Random Retro Review: Dishonored

[IamLEAM1983]

Hoboy. Saying you're actually enjoying the new Thief reboot seems like a sure-fire way to trigger Anime-worthy nosebleeds, in some communities. If you happen to think Eidos Montreal did an okay job, you're a shitstain on wheels who represents everything that's wrong with the gaming industry.

Talk about being aggressive!

So. Let's look back on everyone else's darling of two years past, Dishonored.

I hate to say this, but I've never been particularly hopeful of what French game design houses can cook up. Past experiences have taught me to be leery of anything with Larian Entertainment (of Divinity series fame) or Arkane Studios (of Dark Messiah) associated with them. They're absolute kings when it comes to world-building, but the process of iterating gameplay on top of that world is where they trip all over themselves. Larian suprised me with Dragon Commander, I'll admit, and Arkane put on a very brave and competent face when they first announced Dishonored, which would be backed by my personal darlings – Bethesda Softworks.

In 2012, Eidos' Thief reboot had slipped away into vaporware status and wasn't on anyone's mind, at this point. This allowed Arkane Studios to swoop in, fresh with new talent and a new publishing deal, and smugly sit on the perch Garrett had occupied as of 2002's Thief : Deadly Shadows.

You played as Corvo Attano, the Knight-Protector to Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, ruler of the walled industrial city of Dunwall. That city exists in a world where Victorian design conceits coexist with sword-and-shield combat and ornate Steampunk rifles and pistols, where whales are so big and plentiful as to be able to power an entire industrial revolution on their blubber alone. Unfortunately, it's also a world tense with internal political strife, with the Empress' own spymaster pushing for an aggressive and retaliatory stance towards the offences of neighboring city-states. She refuses to consider his advice, citing the growing presence of an epidemic in the fringes of the megalopolis. The sick and the dying are inherently more of a concern to her than the Spymaster's thinly-disguised glory-hogging desires.

What has to happen, well, happens – the Empress is murdered by cloaked figures and her daughter is taken away – and the Spymaster happens to be foolhardy enough to gloat at you during your “interrogation”. Read torture, of course. Quicker than you can say “Revenge Plot” and “retrieving your honor”, you're freed by a sympathetic someone and left to your devices. While the game is structured in a strict series of levels, each level is essentially a playground designed to let you mess with Corvo's impressive acrobatic abilities. Soon afterwards, a shadowy supernatural entity known as the Outsider bestows you its mark, conferring you impressive latent supernatural abilities. Some will unlock on a chapter-required basis, such as the all-purpose Blink power, while others need to be researched or obtained with a bit of side-questing.

From that point on, you'll start to feel just how torn up the game happens to be. On the one hand, the story and setting, along with your end-of-mission briefings, all indicate that going for a no-frills and no-kills approach will net you the best potential outcome. On the other hand, your weapons handler and the Outsider both conspire to give you an impressive, versatile and entertaining array of tools and powers.

Too frazzled to line up your shots adequately? No problem, just shoot straight in front of you, freeze time, possess your misaligned target and walk it in front of the immobilized bullet trails. Unfreeze time and bam, instant death. Are you stuck dealing with a guy who's spotted you and who's too big to take down in a straight duel? Blink behind him and use the Rat Swarm power to go all Nosferatu and command Dunwall's rodents to devour him alive in a cloud of swarming and disease-ridden brown fur and dark little eyes. You can also set traps pre-emptively using mines and wire-trailing bolts and lure your unsuspecting target into your impromptu minefield. If killing is your business, then business is going to be oh-so-very good.

What if you want to play it like the Mahatma, though? Well, let's see... You've got a wall-piercing enhanced sight, the unlockable ability to see an enemy's cone of vision, Blink and, uh... a couple shadows. Corvo carries a cross between a jack-knife and a sword, but it's rendered moot by your no-kills approach. So, um...

Parry, dodge, parry, spin – and flee. Then Blink a few storeys away so the guards forget your face, then Blink back down to the shadows to try again. Yay!

Oh, but you've got sleeping darts, so that's fine, right?

Nope, because those darts only travel the third of a bullet's distance. Awesome.

