My First Hour With Dishonored

Arkane Studios and Bethesda/ZeniMax's Dishonored could shape up to be one of the biggest games of the holiday season, though I have to say my first reaction to it was that it wasn't the PC-focused offering I thought it would be. When it sank in that this was another Unreal Engine 3 game (albeit modified, I'm sure), I quickly did the math and concluded this was very likely developed with the DX9-era consoles in mind. I was expecting basically a PC exclusive pared down to run on the consoles, but this is not the case. This is another multi-platform game adjusted to give PC gamers a little extra eye candy, i.e higher resolutions. Is that a bad thing or does it make Dishonored in any way flawed? Of course not. Fears of this turning into Disillusioned are quickly dispelled as within minutes you realize the world has nice detail and atmosphere to it. It looks good, but not amazing. The visuals are attractive thanks to the imaginative work of the artists, not due to brute PC power. This means they look almost as nice on those other platforms. So you're in this for the story, the vibe, and the play. As Corvo Attano, you're Empress Jessamine's personal bodyguard, who inexplicably gets sent on a diplomatic mission to other city states to gather support for your own country, a place called Dunwall. Your home is in dire straits, beset by disease and internal strife. And rats, apparently. Why they'd send the queen's personal special forces dude on an aid-gathering mission is beyond me, surely Dunwall has diplomats? But nevertheless, you return and very quickly Jessamine is assassinated and you're taking the blame. The rest you will have to find out for yourself, and I didn't get far into the game. Corvo's a YASP (Yet Another Silent Protagonist), obviously inspired by good old Doom guy, Gordon, and that Jack person from Bioshock. While Dishonored has very little to do with Doom, it is very much inspired by City 17 as you probably heard, and bears an almost uncanny resemblance to Bioshock. As others have noted, the Thief series has also influenced development, as you can try to stay stealthy and avoid killing people, mostly security and military personnel that get in your way as far as I can tell. There are other opponents about, some ninja-like people, and Corvo gets to learn new skills, so there's some depth here. My biggest concern is that the game is much more convenient to play with the Xbox controller than with a keyboard and mouse, also suggesting the developer mindset. Additionally, in-game settings are very limited from what I could tell. Again, I'm sure there's a config file somewhere, but the game menus give you very little room to change things on your PC. That leads me to think that GTX 650 Ti we looked at a couple days ago will do just fine for this one. You should play Dishonored, it's a very artistic game laden with small and neat details that any gamer who enjoys an atmospheric outing will appreciate. It's also very playable and the dual-wield weapon system is cool. The story seems to have enough intrigue to keep you going. I've only played an hour, but I have that lovely craving to go back and keep playing it, and anyone with any experience with gaming will tell you that's the mark of a good game. A revolutionary or even really impressive achievement for PC gaming, it is not. That leaves me a little Disappointed, but certainly not Disavowed (Modern Warfare 2's favorite word, if you recall). Have fun! As always, playing this via Steam, so thanks for the super-reliable screen grabber!