Dishonored its one of my personal favorite stealth games. This is the first game of the series created by Arkane Studios and published Bethesda.
The story in the game instead of morality its focused on chaos the more destructive and violent your actions are the more the game turns to be pessimistic. In the opposite its more optimistic and hopeful and your endings will vary depending on your actions. Chaos in the game means that your allies will be more wary about you and you will find a lot more enemies to deal with due to the high chaos.
The story goes Corvo Attano who has just returned to find a cure of the ongoing rat plague in Dunwall after delivering the message suddenly an attack happens and the Empress is killed and her daughter kidnapped. Suddenly Corvo is framed and he escapes prison to join up with the loyalists in order to find out who really was responsible and to save Emily and bring her as the rightful heiress to the throne.
You can play the game in any way you like with going in heads on or through stealth you don't even have to kill targets you can also make them befall accidents which they get poetic justice in ironic ways like branding one priest a heretic or exposing the mastermind of the entire conspiracy by playing his audio recording on the air which he ends up being arrested by his own guards. In addition, you can get through the entire game without killing should you choose to take the pacifist route.
You have a wide array of gadgets and void magic to help you in your mission and they are fully optional and each of your abilities can be upgraded by finding runes to help you unlock upgrades for your abilities. Void magic can be used for traversal,stealth and combat and you can improvise them in anyway you like and combine them together for whatever think should be the best way possible.
Objectives can be completed in any order and there are various ways to complete them thanks to the complete freedom you have. You can also kill enemies in various ways by sabotaging traps so they accidentally kill themselves or by using your gadgets to violently kill them. The killcams in the game are brief yet highly violent I like how up-close and personal they feel. The combat in the game is intricate you can use your sword or your gadgets and magic to help you and there is a variety of enemies to fight from guards, gang members, hounds and zombie like plague victims in the game each with their own strategies to take them out.
It does take time to get used to controlling your character as it can be quite intimidating exploring the world and having all this freedom given to you. But, i enjoyed the complete freedom the game gives you to play how you see fit.
The world of Dunwall is inspired by Edinburgh in Victorian London and the world is this steampunk fantasy setting and it's also gritty and dark to it as well. The world itself also tells a visual story as you explore sections of Dunwall you find more and more of the amoral dark side of the city and how life is under the Lord Regent. It shows how well the art direction was in the game mixing both steampunk and fantasy at the same time.
The game is not open world but its more open ended as you can explore the entirety of a level in one sitting and its actually good to get lost in the game as you can also find collectibles that are worth coins and find food to restore health along with potions to help restore your health and mana which is for your void magic and its recommended to do so in order to understand the world.
The graphics in the game are good its on a much higher resolution and the style of graphics works quite well with the art style and dark nature of the game.
The game has a lot of replayable value you can replay missions to see what other ways to complete objectives and find other collectibles that you might have missed.
I like the individual narratives on each of the targets you have to take out and the overarching story I just wished it was a bit more focused on how each of this is connected to the main conspiracy that is behind the events. And it can be predictable as well at times which removes the surprise of how your actions play out to be in the game.
The characters aren't saints even you in the game can have good intentions yet also a shadowy motive behind it as part of the amoral world you live in.
I like how silent Corvo is as he feels like you’re the main character in the game and whatever thoughts you have are his thoughts in the game. He is one of the most mysterious shadowy and deadly characters in the game.
Another character is this amoral god known only as "The Outsider" who gifts you your magical powers and observes all of your actions and whenever you interact with his shrine he makes remarks about your progress so far.
As the game is the definitive edition additional dlc is included giving you even more replayble value to the game.
The musical score in the game its dreary and haunting perfect for a somber game like this.
I really liked this game alot
The game gets 5 stars
I enjoyed this game a lot and the series itself is always ambiguous and always no definite answers can be given to part of the mystery of the world you are in. I do recommended this if you are into immersive sims,stealth games and fantasy games.