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Dishonored (2012)
#8 of 26 (2018)
62 hours playtime
20 of 80 achievements
Dishonored (2012)
Dishonored is a game that builds a world. They almost could have called it Dunwall, after the city in which it takes place. But then it might be mistaken for an open world game (like other, elder, Bethesda-published titles named after regions). Dishonored is level-based, but gives you plenty of freedom in how you choose to handle that level. Covert stealthy assassinations, sabotage and trickery, outright open slaughter, or a completely bloodless approach are all on the table for the entire game. I was reminded of many different games while playing, and in this respect, it reminded me of the current Deus Ex games. (Even one of the earliest-encountered passcodes pays tribute to the Deus Ex inspiration.)
Every level in Dishonored has the mixed countenance of older British architectures overlaid with an intrusion of the Combine from Half-Life 2 (slabs of dark girders). And the designers wisely show off how great this style looks whether at dusk, noon, or midnight -- there's one area that you return to often that made these lighting decisions particularly noticeable. The levels are lengthy though, at least on a stealth playthrough. There are often multiple sections to traverse before you get the end-of-level stats screen, and if you're attempting a non-lethal run for the first time, that can start to feel a bit arduous.
I played the game stealthily, and non-lethally my first go around, and I don't recommend that. But part of that non-recommendation is because I began to have some sort of technical issue mid-way through. My settings would reset whenever I loaded a save (which is often, on stealth), and my achievements were no longer working. I'm not certain if this was a result of briefly switching to a keyboard for half a minute instead of a controller one day, having my Steam account open on another computer in the house, not running the game with Administrator rights, or just bad luck with a glitched savegame while rapidly saving and loading (I had one crash-to-desktop from that), but nothing I tried seemed to fix it and the settings not saving seems to be an issue a few people have had. So, my "Clean Hands" and "Ghost" achievements never popped, not to mention the Complete-the-Game achievement. Still, knowing the maps now, I will probably re-attempt those achievements later, but I'll be bypassing all the little nooks and crannies I took the time to explore on my first run. I haven't decided if my next playthrough will be that achievement attempt or a bloody massacre -- both are appealing options, and I still have the DLC content to play as well!
Dishonored also reminded me of the Batman Arkham series -- mostly because Dishonored has a Batman-esque "Detective Mode" called "Dark Vision" where you can see your enemies and important items through walls. I wish that ability wasn't so useful, since it renders the rest of the otherwise dark-but-vivid world a monochromatic sepia. Other abilities include an extremely useful "Blink" for short-distance teleportation, possession, and the ability to summon rats. These "occult" magic abilities were very reminiscent of BioShock, and you even have a mark on your hand like Booker in BioShock Infinite! Apart from Blink, the game lets you choose which (if any) abilities to acquire first -- another score for Dishonored's freedom-of-choice gameplay. I haven't used any of the more lethal abilities yet, and am looking forward to trying them out.
The giant whaling ships in the background, the fringe traces of the occult, the many books, maps, and notes to find, even the rats, and definitely the various characters you interact with (a celebrity voice cast that impressed me on seeing the credits) all work together to bring the world of Dishonored to life. I'm curious to know what other actions I could have taken that may have influenced the outcome of the story, and all of my questions weren't answered, but I was happy with the ending all the same. Arkane Studios did a magnificent job on this game, and as a result I'm that much more looking forward to playing Prey as well!
The complete GOTY edition of Dishonored (single key, of course) cost me $6 from Green Man Gaming in August 2014 -- sort of. A year before that, I won the Void Walker's Arsenal DLC on SteamGifts. But the non-DLC base game came from a very lucky price glitch on GamersGate in December 2012 when the Bethesda New Year's pack was $27.32 for a little while and additionally netted me Doom 3 BFG, Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and Oblivion, Fallouts 3 and New Vegas, Hunted, RAGE, and Rogue Warrior. (I later uselessly re-bought those two Elder Scrolls games because it was a better deal when finally getting the Skyrim DLC in a physical Elder Scrolls Anthology (also a single Steam key). In other words, I hate Bethesda DLC pricing, and I still view that price glitch as pre-emptively getting back at them for having terrible DLC pricing.)
The last time I played Dishonored was right after getting that pack and I only made it through the first level. Again, thank you to the BLAEO community for being part of the encouragement I need to get through the big worthwhile games!
