Having sidestepped Dishonored for a while while a host of other pre-Christmas blockbusters crammed the shelves, I decided New Year's Day was a good time to explore this brave new world. The world of Dunwall is a curious amalgam of Dickensian squalor, Regency splendour and steampunk apocalypse.
You play Corvo, the resourceful bodyguard of the Empress and within the opening few minutes the Empress is assasinated, her daughter Emily kidnapped and you are thrown into prison, wrongfully accused of the murder. As with Oblivion, The Witcher 2, Skyrim and Far Cry 3, you start the game escaping from captivity but right from the off you learn there are many ways to achieve your ends.
Achievements are rewarded if you can get though a mission without killing anyone and by using stealth alone. This is undoubtedly the toughest course but the most satisfying if you can pull it off. The main joy of Dishonored is the open-ended gameplay that lets you explore this magnificent town in a number of ways while plotting your next move.
Dunwall itself is in the grip of a plague which has left whole areas in ruins, flooded and occupied by lethal rats and the equally deadly 'weepers' - infected humans who act like zombies. If that wasn't bad enough, the polluted waterways contain flesh-eating fish and rotting canals and alleyways hide poison-spitting plants.
Living in this murky subculture are bandits, thieves and killers who will atack for coin or sport - although occasionally deals can be struck. On the plus side, a small band of Loyalists are holed up in a riverside pub and it's their plan to use your fighting and stealth skills to overthrow the traitorous Lord Regent and his cohorts and restore the status quo.
In addition, there's a quasi-divine figure known as the Outsider who appears to Corvo early on and endows him with special abilities to top up his melee and range skills. This is where we stray into BioShock territory, as your powers include limited teleportation, seeing though walls, a force blast to push enemies off walls and time freeze. My personal favourites were undoubtedly the fun of sending a horde of rats to attack and annihilate enemies plus turning unsuspecting foes to ash.
There is huge replay potential here in exploring a vast range of ways of combining basic weaponry skills (crossbow, pistol, sword) with exploding ammo and your 'supernatural' gifts. As with Skyrim, there's also a degree of moral choices you can make that effect the eventual outcome and a fair number of side quests you can pursue for more upgrades. The Outsider upgrades happen after collecting runes (i.e. artefacts, rather than Skyrim's Nordic letters) and minor improvements are possible when you discover bone charms.
Because there are not enough runes scattered round the map for you to fully upgrade all your powers, decisions also have to be made about how you 'load' your abilities. This also applies to ammo and weapon upgrades which are only made possible via coin purchases at the Hounds Pit Pub workshop. Techno geeks will also appreciate the rewiring tool that can turn lethal light walls to your advantage and you can even possess rats and humans to avoid detection in crowded places.
The more you explore Dunwall the more you feel truly part of this decadent, treacherous but often startlingly beautiful world. The voice acting throughout is excellent - any game that boasts performances by Susan Sarandon, Michael Madson, Carrie Fisher and Lena Headey is always on to a winner - and there are several plot twists and surprise reveals to keep you guessing to the end. As with any great composition, you will find a few bum notes - the Outsider should have had a much more weighty role and the ending lacks a wow finish - but if you've somehow missed Dishonored in all the Spec Ops 2, Assassins Creed 3 and Far Cry 3 cacophony, you need to go back and unearth this crazy diamond.
Score: 4.5/5
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