Dishonored is a stealth-action hybrid from Arkane Studios, the studio behind Dark Messiah of Magic and Might, another stealth-action hybrid. The inspiration from Dark Messiah is very apparent in Dishonored both in the stealth and the action segments, most notably in the sword combat.
You play as Corvo, bodyguard to the empress of the city of Dunwall who sadly gets assassinated and her daughter kidnapped, the blame is put onto you, naturally. You then embark upon a quest for revenge against the men who did this for power. Admittedly a lot of the main characters are relatively weak and not much characterization takes place but there is some wonderful plot twists
The city of Dunwall itself is a very interesting location, the city is very industrialized and looks to be based off of late Victorian England in some sort of alternate universe industrial revolution where great minds have harnessed the power of whale oil and created amazing Tesla-like technologies. A plague is currently ravaging the city and a large portion of the population has been killed or infected forcing the somewhat dystopic rule to to kill and dump the infected. Its a cheery setting isn't it. But this really sets the tone and story for the rest of the experience, although a lot of it does depend on your choices.
Dishonored has a very interesting moral choice system in the sense that it doesn't just say "here's a good option on this side and a bad option on this side pick ok thanks now your face has more scars" Instead you are generally given a lethal and non lethal option in missions but that's not the only thing that affects potential outcomes. Your general approach to the mission also factors in, with more kills increasing your chaos level and actually affecting the city around you. Other characters also respond to what you do and how you do it, but I won't say how because that would lessen the impact of it, and some of it can really affect you as a character and a player. The game often makes you question yourself and your actions, but revealing how would just be pure spoilers.
The gameplay itself offers much variety, the game caters well to both stealth and combat gameplay, both styles are viable options for completing the game and very satisfying to play as, grizzly stealth kills and combat executions are plentiful in this game. You can dual wield your blade and something else like a grenade or a power. A lot of variety comes from the powers system. There's a variety of powers available but none of them are useless which is surprising given how many games have terrible balancing in systems like these. The powers themselves are quite diverse, ranging from teleportation to time bending to summoning swarms of rats and more. The combining of these powers can lead to some very creative ways to kill, sneak and distract, upon mastering these abilities and learning to use them fluidly the game really conveys the feeling of being a highly efficient badass very well as all the powers blend very well into each other in the heat of the moment.
Visually the game is very stylized and I really like that, you can tell what kind of character they are merely by the shape of their head, the only problem I have with the style is that all of the female characters look exactly the same apart from their clothing. The style of the city and technologies within it is very reminiscent of half life 2 with the oppressive architecture. From a technical stand point the game is about what you would expect for a game at this point in time, very pretty but nothing special
Overall I think that this game is a solid contender for GOTY, it's very immersive and the variety of playstyles it supports combined with the multiple endings means that I'm going to be spending a lot of time with this game over the next few weeks very much worth the purchase
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