesome ways. At any rate, be you a whirlwind killer or a saint in the shadows, you will like Dishonored.

Case Review