Dishonored Review (PC, Xbox 360)

I have always loved the steampunk world.  A fantasy world that with very little effort on our part could actually exist.  With the exception of some of the fantastical creatures, of course.  I think most of us gamers would agree that all that brass and copper, those goggles, and all those cool guns and knives are just the world we would want to live in given the chance.  I would love to be some sort of sky pirate in a zeppelin that looks like a schooner.

Alas, that world doesn’t actually exist.  That doesn’t stop us from playing the fantasy though, does it?  Bethesda, the makers of pretty much every freaking game that is coming out here lately, has given us Dishonored.  Okay, that’s not entirely true.  It’s actually a game from Arkane Studios, but it has Bethesda written all over it in every detail of Dunwall.  A world of steampunk, assassins, corrupt politicians, and supernatural power.

You are Corvo Attano, the official bodyguard of the Empress of Dunwall, an industrial whaling city modeled after Victorian London.  You are framed for her murder and the kidnapping of her daughter, Emily.  So, pissed off, you escape from prison six months later with the help of the Outsider and his followers.  The Outsider also gives you several supernatural gifts later on in the game, which make your assassination missions that much more flavorful when the time comes to exact some revenge.

The feel of it is very “Bethesda”.  Powered by their go-to Unreal Engine, the graphics feel very much like a combination of Fallout 3 with a touch of comic-book style like we saw in Borderlands.  And for some reason, you have to escape through a sewer.  What is with Bethesda and those damned sewers?  You play in first person mode, as with most of their games, and you collect food, ammunition, and health kits along the way.  The game focuses on stealth while using gadgets and weapons to take out the bad guys as quietly as possible.  Apparently it’s possible to complete every mission in the game without any lethal moves at all… but screw that.  I want to kill stuff.

Between missions you have to report to The Hound Pits Pub in the city, where you can trade your scavenged loot for weapons and upgrades.  For some reason, Lord Trevor Pendelton, one of the Loyalists that helped you escape, looks like a sickly Steve Buscemi.  And once you are on a mission, Dunwall is your plaything.  The city is built sandbox style, so you can roam to your heart’s content.  You just have to be careful of the hordes of rats that can devour a person in under a minute, or the weepers, people infected with the plague that cry blood and can lash out violently at any time.  Yeah, did I mention this takes place during a plague?  There are bodies wrapped in linen in every drain and tunnel in this game.

Now for the fun stuff.  You can unlock powers as you go.  These include the following:

• “Dark Vision” – You can see through walls.
• “Possession” – The ability to possess creatures and humans for a short time.
• “Bend Time” – Slows or freezes time.
• “Blink” – Short distance teleportation.
• “Devouring Swarm” – Summon a bunch of killer rats.
• “Wind Blast” – A gust of wind.  (Kinda fus-ro-dah, eh?)
• “Shadow Kill” – Turn your victims into an ash pile to prevent them being found.

These seemed kind of lame when I first started looking into this game a few months back.  But after seeing some of the videos on the Bethesda website of how they were being used, I was intrigued.  Like waiting for a guard to fire at you, then freezing time, possessing the guard, moving him in front of the bullet, then releasing your powers and watching him get plugged by his own slug.  It’s freaking hilarious.  And they have these energy fences that the guards like to throw rats into and watch them get turned into rat tar-tar.  So getting a guard between you and the fence, then using Wind Blast to send him into it is pretty effin sweet.

You can also create a swarm of rats, freeze time, possess the rats and guide them to your enemies, then release your powers and watch everyone die.  Being an assassin is awesome.  But being an assassin with supernatural powers is next to godliness.  The game has six active powers, four passive powers, and 40 Bone Charms that allow perks in the game.  You can, for instance, use a perk to make time freeze or slow for longer, or possess things longer.  You can only have three of them active at once, though.  So choose wisely.

Another thing you have to pay attention to is your mana.  It is necessary to use powers, and only partially regenerates after use.  You have to use potions to get your mana back up to full, so be careful about using mana-intensive powers.  Some of them can really drain you, then you are stuck with whatever weapons you have if you get in a bind.  Just a side note, weapons are going to be used in your right hand and powers are assigned to your left.  Although you can dual wield a gun or crossbow and a sword with no powers assigned.

Missions were a little tricky in this game.  It’s not like a lot of those stealth games from yesteryear where you are detected and then you hide and they stop looking for you.  If you are detected in this game, the panic spreads through the guards faster than the plague that is ripping through the city.  Then they feed off each other, so the alert status of the guards never dies down.  Once you are detected, you better start killing or the whole place will know you are there and will be looking for you.  I found out the hard way.

Now, the politicians in this game are a lot like the ones in the real world.  Always looking for a way to screw someone over.  They use the plague as an excuse to take anyone they want away from their home and family and put them in a shallow grave.  Or no grave at all.  So don’t feel bad about ripping them a new one when the time comes to kill.  Although there are options for worse punishments than death in some cases.  And they are fun.  But I won’t spoil the game for you.  You’ll figure those out when you get to them.

The game is very playable.  I had a lot of fun on the missions, and it was hard to stop playing to write notes for this review.  I had to set a timer on my phone just to keep my head in the real world and remember I have a job to do here.  And the cast is amazing.  I had to stop playing long enough to look up the names of the voice cast because they sounded so familiar.  Some of the voice actors/actresses include Susan Sarandon, Brad Dourif, and Michael Madsen.  And Carrie Fisher blabbing over the loudspeaker throughout the game.  I love when screen stars come over to the game world for a gig.  Like when Marilyn Manson and David Duchovny did Area 51 for the original Xbox.  Just beautiful.

The big man on campus is known as the Outsider.  Supposedly he’s both good and evil, yet neither.  He gives you, as well as other people, his mark, which grants you the powers you use during the game.  Though it seems he doesn’t give a crap how you use them once you get them.  One of those free will scenarios, I guess.  Kind of has a religious feel to it, right up until you are given the mission to kill a bunch of high-ranking church members, then you’re back to wondering what the hell this guy is all about.  I just stopped caring midway through and just had fun taking people out.  The means justifies the end, as you will find out.

I tried not to divulge too much information about the storyline, but it was hard to do.  If you like any of Bethesda’s games and their plots, then odds are that you will enjoy this one as well.  What is boils down to is what most of their games are about.  You are in this world, you have people trying to kill you, and you have to choose how you want to use the weapons and skills given to you.  That’s the one thing about Bethesda that I admire above all else with their games.  That it’s YOUR game.  You make the character what he is in the end.  It’s your decisions and your actions that define the road that your character goes down on his quest for absolution from the crimes that he didn’t commit, yet carries all the guilt in the world because of them.

Dishonor was more fun than I expected, and the storyline was fresh, after that classic “must escape from prison” thing that Bethesda loves to use.  But the point is that it worked for me, and I enjoyed the trip.  The steampunk world is one that they captured perfectly in this game.  Throw in the fact that you are an assassin with magical powers and you’ve got a game that combines everything that makes a game great these days.  I honestly don’t have anything truly bad to say about Dishonor.  It simply works.