[Game Review] Dishonored

"Revenge solves everything."

                                                                                       -Dishonered Tag Line

Well, time for something completely out of left field. You might be thinking "what the hell are you doing reviewing a video game for you twat? It says anime and books on the title of the freakin' blog!", to which I have an answer. I don't particularly feel impassioned about anime right now; I just finished watching Kyoukai no Kanata and the ending has pretty much dragged whatever optimism I had for watching new anime out of me, so now I'm just kind of mad at the medium right now. It doesn't help that I'm also watching Eureka Seven, which seems to be content on dragging out these last few episodes as long as possible, and Black Rock Shooter, an anime which seems to be genetically designed to annoy me. As for the book side of things, well the 'Game of Thrones' series seems to be consuming my entire life lately, so I decided to take a step back from that for now, which left me with spare time. Spare time I spent playing this game: Dishonored, an action-stealth game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks  which came out nearly two years ago, but shut up, I only got my hands on it recently, so I'm reviewing it now. 

     This being a stealth game where you try to stab as many people as possible, I was expecting a good time with a interesting setting and a lot of different ways to kill my assassination targets, but I think what I got at the end is a game which stands tall and sturdy on one leg, but since the other leg is made of jello, it all ultimately collapses.

So, as the game begins you are Corvo Attano, The Royal Protector to the Empress of Dunwall, as you return from an unsuccessful diplomatic mission to request help from other cities to help combat the mysterious Rat Plague which has infected the lower classes of Dunwall and thrown the city in chaos. Things go sour however as like, literally a minute after you reunite with the Empress, you are attacked a group of assassins, and despite Corvo's best efforts, the Empress winds up dead and her daughter Emily kidnapped. You are blamed for the Empress's murder, even though it's kind of obvious it wasn't Corvo and was a coordinated group of ninja-assassins people who are responsible, and Corvo is thrown into prison, where the people who are truly responsible for the Empress's death basically tell you "Muh hahaha! We are the bad guys! I hope telling you this doesn't come back to stab into the back later!" Of course, Corvo ends up escaping prison with the help of a group called the Loyalists who intend to place Emily back on the throne of Dunwall and bring to justice those who kidnapped her and killed her mother. They enlist Corvo to assassinate the various royals of Dunwall in order to slowly expose the treacherous new Lord Regent, who is responsible for organizing the death of the Empress in the first place. Also, a mystical being known as the Outsider has taken an interest in Corvo, and grants him magical powers to aid in his revenge, and the such, shockingly without any ulterior motives. And yeah, the story pretty much goes on auto-pilot from there, as you work your way up through assassinations, until you can bring down the big bad guy himself, and while it's a fun time getting there, here's where the problems start flooding in.

The Outsider's mark on Corvo's hand.

Look, I understand story isn't really the most important aspect of a game(that would be either game-play or immersion), but for god's sake, there needs more of an effort than this. Dishonored's story is one of the most straight-forward stuff I've ever seen. It's literally: go kill this guy. OK good. Now this person. OK good. Pretty much all of the Loyalist's plan go off without a hitch(as long as you the player can fulfill them), and I was waiting for something else than what was presented to me. You can make a revenge story, that's fine, but there's needs to be more than that; some kind of other intrigue for the plot, some snags in the plan, or it's just of kind of boring. I spent the first two-thirds of the game going from mission to missions, killing political figures with the game's awesome mechanics, waiting for something else to happen. Granted, the game does finally throw a twist at you, but that seems to be there to pad out the game's already short run-time, and doesn't really even make that much sense. The characters won't get you into it either; everyone else in the game is kind of one-note, Corvo himself is a silent protagonist, which I know is supposed to be for the player to project onto him, but since Corvo in the game already has a reputation with everybody in the game, it sort of clashes. For instance, my Corvo was sort a world-weary exasperated type whose just willing to do anything to just put an end to the whole situation, including stabbing as many people in the throat as needed. Or what if your Corvo is actually a ugly hobo with huge warts? It wouldn't make sense for all the characters to be talking to him like he's some sort of nobility. In the end, whatever character he is in the end just won't work with the story, so once again, you're just stuck with a blank sheet because the story demands it. 

