An abandoned district flooded with water. The deserted buildings, the growl of some faraway machinery & the sound of flowing water create an unnerving creepiness. It's a pale yet haunting reflection of a city that's filled with despair. This eerie ambience can either last forever or soon explode with sounds of gunfire & blades penetrating human flesh.
My HUD (Heads Up Display) showed where I need to go----an entrance to a base at a side of a nearby building. I am on a narrow walkaway above the water. I moved towards the destination. Suddenly, I saw movement. A patrolling assassin. I zoomed in towards his location & found him facing at my direction atop a high point further in the walkway. His location as a vantage point means I can't infiltrate further without being seen. That makes him my first target. Looking around for a moment, I jumped into the water & swum to the stairway of a nearby building where I could see him without being in his line of sight.
I selected the Possession ability from the circular menu & aimed at the assassin. The camera zoomed towards him & after a brief of ruby red splash onscreen, My HUD turned grey. My health bar is replaced with the assassin's. I am in his body now----I see through his eyes & walk in his shoes. I took a quick glance & saw several assassins patrolling in vicinity. Getting an idea about the location of my next targets, I looked below at the water and stepped forward. This started a free fall. Mid air, I got out of his body & hit the water. Not a scratch. I looked around & saw the dead body of the assassin floating underwater. I swum back to my earlier position while drawing the blueprint of my next moves in my head. Time to end it, quietly.
I sleep darted one with my crossbow, appeared behind another in the blink of an eye & choked him out. Slowed time to a crawl & slit one's throat before he had a chance to perceive & a blast of whirlwind from my hands threw the last one off a ledge. Looking around a bit, I moved towards my destination.
The word 'innovation' is getting rarer in the gaming industry when it comes to gameplay ideas. The result is the oh-so-many annualized franchises that serves as little more than iterations of their previous versions. Along comes Dishonored, a first person stealth action adventure title developed by Arkane studios that pierces through this saturated gaming scenario like laser beam through fog. It's wide range of compelling mechanics & possibility of their execution along with a fully realized Steampunk themed world makes for one of the most memorable gaming experiences of this generation.
You play as Corvo Attano, the royal protector of the Empress of Dunwall. Shortly in the game you are framed with the murder of the empress. You escape from prison with the help of a few people & make your way to them. You are quickly briefed about the whole situation & then begins your mission---to find & eliminate the people responsible & put the daughter of the empress on the throne. But that's not all, there's also a rat-plague that's slowly tearing the city apart. Not the most ingenious of narratives but it's reassuringly engaging & does what it's supposed to----set the stage for the truly exceptional & emergent gameplay that Dishonored has to offer. Thus begins a series of missions where your goal is to take out your target, in any way you like.
In the world of Dishonored, technological inventions such as whale oil driven industry & supernatural forces co-exist. After reaching your base for the first time, you are imbued with magical powers by a ghostly figure called The Outsider. The first ability you get, called Blink, allows you to teleport to a short distance anywhere in the map. Even more outlandish abilities are available at your disposal such as the ability to possess a human, a rat & even a fish for a limited time, summoning a swarm of deadly rats to shred your targets, slowing down time, releasing whirlwind from your fingertips & many more. These powers can be unlocked & upgraded to a more powerful version by collecting Runes throughout each level. However, all of these consume mana in varying degree. You can't just spam them all the time. The icing on the cake is that all these abilities can be combined & used in conjunction with the environment in remarkably creative ways. These powers are also incredibly balanced----they create a sense of empowerment and power fantasy without taking away the vulnerability factor. If you don't play your cards right, you can still die....a lot.
Your available powers can be distinguished to suit both stealth & all out action perfectly. This adds a layer of role playing element as you can choose and upgrade your powers according to your intended play style. Also, there are several Bone Charms scattered throughout each level which grants you passive abilities like increasing your maximum health, maximum mana, swimming speed & more. There are a total 40 of them but a maximum of 10 can remain active at a time. This creates an additional layer of customization as at any situation in any level you can choose which Bone Charms will be active according to your intended play style, on the fly.
Aside from your supernatural powers & abilities, Dishonored also has the standard set of munition ranging from Crossbows with incendiary & sleep darts, pistols, sword, traps that explode when an enemy walks over & many others. Each of these along with your powers together create a staggering array of options to choose from. Playing the game truly makes you feel crafty or strategically creative.
