Nikki Reviews: Dishonored - Contains Spoilers!

Dishonored for Xbox360 - Contains Spoilers!
Almost completed

About two years ago I was watching my ex boyfriend’s brother play this pretty cool game. The name of it was Dishonored. I really liked the way that you could teleport from place to place but never actually asked to play the game. Around 6 months ago I started getting curious, so Lucas and I decided to get the game for our Xbox 360 and that was when I started my adventure as Corvo.

Overview of the game

The game starts out the same every time, you play as Corvo, the last bodyguard to the Empress, who has just returned to her in the city of Dunwall. Now if you want complete surprise while playing the game skip to the next paragraph as I'm going to talk about what happens in the beginning of the game. About five minutes into the game these teleporting assassins come in and kill the Empress and then steal her daughter Emily. You can try to fight off these assassins but it’s honestly to no avail so don’t feel bad when they kill her anyways. It’s just how the story goes. Naturally the assassins all disappear and you are left there to get framed for the murder and get put in prison. On the eve of Corvo’s planned execution you get Corvo out of prison and end up coming across this person called The Outsider who grants you supernatural powers like Teleportation.

If you only get one thing from this review let it be that Dishonored gives you options. There are different ways you can play the game while still following the same story line. You can clear the entire game without killing anyone (even though a lot of people seriously want you dead). If you want to use a blade, you can. If you want to use a bow and arrows, you can do that too. You can even just use magic. As you go through the game you can find different items that will help with making Corvo stronger. Bone Charms and Runes will help you upgrade your ability and equipment. In fact each playthrough of Dishonored will give you 26 random Bone Charms to collect out of the 35 Bone Charms that exist. That’s right, it picks them at random making no gameplay exactly the same. Bone Charms will be in the same places every time but the charm itself will be random.

The game follows a Chaos system, it tracks what moves you make as Corvo, the more destructive Corvo is, the more chaotic the world around you becomes. I really love this aspect because it’s really realistic. If you just leave some dead bodies around the city in real life, people are going to notice. It’s only logical. This easily makes it as one of my favorite thing about the game. Dishonored allows the player to choose how the game and NPCs will play out would be the fact that you can truly make the game fit your style of gameplay. Personally I like killing people in game play but I also really like sneaking around to do it. Luckily in this game I can just that. If you play this game and you want to just kill people left and right, you pretty much can. If you want to be nonviolent, you can. It’s totally based on what you want to get out of the game.

My gameplay
The first time I played through this game I didn’t have a walkthrough or anything like that. I didn’t have much understanding as to how to use the Heart or the Chaos system. So I pretty much just killed whatever and really didn’t do that great of a job. I got through most missions with failed attempts and literally just by the skin on my teeth. As I came to The Flooded District which is the seventh mission of eight total missions. I came to a point where I couldn’t seem to get past I looked at tutorials and realized that I wanted different powers than what I had, so I did what any rational gamer would do when they don’t like the outcome of their gameplay, and restarted the entire game.

The second time through I made it my goal to look for all of the Bone Charms and Runes I could find so I could truly unlock Corvo’s true potential. I purchased a game guide to help me find charms and Runes when I was unable to locate them. I taught Corvo new skills like possession and time bending which helped me gain more skills and become stronger overall. Finally I got back to mission seven and came across the point that had given me so much trouble the first time and cleared it.

However for some reason, I never ended up completing the game after that point. Part of me thinks that the reason I never got to the end of the game was because I loved the game so much that I really couldn’t deal with accepting the fact that once I finished it, it would be over. Luckily Dishonored 2 was announced at E3 this past year and I’m hoping that when it comes closer to being released I will finally be able to finish Dishonored.

What did I like/dislike?

The game honestly had really amazing graphics and I was very pleased with the work that Bethesda put into this game. One of my favorite things was the fact that I could teleport from place to place. I also really enjoyed the mystery that the story-line gave about who murdered the Empress. However, like every Legend of Zelda game, I was forced to do everything for everyone which can get irritating at times. There was no real way to progress in the game if you didn’t complete the task at hand. This the gameplay is known as linear which is not something I’m unfamiliar with. Dishonored wasn’t as lax as other linear games such as Pokemon where you can always find something to do before moving on to the next town/battle/gym/etc.

My least favorite thing in this game was easily was the Whalers, the assassins that could teleport from place to place and were way better than I was. Or at least they were my least favorite thing, until I came across the Overseers with their music boxes that nullify your magic. Which made life very difficult when you ran out of bullets or arrows and you couldn’t use your magic to fight them. Of course I only truly dislike them because they are brilliant and challenge the player. As all good games I loved to hate some of the enemies, especially Tall Boys.

Finishing up

I adored Dishonored. I played the game for hours on end. Lucas would constantly talk about how Dishonored had stole his girlfriend from him. I loved the game so much that I was willing to restart the entire thing just to become a better Corvo. Not to mention I didn’t even finish it because the idea of it being over was too much to bare. When it gets closer to the release for Dishonored 2 I will probably look into the game again and finish where I left off. But for now, Oblivion has most of my attention.