Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Agent 47, the main character of the Hitman franchise, had been granted supernatural abilities which he could use freely while carrying out his assassination contracts? Well, if so, a game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda in 2012 called Dishonored might very well be the closest thing we’ll ever have to an answer to that question. Throughout this article, I’ll do my best to illustrate why I strongly believe Dishonored is worth your time, even if you’re not a fan of game franchises such as Hitman or stealth games in general.

I suppose I shall begin by discussing the plot of Dishonored in as much detail as I feel is appropriate, though I certainly won’t spoil anything. Your character is Corvo Attano, the highly-trusted Lord Protector (essentially a needlessly fancy way of saying “bodyguard”) of the Empress of the Isles Jessamine Kaldwin, as well as her daughter, Emily. The game begins with your return to Dunwall after being sent on a diplomatic mission meant to acquire aid from other nations in dealing with the “rat plague,” which is basically Dunwall’s somewhat different version of the Black Death.

A few short moments after you reunite with Emily and the Empress, the three of you are suddenly assailed by mysterious, almost ethereal assassins. Despite your best efforts to fight these assassins off, the Empress is mortally wounded and Emily is kidnapped. With her final few breaths, the Empress instructs you to find and protect Emily. You would surely have begun the process of doing so posthaste, if not for the fact that you’re immediately accosted by several guards and the royal spymaster, the latter of whom is all too eager to falsely accuse you of murdering the Empress and abducting Emily.

Six months after these events, you regain control of Corvo as he sits in his cell within a prison known as Coldridge. Corvo is scheduled to be executed the following day for his alleged deeds. That is, of course, unless he somehow manages to escape captivity before then. Fortunately for you, one of the prison guards brings you a meal, which you’re told comes from “a friend.” Included with the meal is the key to your cell and a message from the same anonymous “friend” providing instructions for going about escaping the prison.

The process of escaping from the prison serves as something of a tutorial that intends to briefly teach you about the potential differences within the game world which are directly influenced by your actions and play style. That’s just one aspect of the “player choice” system present within Dishonored, which I will discuss in more detail at a later point within this review. After you escape from the prison, you meet Samuel Beechworth, a boatman who introduces himself by explaining that he works “for some good people who want very much to meet you.”

You then proceed to board Samuel’s boat in order to be escorted to your new allies, and perhaps meet this anonymous “friend” of yours. Samuel takes you to the Hound Pits Pub, the base of operation wherein Samuel’s employers are awaiting your arrival. Once there, you’re introduced to the rest of your new allies: Admiral Havelock, Lord Treavor Pendleton, and Piero Joplin. These three refer to themselves as loyalists to the empire and the late Empress. They never doubted Corvo’s innocence of the crimes of which he was accused; to that end, they intend to help Corvo clear his name and restore order to the empire by bringing about the coronation of Emily Kaldwin, rightful heiress to the throne, as Empress.

Havelock and Pendleton are the two most often responsible for planning your next moves. Piero, on the other hand, is the group’s inventor and resident brilliant mind. In exchange for any money you collect on your travels, Piero will supply you with such things as weapons, ammunition, potions, and upgrades to many components of your equipment. Piero also crafts you a unique mask in order to conceal your identity, strike fear in the hearts of your enemies, and somewhat enhance your abilities if you happen to choose to invest in upgrading it.

After meeting Piero, receiving your mask, and perhaps purchasing a crossbow bolt or two, your objective is to head to a bedroom that’s been prepared for you and sleep off your presumed exhaustion. That may very well sound anticlimactic and/or boring, all things considered. However, I assure you, it’s at this point that things truly start to get interesting.

You might be wondering why, at the beginning of this review, I brought up the idea of Hitman’s Agent 47 somehow acquiring and using supernatural abilities to his advantage while carrying out a contract. Well, I hope you’ll indulge me for awhile as I explain my reasoning for posing such an unusual question. You see, as you sleep away your first night in the Hound Pits Pub, you awaken to find that something seems off about your current situation.

It turns out that you’ve been summoned to “the void” by a higher power known as the Outsider. The Outsider knows of everything you’ve been through and, more to the point, what you’ll end up going through in the very near future as you work with the loyalists. Because of this, the Outsider declares that he has “chosen” you to bear his mark (which manifests as a tattoo on your hand) and, thus, receive certain supernatural abilities.

The first ability granted to you by the Outsider is called Blink, which allows you to quickly and stealthily teleport a short distance. After putting you through a short “obstacle course” of sorts to get you accustomed to using this ability, the Outsider explains that he expects you to begin searching for and collecting runes which bear his mark. These runes will “grant you powers beyond those of other men.” To aid you in your search for these runes, the Outsider gives you another gift in the form of “the heart of a living thing.” The Heart will alert you when one such rune is nearby and help guide you to a rune’s location if you equip the Heart in your left hand.

These runes will allow you to unlock additional abilities, as well as upgrade abilities you’ve already unlocked if you have enough runes to do so. For example, the first power I chose to unlock with my first rune is called “Dark Vision.” The initial, non-upgraded version of it allows you to see enemies and their fields of vision through walls and other obstacles. There are several other unlockable powers which can prove to be quite useful indeed. These powers can range from summoning a swarm of rats which aid you in combat, to causing enemies you kill to instantly turn to ash (thus preventing their bodies from being discovered), and manipulating time itself.

