I won't spend too long with this review, since probably more words have already been written about this game than I will ever care to read. But my experiences playing this game for the first time 6 years after it was released might help other people who missed the boat and are thinking about this game.

--The Good--

Don't let the hand-holding in the beginning of the game fool you. This game is all about choice and player freedom. You are given some goals and let loose in the game world to figure out for yourself how best to proceed. The level designs give you lots of variety and options, and the game systems are simple enough that they don't get in the way while also being robust enough to allow for all kinds of unexpected moments. I left this game with all kinds of war stories.

For example, in one situation I dropped down on a guard and choked him unconscious, spun around and shot a sleeping dart into another guard before he noticed, and then possessed a rat in the corner of the room. When a third guard game in to see what was going on I walked around behind him as the rat, jumped out of the rat, and knocked out the last guard. This kind of thing can happen all the time, especially if you are patient and wait for things to fall into place just right.

--The Bad--

The art style really matched the way this game played. But besides that the story was relatively weak and the world setting felt a little too similar to Bioshock at certain moments. I did feel emotionally attached to the daughter-figure character by the end though, so it was not a total loss when it came to the storytelling. And the story also didn't get in the way of the game too much (there were no long cut-scenes or monologues or anything like that). When I put down the controller I knew all I needed to know. Me assassin. Me protect princess. Plague bad. Elixir good.

--The Verdict--

In some ways I think this game plays the way Bioshock wanted to play, giving you lots of choice on how you wanted to play, with lots of opportunities to set traps, execute amazing maneuvers, and just generally have all kinds of emergent gameplay experiences. So if that's your thing you really can't go wrong with this game. It rewards even a mild amount of patience with dividends. It is also inexpensive (mine was a used PS3 disc copy for $5). Just don't expect a dazzling story, memorable characters, or an overly interesting world setting.

Choices, make your own choices. So much RPG's give you choices. What about actions, I'm not talking button press, not saying yes or no to execute a man, I'm saying gameplay choices. I'm talkin stealth, I'm talkin going loud, I'm talkin kill or no kill, I'm talking a little bit of good, a little bit of bad, straight from your actions. This game gives you that.

This game gives you so much freedom in your actual palm of your hand. If you prefer stealthing around and taking out your enemies in a methodical way, you live in their shadow while you progress through the whole game, you could. The game lets you play through so many abilities to let you achieve this in anyway you would like to, whether just simply walking behind them and knocking them out to setting traps for them to set.

But oh, if you want to go loud, use your own shadow to bring them forth to you to land into your bland. Push them with winds unseen, drop a piano on their head if you truly want to. You have the power to do so, you can even just kill them with the oh so humble crossbow. This game has it all.

This game has a great story, and so much mechanical freedom you can play this game multiple times and feel like you could've perfected the already, perfect assassination. Worth every dime.

I’m not a stealth game expert by any means, and I’m even less well versed in what people frequently refer to ‘immersive sims’. Consequently, I had no previous experience with Arkane games, but their aesthetics (first) and the fact that they are regarded as multiple approach experiences (second) always appealed to me greatly. With that in mind, I decided to go through the Dishonored trilogy back-to-back to see if it lived up to to the cult status it has acquired over the years.

One thing stuck out to me above all else. The notion that this was a stealth franchise, a genre I often struggle with, couldn’t be further from the truth. This is, above all, a ‘style and agency’ franchise, in the sense that not only do the games fully respond to how you decide to play them, they actually strongly encourage you to experiment. From there on, it’s a simple practice exercise to master your preferred play style and how much of a badass you look - and feel - doing it. This, along with its imposing atmosphere and tone setting, fully justifies delving deep into the 3 games, even though, in my opinion, the quality doesn’t necessarily keep the same level of consistency from start to finish.

I’ll be posting my thoughts on the franchise over the next few days, starting, of course, from the beginning.

The first Dishonored was obviously my introduction to the series, and because of that it took a while for me to get used to all the different systems and gameplay mechanics, which can almost feel a bit uncomfortable when you’re as unfamiliar with them as I was. About 45 minutes into it however, I was sold. It is beyond impressive how a game made in 2012 still feels so good mechanically, for the most part at least (seriously, those chains man, WTF). The sense of movement and traversal in this game is fantastic, and it strongly reminded me of the enjoyment I got out of moving around in Sunset Overdrive. Blink, in particular, is a fantastic mechanic that serves as the centrepiece highlighting just how stylish this game is. Another thing I really appreciated was how your use of some of the mechanics relate to outcome. The Heart is such an incredible and unique feature, especially in how it is able to inform and attribute righteous morality - or infamy - to your decisions, and I love how it connects with your personal choices. In fact, I love how the game makes the non-lethal approach more challenging, an interesting in-game commentary about how it takes more effort to be a ‘nice’ person than a ‘self-serving asshole’.

The level design on display is crazy good, with a ton of ways of going about things and a wide array of tools to go about them (the number of weapons, powers, bonecharms and upgrades you can experiment with is awesome). Most if not all levels excel at something I particularly enjoy and which is tied to movement and traversal: verticality. This is done in a highly competent way that I hadn’t experienced in a game quite the same way before, to the point of it feeling daunting until you learn the ropes and go through the missions in a style that most suits your preference. The fact that the upgrades are given by the runes you find ties ability progression to the amount of investment you put into your playthrough, nudging you in the direction of exploration. Which of course, the more you do, the more comfortable and familiar with the levels you become. Ranged combat is overall pretty satisfying, but melee feels quite floaty, and I thought the hitboxes were a bit all over the place. AI is also a bit hit and miss: on the one hand, I love how enemies can take so many different routes that keep you on your toes, but on the other, they often felt a bit too ‘dumb’ with how much they were able to visually miss.

