Review – Dishonored

Action/Stealth

The bed-chambers of Buckingham Palace must be copiously supplied with blindfolds!

Mark

Say, do you remember Thief? Well, Arkane Studios sure as shit do as what we have here is a fully-fledged ‘spiritual sequel’ complete with all the modern bells and whistles you’d expect from a modern stealth-action game.  Set in the steampunk-flavoured city of Dunwall, you take the role of Corvo, former royal bodyguard-turned-assassin charged with uncovering the shadow conspiracy that framed you for murder, kidnapping and high treason. You do this with an arsenal of steampunk weaponry including traditional swords, flintlock pistols and crossbows along with more exotic fare like razorwire trip-mines, not to mention your supernatural powers.

Oh yes, you’re not just some pleb with a fancy mask, you can wield the dark arts and blink (read: teleport) short distances, possess rats, see through walls and even read minds. Mix in a healthy dose of parkour-style platforming and exploration and some open-ended level design and you’ve got Thief 4 in all but name, which I’m sure you’ll agree is no bad thing.

Steampunk: Hard to caption.

That’s not to say it’s perfect.  Far from it. The game has a rather heavy-handed morality system that can only see in black and white and the combat is a little too easy for seasoned sneakers when utilising Corvo’s entire arsenal. All that will quickly be forgotten though when you get stuck in, as Dishonoured‘s biggest draw, for me, is Dunwall itself.

Sure it’s built on a skeleton that’s a bastard mix of Steampunk Victoriana, Herman Melville prose and Middle Ages shit-caked hovels but all the fine details like the hundred of miscellaneous notes, books and dairy entries to be read along with character monologues both spoken and mind-read make a single cohesive setting that’s just screaming out for sequels that go further a field, perhaps to the shores of Pandyssia?

Is it worth your shekels? Well if you like stealth-action and can’t be arsed with pretentious modern fare like Splinter Cell be sure to grab a copy as soon as otherwise hang on until the inevitable post-Christmas price drop.

Rating: 8/10