After the Outsider returns you to the “realm of the living,” for lack of a better phrase, you are instructed to head downstairs and see Admiral Havelock. At this point, he assigns you your first task; in doing so, he also explains much of what you’ll be doing for the rest of the game. As you learned before you escaped prison, enemies of the empire are actively conspiring to put one of their own people on the throne once occupied by the late Empress. Your general objectives are to locate and protect Emily Kaldwin, then eliminate any challenge to her coronation by ridding Dunwall of the conspirators against the empire, piece by piece.

That explanation concludes my rather long-winded discussion of Dishonored’s plot and leads me nicely to my next point. I mentioned earlier in this review that Dishonored contains what it refers to as a “play your way” system with many aspects to it. I’d like to spend awhile discussing that system, some of its various parts, and give a couple of reasons as to why I wholeheartedly believe the system as a whole is quite well-developed and well-implemented. To begin this discussion, allow me to present one of the more significant aspects of the system by directing your attention to something I said just a moment ago.

I presented the idea that you must “rid” Dunwall of the conspirators against the empire. You’ll notice I did not explicitly say you must assassinate them, or even cause them any degree of harm. To the best of my knowledge, it is entirely possible to finish the main campaign of Dishonored without killing a single NPC, not even your designated assassination targets. This process is commonly called a “no-kill run,” and it’s a major aspect of the game’s so-called “play your way” system at work.

The idea that Dishonored can be finished without a single casualty caused directly by players may raise a question, however: if these targets need to be eliminated, but not necessarily killed, how can this be accomplished? Well, every mission contains a nonlethal way to dispose of your targets; you just have to find it. I’ve found that these methods are usually initiated by talking to certain NPCs. These methods, in my experience, typically aren’t very easy to discover, and may well be more difficult to successfully pull off than just assassinating your targets. That will likely require players attempting a “no-kill” run to explore more than they may have originally intended to. I concede that this can be frustrating, but it’s also worthwhile more often than not.

For example, in the second mission, my targets were Lord Pendleton’s older twin brothers. Before I began the mission, Samuel the boatman suggested that I consider seeking out a gang leader known as “Slackjaw,” as he might know of a way for me to enter the building containing my targets that wasn’t as heavily-guarded as the main entrances. I then made it a point to meet with Slackjaw, who proceeded to propose a deal: if I would get him the combination to a wealthy art seller’s safe, he would make sure “no one will see [my targets] again,” but explicitly promised not to kill them. Conversations with certain NPCs like this potentially lead to these hidden nonlethal elimination methods, in my experience.

Why might you potentially want to strive for one of these “no-kill runs,” then? Well, aside from the sheer challenge of doing so and the achievements with which you might be rewarded, it turns out that killing as few NPCs as possible will likely make things easier for you as you go about your work in later missions. To elaborate, killing many NPCs in an earlier mission may generate more enemies, such as voracious plague rats and still-living victims of the plague known as “weepers,” in later missions.

If this occurs, you’ll have to deal with the aforementioned “weepers” and swarms of rats (the latter of which are the bane of my existence, personally) before they draw unwanted attention to you, or possibly even kill you if you aren’t careful. Additionally, aside from your killing spree potentially generating more enemies down the line, killing NPCs generates what the game refers to as “chaos.” If your chaos level is too high, some NPCs may react to you in a hostile manner, or several other aspects of the game might change based on your actions. Remaining unseen and limiting the amount of NPCs you kill are the best ways to keep your chaos level low.

Of course, if a particular guard or other NPC is preventing you from going about your work, you can still rectify this issue in a nonlethal manner. If you can safely approach the nuisance NPC from behind, you can perform a nonlethal takedown. If close-quarters takedowns are too risky, you can also acquire sleep darts for your crossbow in order to knock out enemies at range. Either way, I would still highly advise doing your best to hide dead or unconscious bodies in order to raise less suspicion and prevent unconscious NPCs from being woken up.

To conclude, I’d like to emphasize how much I’ve enjoyed Dishonored. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game partly because of the near-total freedom granted to me by the “play your way” system; but also because of its similarities to the Hitman franchise, of which I am a massive fan. I have many fond memories of most Hitman titles, and playing Dishonored has managed to elicit the same degree of joy within me that I’ve had filling Agent 47’s shoes.

That’s due to not just how the two franchises are alike, but also how Dishonored’s differences from the Hitman formula allow the game to build upon the standards by which I personally determine what is and is not an enjoyable stealth game. I may not be playing as the world’s baldest contract assassin in this case, but I can assert with the utmost confidence that I’m just as entertained and happy playing as Corvo instead.

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Dishonored

$27.99

9.1

Score

9.1/10

Pros

• "Play Your Way" System Provides Near-Total Player Agency
• Open World is Enjoyable and Rewarding to Explore
• Different Play Styles Provide Significant Replayability
• Violence is Not Mandatory

Cons

• Certain Aspects Could Be Explained More Clearly

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