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Dishonored
There are games we like, games we admire and games we love, but every once in a while a special game comes around that feels like it was built especially for you. It's as if the designers secretly accessed the workings of your mind, determined exactly what buttons to press and levers to pull, and divined a magic formula that would capture your imagination. We've all played games that have us despising the clock, dreading that moment we have to put them down and be responsible, but these games go beyond that. They take us to the point where you forget time and fatigue even exist. As a result, you don't even realize it's past ten o'clock at night until you see the sun coming up to start a new day. For me, Dishonored was one of those games.
Too often a game's designer makes some pretty lofty promises and fails to deliver on them (I'm looking at you Molyneux). Dishonored's creators promised a lot. They promised a dynamic environment, the living city of Dunwall, where the player could uncover something interesting under every stone, where peering through keyholes would offer revealing insights into the plight of the world, and where you would be presented with sometimes difficult decisions that had real consequences on the environment itself. They were even bold enough to promise what has become the holy grail of game design: the ability to play the game however you want and still have a rewarding experience. Yes Dishonored would be a game where stealth and cunning would be your closest ally, but if you wanted to shrug all that off and charge headlong into the fray, you could play that way too, and have just as good a time.
If these claims weren't shocking enough, its designers set the bar even higher by drawing comparisons to some pretty big games including Deus Ex, Bioshock, and the Thief games. All this from Arkane Studios, a developer with very few projects under their belt.
For gamers, the biggest shock came in October when the game actually shipped, and delivered literally everything it promised. Dunwall was a fully realized city you could bend to your will. Your targets could be eliminated in many different ways, or even allowed to live if you so chose. Also, as promised, you go about your tasks mowing down anything in your path, or work quietly and efficiently, making the city either more chaotic or more stable as a result.
We awarded Dishonored a full 5 stars here at Pixlbit, and it earned every last one of them. Arcane proved itself and made Dishonored a household name in a year where franchises like Halo and Call of Duty were promising to make record sales and grab the attention of the gaming world. Whether Arcane, Harvey Smith, and company decide to visit Dunwall again or not, I sincerely hope they revisit this gameplay style in the future.
Write-up by Angelo Grant
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