Almost forgot! -- here are additional thoughts on the game from your fellow assassins Narayan, Ragnar, and adil, each with a different play style! :)
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Rusty Lake: Roots
3 hours playtime
9 of 16 achievements
Rusty Lake Roots (2016)
Recently acquired in the Humble Jumbo Bundle 11 at a BTA price of $4.90, I finished Rusty Lake Roots fairly quickly, in one sitting. It’s a great continuation of the mobile series (most of which I have played), and has a really nice focus on the people this time instead of black and white cubes. (Glancing at the achievements I missed, I think the cubes might still be in the game.) If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s basically a pleasantly disturbing and creepy room escape point-and-click type thing – a few simple puzzles and opening drawers and cabinets. I didn’t really like having to swipe the mouse side to side to scroll the scene, but the game was worth my time.
Also enjoying…
Factorio - Like Kerbal Space Program (of the past…), Factorio’s developers don’t devalue their game and I respect that. It’s been on my wishlist for years, so I just had to get it before the price increase. Liking it so far, although I didn’t expect to be controlling a character. Haven’t built a train yet, but I’ll be there soon in freeplay.
Monaco - This campaign just keeps going and going… it’s a bit exhausting. Where’s the ending?! Still fun though in local co-op, in short bursts.
Super Mario Bros. 3 - For a long time, my girlfriend has been better at this one than me (she grew up with it and I didn’t), but I might be catching up! We’ve made it to World 5 now!
Papers, Please - The Short Film is a good watch. Cool to see the game pretty much re-played in 11 minutes of nicely done movie.
Dishonored is surprisingly fun yeah, and while I also agree that a stealth playthrough is not a good way to play the game a first time, it’s for a completely different reason :D I thought it was a lot more fun to kill people, considering all the weaponry at our disposal compared to going stealth all the way.
But still, very enjoyable game, if I didn’t have such a big backlog I would probably get the sequel and play it right away.
And congrats for reaching World 5 on SMB3! It’s nice to see people still enjoying some good old Mario games!
I have a feeling the sequel will be more of the same, gameplay-wise (why change what works?), so I’m okay missing out on it for a little while to play other things. But yes, whenever I blew my cover, I would break out the knife and grenades and go on a mini rampage!
This comment was deleted about 6 years ago.
I am just starting to work through the Dishonored game myself, played it before on console and enjoyed it. Glad you enjoyed it as well. Looking forward to playing the sequel myself, do you plan on venturing to its later installments?
Most likely, yes, I’ll pick up Dishonored 2 and Death of The Outsider when they’re more affordable – it’s such a nicely-developed world, it’d be a shame not to spend some more time in it! But it sounds like the two bigger story DLCs for the original will be adventures enough on their own in the meantime. :)
Thank you for the write-up! I’ve always been intrigued by Dishonored but I kinda suck at stealth, or at least I’m a super-slow, savescumming fool when I play stealth.
Can you save anytime, or does it just use end-of-level checkpoints?
You’d need a full time janitorial team to clean up after my save scumming. Save anytime except during cinematics or, I think, mid-jump/fall. There are a limited number of save slots (20ish?), but they’re easily copied from the savegame folder if you feel limited. Because of the limited slots, and the game’s good autosaves though, I overwrote my prior saves a lot more often than usual.
If you’re not one to explore every inch of a level, read every little note, and exhaust every character’s dialog options, the levels might not feel so long. If you plan to run through and silently murder only if you have to, the levels are probably just the right length. Another part of why I’m slow in stealth is because I choke out as many people as I possibly can instead of just silently passing by. And then I have to hide the bodies (though sometimes they’ll vanish after dropping a few more), which takes more time.
Also, the stealth detection is mostly forgiving (I played on Normal difficulty), with enemy sight distance being pretty low in shadows and mostly eye-level, and you have lots of options for movement. It’s most problematic only when there’s a group, and I wasn’t sure if throwing distracting objects around would set off any alerts, so I never tried that.
Ah, good news!
Unfortunately I am that person. :p
My condolences. :) (Ahh yes, I remember you from my Deus Ex: The Missing Link review! :) )
On the positive side, the game will stop giving you a Talk indicator when a person has run out of things to say to you.
…Unless, and this is especially true with the character Piero, they will just randomly say other things when you’re nearby.
And on the down side, one of the abilities that you gain will also give you spoken information about other characters and the area you’re in. And it repeats things. But not in order. I haven’t looked closely at the achievements, but I hope to god there isn’t one for hearing everything it has to say. (It’s great for giving you more backstory though! :) )