The Mog Blog

The next big thing to come out of Bethesda is Dishonored straight from Arkane Studios. As soon as The Elder Scrolls Online presentation ended (which you can read about here), they brought out the devs of Dishonored and gave us a show about the game.

We’re placed in a world as Corvo Atano in a FPS stealth assassination game. While at first glance this may seem like any other stealth game out there, Dishonored brings itself a level of refinement and improvements from the other games out there.

Choice, of course, is always something that is waved in front of your face when showing off a stealth game. What methods will you use to get to your target? Will you murder the target? Will you murder everyone else along with the target? What about morality choices? Sure, we’ve seen this before with Deus Ex, Hitman, Thief, and a few others (and never mind that the dev team mostly consist of those that have worked on some these previous titles). However, Dishonored does take it to another level.

Playing stealthy looks very active from the demo what we’ve seen. Corvo has many tools at this disposal that range from different weapons to supernatural powers. The demo they showed us had all the abilities unlocked, but they did mention that it won’t be the case in the final game.

Each ability has its own uses. Blink allows you to teleport yourself around and it seems to be limited to your line of sight. Windblast lets you push people around or even off of places. Possession seems to be the one that prove most useful. You’re able to take control of another living object and use that as a way to move around. The dev taking control took possession of a fish in order to swim through the sewer system and allowed access to his target from underneath the compound.

Weapons range from the ganky-stabby knife to pistols that will leave a dent on anything. The kills are brutal, usually leaving the victim as a pile of meat in the end. Heads flying off, limbs being torn apart, and blood all over the place, Dishonored does not hide from the fact that it’s a bloody mature game. In a bit of a classy maneuver, we see a woman on the floor, crying in fear after assassinating the target. The dev threw down a razor grenade which spews out shrapnel that will rip through enemies right next to the woman in question and quickly turned away.

Disturbing? Yeah, it kind of was.

While it was not shown in the demo, Corvo does have the option to handle his objectives without killing anyone, including the assassination target. While this does sound contradictory to an assassin’s role, you are able to eliminate the threat of the target by potentially planting some items around to frame them and potentially get them arrested and put out of the picture by other means. This all culminates in the end as it seems to determine what ending you will get based on your moral choices.

There is a level of finesse that is required as you play through Dishonored. Charging in is almost always fatal in a stealth game. Dishonored does have a resource system in place for the abilities, so don’t think that the Blink acts as a free get away card. Careful planning and situational awareness looks to be crucial, something that has me genuinely excited to jump in, die, and learn again and again.

The gorgeous cities and the details in the interior design are all displayed in 60 FPS. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to sit down with the game, but it did seem like the demo was being run on a console setup.

Dishonored is scheduled for an October release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.