Graphically, Dishonored is pretty stunning. The visuals are very stylised. Character skin textures kinda look painted, like an oil painting brought to life. The city of Dunwall looks pretty amazing, with partially destroyed or flooded building and everything looks grimy. It really gives the feeling of despair in a rat infested, plague-ridden cesspool of a city. It looks closest to a Victorian period city and the guards dress in what looks like imperial uniform. Most things appear to be from the period but there are machines, which look much more advanced and give it a sci-fi feel. The most impressive looking enemy are the “tallboy,” which are gas-mask wearing guards who patrol on stilts and are armed with rockets. The animation is smooth and appears to be pretty much glitch free.
For those who like a good story in their game, I won’t say much in case I spoil it for you, but although it’s not amazing, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed and If you don’t mind a bit of reading, there are books scattered around the city to fill it out a bit.
I can’t really give any negatives without feeling that I’m nit-picking and finding positives from it. The main one is that it feels a bit short. If you just stick to the main missions I’m sure it can be finished quite quickly. There are side missions but there are only one or two to each main mission and they often relate to your main objective. Saying that, they can provide you with an alternative to completing your goal and give you a different story outcome. There was a few missions where I was backtracking quite a bit and in the same buildings as the mission before, but later the city opens up a lot more.
I’m not sure exactly how many hours it took me to complete the game but I finished it within a weekend. Saying that, it’s just as big as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Metal Gear Solid and other games of this genre, especially if cut out the long drawn out cutscenes (yes, I’m referring to you MGS). See, I’ve already found a positive from that; cut scenes are at a minimum and are mainly just there to give you details on the job at hand, not just some over-the -top cinematic action, you feel you should be playing, not watching. Also, there is some replayability as you can play again taking different routes, approaches and see the story outcome change, gaining new game achievements as you go.
Secondly, there aren’t many weapons. You just have a sword, pistol and a crossbow. The latter does have alternative ammo times though. Saying that, it may be to keep the gameplay simple as you have the magical abilities in addition to them.
Finally, in the last few missions you can gain a lot more gold than in previous ones but there doesn’t appear to be anywhere to spend it and there are still plenty of equipment upgrades you’ll want. I can’t find a positive for that one. That sucked!
Bethesda games have a reputation for being riddled with bugs. Amazingly, I only encountered one. It was quite a big one, however as mission giving NPC attacked me for no reason just after briefing me on the next objective of the chain. I had to kill him.
Overall, this is an essential experience and although the some of game areas can be fairly limiting (by that I just mean it’s not free-roaming as each area is usually mission specific), the amount of different ways you can approach each task gives so much freedom. It also never gets frustrating, which I find is often the case in most other stealth games I’ve played. It may not last as long as you may want it to but maybe because it is so hard to put down once you start that you’ll just fly through it. Great visuals, great gameplay and fairly decent story.One of the best games I’ve played this year and although not highly original, it’s not just another sequel in some long standing, overdone franchise. Go get it!
