One Life Left: Dishonored

Something strange has happened to the stealth game genre this generation. While there have been plenty of stealth games, from entirely new franchises (Assassin’s Creed) to new installments of older series (Splinter Cell and Hitman), all these games had something in common: they weren’t really stealth games. Sam Fischer, the grizzled veteran from the Splinter Cell games, took from hiding in the shadows with his signature triple-lens night vision goggles to joining a terrorist organization in Double Agent and then hanging out in broad daylight in Conviction.

Assassin’s Creed has you running across rooftops and hiding from guards, literally, by sitting on benches and by “blending in” in crowds where any individual with even slight situational awareness would be able to pick you out.

Then, we have Dishonored. Dishonored is a first person stealth game created by the French developer Arkane Studios. The first thing I want to point out about the game is this: do not let the Bethesda sticker on the box confuse you. The minds behind Skyrim and Fallout 3 did not develop this game, but that is by no means a bad thing.

Dishonored casts you in the role of Corvo, the royal bodyguard of the empress of the city of Dunwall, a steampunk, whale-oil powered city that is slowly succumbing to a plague that turns its victims into “weepers,” zombies that cry blood.

Since there is no hope for a cure, things only get worse as the empress is killed and you are framed for it.

Luckily a group of loyalists busts you out of jail and recruits you to slowly undermine the new Lord Regent’s illegitimate rule by assassinating various political targets.

But the loyalists are not your only ally. You also meet “the outsider”, a dark deity who enjoys giving random strangers his blessing by giving them special powers.

With your new equipment, mask and supernatural powers, you’re ready to take on whatever Dunwall can throw at you.

The missions have you exploring a portion of the city while trying to track down your target and take him or her out. The game is in first person, something I’ve always considered incredibly awkward for stealth games, but the vertical level design gives players plenty of opportunities to find alternative paths to reach their objective.

Actually, the entire game is designed in such a way that you could finish the entire thing and not kill a single enemy. If you’ve been paying attention, you would know that your targets must be assassinated in order for the loyalists to succeed.

Interestingly enough, that is never the case. All of your assassination missions have non-lethal ways to incapacitate your target, which require a bit of extra work from the player. But sometimes, these non-lethal consequences can sometimes even be worse than death; for instance, allowing a target to fall to the hands of an obsessed kidnapper, or permanently taking away their livelihood.

Now, it may be silly to not try to kill guards and whatnot in a game in which you play an assassin, but the game does something really interesting with this concept. The more people you kill, the harder the later missions become (security gets ramped up as word of your various massacres spread). The plague also spreads faster and the player will receive a worse ending.

The weapons and items you’re given are fun to use, as you will be given tools of the trade for both lethal and non-lethal takedowns. A personal favorite of mine were the slightly-too-convenient sleeping darts, great for non-lethally taking down enemies from afar.

The game’s greatest strength is its atmosphere. As you explore the city, it really feels as if an unseen sense of hopelessness and dread controls everything around you. Even as the city crumbles, those of the upper class and aristocracy still continue to cling to whatever wealth they have left.

The atmosphere and character designs look a lot like BioShock, which is not a bad thing, as Arkane Studios have constantly said that BioShock was a major inspiration for them. However, there was one thing about the characters that always unnerved me: their hands are terrifyingly enormous.

The ending closes everything off well. Personally I hope to see more games set in the Dishonored universe, but I feel Corvo’s story is over and I would like to explore the other cities briefly mentioned throughout the story.

When you finish the story mode, the game gives you a fantastic mission select mode so you can go back and try your missions some other way. If you want to, you can even play this game like a typical first person shooter. But let’s be honest, if you do that, you’re playing the game wrong.