This means you have to choose between having fun and setting yourself up for a potentially difficult run. It doesn't seem entirely fair to me, as there's a few non-lethal uses I could think of for the Outsider's powers. Say you get spotted; you could possess the guard who runs after you and force him to run away, or at least ride him far and long enough away so that he loses track of you by the time you let him go. If his colleagues don't know he's been possessed, they could try and follow him, assuming he's leading them to the intruder he's spotted.

Is that part of the feature set, though? Nope. Either you're a ghost and you use a third of the game's provided arsenal, which nets you the Positive ending, or you're a whirling abomination of a homicidal dervish, and that gives you the Negative ending. There's no gray area, no will to compromise, no understanding that most players will experiment with the game's mechanics. Even the simple act of being spotted or slipping out of stealth counts as a Chaos-generating action, in the game's mind. With the game's muddled interface for the Observer's powers, it's painfully hard to stick to snap judgments in power sets and required abilities on a moment-to-moment basis.

So either you play it like Thief or like Bioshock. If you're the type who'd want a more measured and all-purpose approach, then screw you. Using the game's tools makes you a bad person. A bad, baaad person. If you don't and somehow are the type of gamer who likes to castigate himself pre-emptively, then yay! A Good Ending is You!

This, honestly, is why I can't agree with anyone who nominated Dishonored as a Game of the Year nominee for 2012. It's inherently judgemental in its approach and glorifies the “pure stealth” runner as the only player archetype who's going to understand the game, to appreciate it for what it's worth.

Then, if that's the case, Arkane; why stick so many lethal options in to begin with?! The boring answer is that they're trying to encourage replays, but the insult is still there. The statement of value is still there. You're the only rebel who's daring to work his trade in a corrupt city in order to free its populace, and actually removing individuals who are far more reprehensible than you somehow happens to be a problem? Corvo isn't implied to have Batman's emotional issues, here – these are people who have killed thousands of innocents during Corvo's wrongful imprisonment. I think I can be excused for ventilating a few of them. If not, quite frankly, all of them.

Otherwise, the narrative and ethically preachy hurdles of the game design are joined by another aspect which I considered faulty, which would be the texture work. Official blurbs described Dishonored as having a “painterly” look, but all I personally saw were textures that looked pretty from a distance, but that lost their lustre as soon as you stood too close to them. This is especially the case in corridors or small interiors – and in fact, in nearly any circumstance in which there's some texture work to be noticed close to the root of Corvo's field of view. Characters, especially, all have a fairly muddy skin tone that doesn't so much evoke aesthetic choice to me, as it does a lack of certainty or skill. It feels as though the art team cut corners in order to preserve memory or to justify the inclusion of a few glaring low-res elements, here and there.

Past that, the story is bog-standard. The Good Ending has you punish the Spymaster for his hubris and the Outsider thank you for nabbing his desired catch, while the Bad Ending has you... punish the Spymaster and then receive a horrified look of sheer disgust from Emily Kaldwin.

Yes, kid, I killed people to get to you. What did you expect, I'm Dunwall's personal Brian Mills – of course I'm going to murder people!

The voice talent is okay at best, on the other hand. The Spymaster's animation sets and general design both scream “Evil, Scheming Motherfucker” from the first second you set eyes on him, to the point where I had to question the Empress' wisdom in keeping a guy like that around. His voice actor seals the deal by packing faux righteousness and evil relish into the proceedings. Yes, game, I know this is the bad guy. Yes, I'll kill him.

Repurposed SS leather longcoat design over a Victo uniform? Yeah. Totally not an important antagonist.

Wait, what? You don't want me to kill him? Oh, I get it – higher principles and all that. Right. There's a kidnapped child in the rinks and I'm just going to sidle along in the shadows like a good boy. Absolutely. Uh-huh.

Otherwise, Brad Dourif voices your weapons handler and, as general, he appears to generally not give a shit. Bethsoft somehow managed to wrangle Game of Thrones' Lena Headey into playing the role of a former confidante of Corvo's, but there's not much to do with that when the protagonist happens to be silent. She also appears to be showing up for the paycheck.

That was a GOTY contender for 2012, I'll remind you, and it won some of these awards. A whole lot of the same package is in the new Thief reboot, and people bitch and moan. Thief executes the same basic gameplay beats in a more elegant fashion and doesn't insult the player's intelligence – and it got torn apart.

The mind boggles.