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| A fishy point of view |
But whether it's stealth or all-out assault, Dishonored never imposes anything on the player or prevents them from doing anything. It's like experiencing your own create-an-adventure book. Also being detected in Dishonored doesn't mean any failure at all, it simply takes the gameplay to a whole new level. This allows an element of improvisation which results in a more exciting & unexpected turn of events during gameplay----taking the re-playability of the game to towering heights. Each time you play a section, your experience can be radically different, depending on your choice of approach.
A refreshing touch is the complete absence of hand holding. The HUD just shows the direction & distance of the objectives. It's totally your business how you go about them. This is a game that treats it's players as they are----capable individuals.
The control scheme of Dishonored successfully creates a bridge between depth & easy accessibility & avoids complexity. In the PC version, the LMB (Left Mouse button) is fixed for your blade & the RMB is mapped for the left hand where you can choose from your powers to secondary weapons like pistol, crossbow or traps. The middle mouse button is mapped to the circular menu from where you can select your power or weapon of choice.
The A.I is keen on perception & has a dynamic awareness level. Their behavior & patterns of movements are also pretty diverse & unpredictable at times. It's not particularly hard but the A.I works really well in groups trying to take you down. Speaking of enemies, Dishonored has quite a range of them----apart from the standard gun & sword wielding militia, you also have mask wearing overseers with devices that neutralize your powers, plague infected hostiles called 'weepers', guards with tall mechanical legs (named Tallboys) & later in the game, assassins who can teleport just like you & pull targets toward them.
Choices are an integral element in Dishonored, both in gameplay & narrative. There are some narrative based choices that you need to make during conversations which opens up alternate branches in the storyline but the majority of the choices & the ones that truly matter are implicit in nature. In each mission, there is a target for you to take out in a plethora of ways. There is also a non-lethal way that is revealed to the player during gameplay in unexpected ways. This allows you to neutralize your targets without killing them. Dishonored puts an emphasis on morality without explicitly mentioning or shoving it. It leaves it all to the gamer. Will you revel in a dazzling devastation of power, become an unstoppable & ruthless killing machine in a pursuit of revenge or will you show restraint, look beyond your own suffering & do what's best for everyone? Will you become an executioner or a savior in a city of that's very close to the edge? These are the questions the game keeps asking the player silently.
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| Stabbing the Tallboys from above is sickeningly fun |
After each level the game calculates the amount of killing done by the player, determining the chaos inflicted upon the world. The degree of chaos contributes to radical differences in the ending of the game and the behavior of several NPC's. Also, your actions throughout the game has a vast impact on the future of the city. Dishonored is a game about consequences, so all your actions eventually come back to you.
The art direction of the game is simply brilliant, portraying a kind of retro-futuristic world. The moody lighting, the Neo-Victorian styled architectures & the steampunk influenced technologies convey a believable alternate timeline. Also, there are numerous books scattered in the levels which provide a variety of world fiction, depicting a world much bigger than the game.
Visually, Dishonored looks & runs fantastic. The light shafts, the detailed textures, the water effects, all look terrific. Sure it's not consistent & the character models look a bit muddy but still, the visuals fit the tonality of the game perfectly. The game also ran quite smoothly on my humble rig and I've had no frame rate or other performance issues while playing. The voice acting could've been better but the sound effects on the other hand are pretty detailed & convincing.
For a single player only game, the longevity of Dishonored is sky high. The game is designed in a way where it's impossible to acquire all of your powers & explore every possibility in a single playthrough. Although the campaign clocks around 8-10 hours, the emergent nature of the gameplay & branched narrative ensures that you'll be playing this game for a long time. There are 4 difficulty modes & several in-game achievements. The levels also have lots of room for exploration, providing further incentive for replaying.
Nothing's perfect though & the game does have it's flaws. The narrative falls short on it's promises----it doesn't tie all the loose ends & ends quite abruptly. Some of the choices you made doesn't show any resolution on the storyline & some plot points could've been explored further. I really hate when a game leaves me with unanswered questions in the end. Also, the in-game objective indicator is sometimes confusing----at one point I had trouble finding my way & spent quite a bit of of time figuring out & running around the map. The non-lethal approach isn't available for all scenarios like some of the side missions which leaves some interesting possibilities out of the game. But these are only minor quirks & is never detrimental to the otherwise incredible experience that Dishonored is.
Overall, Dishonored is one of the greatest games of this generation with masterfully imagined & multi-layered gameplay ideas, a dark & compelling Steampunk world & terrific longevity. There are very few games that make you hit the 'New game' button as soon as you're finished & talk about your exploits with a friend for days. No other game gives you the experience of collecting the incoming bullets of your enemies in mid-air.
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