Opinion: Remembering Dishonored

Isaiah Banwart/Writer

With the release of Deathloop on next-gen consoles in just over a month, it’s worth remembering how we got here. Dishonored is a first-person immersive sim action game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda released in 2012. Royal Protector Corvo Attano must rescue Empress Emily Kaldwin and return order to the Capitol of the Empire while wanted for regicide. Fortunately for him, he has a list of supernatural powers that can be snapped to as quickly as the player can manage. While he continues to fight, the Rat Plague continues to threaten the lives of every Dunwall citizen.

Sometimes subtly, others more directly, the game’s neatly crafted world will show a positive or negative change depending on how much chaos you have accumulated throughout each of the levels in the game. This is often discovered by going through apartment buildings and learning as much as you can about each resident. If you want low chaos, you can play the game like a stealth game without ever killing anyone. However, if you find yourself on a far more brutal expedition, the citizens of Dunwall will notice. Their decisions to flee in terror or cheer you on and assist you depend on how you’ve conducted yourself in the game.

As an immersive sim, Dishonored owes its mechanical lineage to a list of games including 94’s System Shock, 98’s Thief, 99’s System Shock 2, and 2000’s Deus Ex. These games placed emphasis. Sometimes subtly, others more directly, the game’s neatly crafted world will show a positive or negative change depending on how much chaos you have accumulated throughout each of the ten main levels in the game. You get chaos from killing characters, and you gain much less when using stealth to sneak by unnoticed, leaving enemies and alive, and helping strangers.

The refusal to follow the trend of photorealistic graphics kept Dishonored from dating easily in its visual presentation. Massive franchises like Grant Theft Auto contain maps that vastly outreach Dishonored. The difference is another one endemic to the principles of immersive sim design. Grant Theft Auto V‘s cityscapes, though detailed, are mostly fixed formats that can not be entered or interacted with. Dishonored uses a comparatively small mall so that it can make use of every house or building you pass by. This is increased with the verticality of the game, allowing most players an alternative root simply by glancing upwards for a place to climb.

Even now, Dishonored is impressively fun to play. The amount of options you have when correctly timing, swapping, and aiming different powers and gear lets high-skilled players create fantastic and cinematic scenes. Myself, I have my own anecdotes from playing the series. Finding your own solutions to the game’s puzzles, unexpected humor and tragedy, precise combat, limitless speedrun potential, and a critical piece of the continuation of the immersive sim genre await those willing to return to Dunwall.