Dishonored

Dishonored woke up the completionist in me and I played through the main game thrice and the story DLCs twice in a row to get all the Steam achievements. However, getting every single one proved to be difficult in the end as many of the Dunwall City Trials DLC's achievements are actually truly challenging. Eventually I decided I would rather move to the next game on my backlog instead of wasting time in retrying Back Alley Brawl ad infinitum.

The premier first person assassin simulator

Dishonored is a stealth game, although it gives you more tools for killing enemies than for avoiding and/or dispatching them non-lethally. I found it somewhat amusing how rarely you even click the LMB if you are playing non-lethally as it controls the right hand that always holds the knife (which is a lethal weapon). Having the right button to control the left hand also caused some issues – I shot with the crossbow many times accidentally as I am used to having zoom on the RMB. I have had similar problems in Skyrim sometimes.

I am usually fine with whatever the default field of view a given game has. I do not get motion sickness and this time was no exception. I had to raise the FoV from the default, however. I felt I was not seeing enough of the game. Maybe it was because I had not played a first person stealth game in a while and neither does Dishonored have the neat third person cover system like Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Slowly I got used to it again, though, and once I learned leaning from behind a corner does not actually make you visible, I was quite fine with sneaking in first person again.

Excellent gameplay

Aside from my small problems, Dishonored plays superbly. It is incredible how fluid and fast-paced the game can be, especially after you have gotten both of the Agility upgrades for the double jump and movement speed increase. As well as increasing the speed you can move horizontally, the Blink ability also adds verticality to the game. And the maps fully support this. Even inside buildings you can traverse close to the ceiling, unseen by enemies.

Bend Time is also a really cool power. It enables many cool tricks when combined with the other powers and items. Dark Vision was a mandatory ability for me as I would have missed so many items without it. Passive highlight in style of DX:HR would have been handy.

Devouring Swarm and Summon Assassin were not to my liking as I find summons fairly boring. Windblast is basically force push and not really suitable for when you try to stay unnoticed. Pull, while also copied from Star Wars, turned out handy for taking out gravehounds in The Brigmore Witches DLC.

There is an odd conflict with how the lethal and nonlethal playstyles affect one's enjoyment. While using all the cool abilities and gadgets to slaughter enemies is a lot more fun than not, does the story and world become darker. You get sort of punished for having fun and the game will leave a bitter aftertaste. The most depressing part was probably Samuel the boatman's lecture when he dropped me into the final mission.

Number of abilities too small

I hope they add a whole bunch more abilities in Dishonored 2, which was announced in E3 earlier this summer. They should go all out with their imagination to bring out more amazing and original powers, especially for the nonlethal/ghost playstyle. I also hope Corvo and Emily, the two playable characters, differ from each other by way more than having just different graphics in their powers.

I got quite excited after having seen the trailer for the sequel. Emily seemed really interesting and unique. But then I realized that I would not see much of her since the game will probably play in first person too. I wonder if Chloe Moretz will continue voice-acting her.

I also wonder if Corvo will stay mute. I saw someone mentioning Corvo being their favorite video game character. I cannot comprehend that – he has no character at all! He could be a walking marshmallow! There really is no reason to leave the protagonist mute in such a game. In the DLCs, Daud has voice-acting (as he has in the main game) and it works just fine. Although, it is a bit funny if you lean while you are talking as Daud's voice will then originate from your side.

I guess being able to have conversations as your character is what makes a roleplaying game. Dishonored is not much different from DX:HR – you can choose different ways of completing the goal – but it just does not feel like an RPG. I guess there is also the lack of experience points. I suppose they are important too.

A stable PC port

Dishonored runs on the trusty Unreal Engine 3 that is very stable and light on a modern PC. The game's textures could be sharper, though. I get the graphical style they were after but I think that the maps' objects could stand closer examination better. Recent games using the same engine, like BioShock Infinite and Thief, have a noticeably higher definition in their textures.

The PC port is a good one but they could have increased the body limit on the map. (You can do that yourself with a .ini file edit, as I learned afterwards.) I thought someone had woken up the guy I had knocked out earlier the first time I noticed a body missing. They do not disappear in front of your eyes like in Deus Ex: The Fall but it is still rather upsetting in a stealth game.

You do not need to subdue enemies all that often, though. The game does not reward for and it might even cause more trouble as Dishonored's enemies have a clever feature of changing their patrol routes if they notice someone missing. On my first playthrough, all the guards inside the Overseer place ended up eventually coming, one by one, to the location where I started knocking them out.

The game's music was not particularly memorable. But how astonishingly well does the end credits song fit the game's tone! After the Outsider's ending monologue over the intro ended and the track really started, I got that same feeling as I did when Mass Effect's credits started rolling – the feeling of just having finished a great game! Honor for All by Jon and Daniel Licht is a perfect finisher for it.

Also, I need to mention that the preorder DLC completely fucks up the main game's economy with the amount of money it gives you. It reduces the game's difficulty also with a handful of non-randomized bonecharms, though their actual effectiveness is debatable. The three extra charm slots from the DLC do definitely affect the difficulty, however. Even with a total of ten slots I had hard time deciding which bonecharms I should use.

Edited 2020-04-12: Fixed a typo.