     The whole Rat Plague hints at being some sort of big intriguing conspiracy in itself which could possibly add more meat to the story, and yes, while some stuff about it is revealed, it really doesn't make a difference to the story in the end. Yes, Dunwall is an extremely cool setting, and the Rat Plague adds some really cool aesthetic to it as well as amplify the well-done gloomy atmosphere of the game's setting; that is, a city falling apart among a sea of corruption and filth; but it terms of the narrative, it hardly makes a difference. The only reason I could think it even there was for the designers to make some cool environments, and to add an enemy called a Weeper to the game which is basically just a zombie, because you know, everything needs to have zombies these days.  

The crumbling city of Dunwall. 

As we turn to game-play, here's where Dishonored starts to earn a lot of points back for me. Stealth is centric to the game-play, whether it be taking out The City Watch one by one silently with your knife or summoning a group of rats to eat their flesh while you laugh maniacally behind the corner. That isn't to say of course, you can't just blow open the front door with your powers and shoot everyone in sight in the head. Here's where Dishonored's biggest strengths lie. It encourages you to play around with the game-play until you find what works for best for you to kill your targets. Are you the kind of assassin who runs and teleports across the rooftops of Dunwall and snipes with your crossbow from afar, or do you simply posses to guards to individually commit "suicide"until there's nobody to protect your target. The choice is yours, and the game always makes sure that there's is multiple ways to do everything, and they do this by keeping the game semi-linear, at least in the first few missions. Yes, you can explore Dunwall to some extent and do a few optional missions, there's not a ton outside of your assassination jobs, but it's there. They also did a good job with the difficulty; it's not hair-pulling-out hard, but you can't be sloppy. Ammo isn't as common as you'd think, so you need to be efficient with your kills until you can buy more things at the Loyalist's base in between missions with the money you pick up. The game-play becomes even more varied as you collect "Runes" during missions that allow you to buy more special powers, and since they are usually hidden, it does encourage a certain amount of exploring before you get around to killing your target, but if you're good you can pick up most of them on the way.

     Everything is mostly balanced as well; you'll probably need all the magical power-ups at some point and ammo for better weapons is hard to come by, but there is a couple things that are a lot more useful than others. For instance, once you unlock the power to slow time, it'll pretty much be all you'll need, because you can use it to run past defense systems, take out enemies before they have a chance to even react, and maybe even for just getting the hell out of there. It's hard not to become reliant on it, my favorite part of the game being when I stopped time, blew open the door in front of me with a gust of wind, fired two crossbow bolts at my target and the witness killing them instantly, and then jumped out the window across the room. All in all though, besides from that game-play is very well handled, and it's worth trying out all the different assassination techniques. 

Or if you're a bad-ass and don't need magical powers, you can just sneak behind everyone and slit their throat.  

The only big problem I have with the game-play is the moral choice aspect, which seems a little shoe-horned in. Yes depending on whether you kill or simply incapacitate your targets dialogue will change and you will get a good or bad ending, but really there's no point to it in this game. I guess it allows you to serve what you believe is just which adds to your Corvo persona, but I just said "screw it" most of the time and just killed my targets(besides from the Lord Regent who I allowed to live in complete disgrace), because it was just easier, but I guess in the end it's just an another way to add more substance to the game-play. At the very least, since the game is way too short, you could play both a good and bad story line to extend the run time. 

So, Dishonored is a good game. Yeah, it is, despite all I've been saying about the crap story, I had a lot of fun playing it. The game-play is really solid, encourages experimentation, and very satisfying in a way. That's all I can say for it. It delivers all the "stabby" action is promises, but fails to hold up on any other merit. If you don't care about that and just want hop from roof to roof like the Batman of Dunwall and leap upon guards from on high, go crazy, you'll have a lot of fun. Just don't expect else from it. I don't think Dishonored is going to be your new favorite game, but if you want a couple hours to burn in the company of an awesome setting and a gritty art-style, well there's worse ways to spend your time. I guess I'm just a little disappointed here. Not in the way that the game is bad, in the way that it wasn't better. Still, I'll be coming back to replay some of the missions one day. Until then though, I'll be looking for some better games. Or watch anime maybe, which is kind of important for this blog, somewhat. Goodbye for now guys.

Final Verdict: 6(.5)/10

P.S: Seriously, slowing time is OP. 

Well, I don't have any other game reviews, so why not check out my anime review on Angel Beats here?

Or here for my review on Gatchaman Crowds?

Click here for my thoughts on what makes a "deep" story. 

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