Alongside the whole mechanical and level goodness, there’s this incredibly dark, attractive atmosphere, backed by a beautiful soundtrack, that permeates the entire game. The luring oil painting aesthetics look great and can often disguise some rough texture work. The story isn’t at all the highlight of Dishonored, but I still seem to have enjoyed it more than most: the intro was impactful, the political beats were actually more complex and intricate than I had thought, the dark vibe - which adjusts to how you play - was really fitting and well done, and the supernatural lore component was a nice surprise, making the narrative lean heavily into a well established and fantasised version of the occult. It comes with an anti-climatic ending and it leaves a bit to be desired in terms of unpredictability, but it was still quite enjoyable to me. More praise here needs to go to mission structure. I love how the game doesn’t throw you into the stereotypical tropes where you’re sent out to do something that invariably goes wrong. Here, you have a mission and you do exactly what you’re asked without any scripted ‘unforeseen’ events. A breath of fresh air in game writing as a whole.

To cap it all off, the DLC (which is split into two episodes but it’s essentially one package) is very strong in almost every aspect, from story to mechanics to level design, and interconnected enough to actually make me regret some of the choices I had made in the base game. There are a couple of neat new mechanics, and I feel they absolutely nailed the protagonist and the narrative that anchors him. On top of it, the very first mission features what I consider to be the heaviest emotional moment in the entire series, one that, if you’re following the story, makes you pause and truly consider the broader consequences of the society that has been created - the ones who already played the game probably know I’m talking about the whale torture moment.

Aside from the issues with combat and AI, I feel Dishonored misses a great opportunity to explore light and shadow mechanics with any significant degree of depth, which obviously impacts the stealth experience. Tied to this, I think the way it handles sound propagation is a problem (which, I suspect, is why the devs gave you extra ways of seeing exactly where enemies are). I also had the impression the game started dragging a tad longer than it needed to after a while. This, however, is more a consequence of such big levels since, if you’re not enjoying a particular mission, this can create a state of emotional detachment. Finally, I think a Dishonored recommendation needs to come with the caveat that, for you to fully appreciate this game, you may need to give it at least a couple of playthroughs and experiment with both high and low chaos. This is because, if your goal on a first playthrough is pure stealth, not knowing the levels means the potential for constant saving/reloading is quite high, therefore leading to a more frustrating experience.

If you are able to get past these problems, however, Dishonored deserves a deep dive. There is so much here to be enjoyed that I can’t really imagine anyone coming out of it without feeling fulfilled one way or another. It was an awesome introduction to the Arkane universe, and it got me really excited for the sequel. 8.5/10

Standout missions: House of Pleasure, Lady Boyle’s Last Party (I’m a big fan of Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death) and The Flooded District from the base game; A Captain of Industry (slaughterhouse level) and Delilah’s Masterwork from the DLCs.

Right up top: the score is based on my experience and not a hard and fast declaration of the quality of this game WHEN IT WORKS AS IT SHOULD.

For its aesthetics, world, and characters, I'd give this a solid three stars. I'm not fond of the storytelling style, but I'm learning that apart from the absurdity of the Wolfenstein games, nothing Bethesda/Arkane has made has actually managed to grab me. It's frustrating, too, because it's not the stories so much as how they're told. I find their approach, in general, distant and lacking in emotion—it always feels like I'm in a playset with people and not engaging with characters. This is the most successful they've been with me so far, and because I picked up all three Dishonored games as part of that bundle on PS4 I'm going to attempt to get through 2 and Death of the Outsider at some point, but jesus I need to take a break after this.

In general I adore stealth when done right. And for the record, I do think it's done right here; I just realized while playing this that I only like stealth when done in third person. I've played enough first person games to be comfortable with them, but for some reason, even after a dozen hours, the movement and systems and traversing the world just never clicked—I felt like I was still in a tutorial right at the end because it just never managed to get its teeth in me. More to the point: the feel of this game never solidified for me.

This was all exacerbated in the run up to the end where during the mission to kill the Lord Regent I was struck by an enemy and a (from what I can tell) pretty well-documented glitch entered the game—the screen held on the moment I was struck, went red, and took upwards of ten to fifteen minutes at a time to finally fade and un-blur. And the more I got struck, the worse it got. So if I got hit once in an encounter, I would be almost blind, thus meaning I would get hit more and then become totally blind. This did not ever disappear. I closed out. I shut off the system entirely. I even uninstalled and re-installed the game, and nothing rectified this. If not for the fact that I bought it over a year earlier I'd likely demand my money back as the final stretch of levels was dizzying and borderline unplayable—and actually, at times, literally unplayable.

Sadly, I cannot separate the good of this game from the rage this bug induced and how much it hampered my overall experience. It's actually the worst bug I think I have encountered in a modern console game. It's enough that when I finished I uninstalled the game entirely—I have, quite sincerely, zero desire to -ever- touch this POS again.

Still curious to try the other two games, but it will be a long damn time before I do. And when I do, I think they will be the last Bethesda/Arkane games I play. I love their shit so much on a conceptual level, but I've tried several times now and they just never manage to grab me beyond base concept. I want to love their stuff but always wind up feeling as if I'm suffering through it. This is not a studio that speaks to me on any genuine level beyond base idea, so I think I'm done.