I love Thief. I discovered the franchise in 2004 when I read a review of Thief: Deadly Shadows and my Metal Gear Solid-loving ass thought, "That sounds cool!" It took me a while to find illicit copies of the first two games (they were difficult to locate legally even then, though I did manage it eventually) and trying to get the games running led me to a forum that, to put it diplomatically, shaped me in ways that I'll probably be unpacking for a long time. Nevertheless, I was instantly a fan, from the opening moments of "Lord Bafford's Manor" to the abject terror of "Robbing the Cradle" and all the fan missions beyond. But there was something frustrating; Thief as a franchise seemed dead as a doornail. Promises of a reboot were met with skepticism, in retrospect quite deservedly so (though I would never have admitted it on the Thief subforums at TTLG at the time.) But Dishonored promised something fresh. While Arx Fatalis (a fairly blatant Ultima Underworld clone) and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic both had a cult following, they didn't achieve the kind of widespread success that a game like BioShock would. Dishonored was to be Arkane stepping up with the big boys.In a way, Dishonored came out at just the right time. Five years into an early renaissance in PC gaming (now that World of Warcraft was no longer sucking all the oxygen out of the room and publishers had come around to the utility of Steam) audiences were hungry for immersive sims. Your average gamer didn't know what it was called, a game like Deus Ex or BioShock or even The Elder Scrolls or Fallout, they just knew they wanted more games like it. Dishonored was the answer.
While on paper, the story and setting of Dishonored are pretty standard steampunk/dieselpunk/gaslamp fantasy (I see a lot of overlap with the Eberron tabletop setting) it's one of the most visually striking games I've ever seen. With the late great artist Viktor Antonov taking the lead on the game's art direction, the world of Dishonored is a crazy mix of Regency-era London with touches of 20th century technology and the cold cyberpunk aesthetics of the alien occupiers of Half-Life 2 (which Antonov also served as art director for.) Dunwall, a sprawling metropolitan labyrinth once the jewel of an empire, is suffering from a great plague brought on by rats from a distant, mysterious continent. With the epidemic spreading fast, Dunwall society is coming apart at the seams, and something darker lurks beneath the surface. It reminds me of the (sadly unfinished) A Night in Rocksbourg series of fan missions for Thief II, wherein Garrett, following the events of the main game, travels to a different city just as it's in the midst of a quarantine, and uncovers dark mysteries beneath the surface of reality.
The story begins with the protagonist, Corvo, returning home to the Empress he serves. He's been away on a diplomatic trip abroad, and he brings bad news: none of the other isles in the Empire are willing to extend help. Just as he delivers the ill tidings, assassins appear out of thin air, murder the Empress and kidnap her daughter Emily. Corvo is immediately blamed by the Royal Spymaster for the crime, and thrown into prison. Six months later, he is given the tools to break out, where he joins with a group of Loyalist conspirators seeking to remove the Spymaster (who has named himself Regent) and his allies from power. But lurking in his dreams is the Outsider, a mysterious figure who is known to appear to select individuals and give them powers, just to see what they'll do. He's done the same with Corvo, who now has an array of superpowers available to commit assassinations and other acts of terror with.
It's this very open-ended nature of the Outsider's gifts and intentions that drive one of the game's major mechanics: the chaos system. How many murders you commit, how many bodies people find, how many alarms go off, and how many acts of cruelty (or kindness) in a cruel world will affect the chaos level. The chaos level in turn affects the game world. Higher chaos means more rats, more guards, more "weepers" (plague victims who are so ill they've lost their higher senses and are now violent, not unlike zombies), allies react more negatively to you, more characters will be killed off, and even the weather will be worse. What this means is a fundamental split in gameplay styles; a stealthier approach, ideally with looking for creative means to dispatch your assassination targets non-lethally, will more often result in a "low chaos" ending. Putting the full use of your powers to work tends to get you the high chaos ending. It's arguably worth it to try both, just to see what's different; the world of high chaos takes the already nightmarish setting of Dunwall in the time of plague and makes it far more cynical and morally desolate, whereas the low chaos version still has hope for the future.
If I had to describe Dishonored in a nutshell, I would say it's Thief with Deus Ex-style power progression. You unlock powers through finding runes carved into the bones of the great whales that Dunwall hunts by the dozens, monstrous leviathans whose glowing blubber powers all the miraculous machines of Dunwall's modern age. Smaller bone charms confer additional bonuses, such as making guards' aim a little less accurate, lowering the aggro range for the ever-hungry rat swarms, or even simply giving you more health or mana. You're armed with a sword, a pistol, a crossbow (with a variety of ammunition for it, including non-lethal sleep darts), and explosive gadgets. You also have powers that let you do everything from teleport anywhere within range so long as you have line of sight, jump higher, move faster, possess animals (and eventually even people) and see through walls. It's a pretty good powerset, though even if you collect every single rune, you'll never unlock them all (thus further emphasizing split playstyles: you'll never be able to do everything in the same playthrough.)
Dishonored is a love letter to the foundational works of the immersive sim scene: Thief and Deus Ex. There is also quite a bit of Assassin's Creed in it, which, while not truly an immersive sim by any sense of the term, nevertheless is sometimes adjacent. A lot of immersive sim veterans wound up working on Dishonored. Aside from some veterans of Deus Ex including Harvey "Super Fucking Subversive" Smith, my fellow TTLG alumni (and a co-creator on the famous Circle of Stone and Shadow fan missions for Thief II) Dana Nightingale also helped build Dunwall. Not counting the prologue or the hub area, there are eight missions in the game. Each one offers something different, like going undercover to a party thrown by a trio of noble sisters (talk about fiddling while Rome burns!) or rescuing Emily from a high-class brothel (do I detect a touch of Thief2X influence with its own infamous brothel mission?) One mission has you escaping from a sealed-off district crawling with weepers, reminiscent of "The Haunted Cathedral" from Thief or perhaps the classic Ravenholm chapter from Half-Life 2. All in all, it's a surprisingly varied experience, which makes it all the more fun.
I sometimes like to talk about how "immersive sim" as a term is a meaningless marketing buzzword that cannot adequately describe the games that get the label. But at the same time, I'm always looking for games that, if not actually directly replicating the feelings I had playing Deus Ex or Thief (or Metal Gear Solid!) for the first time, at least make me feel like I've come home in a sense; Dishonored is most certainly that, and it's usually close to the top of the list when I'm trying to pick out games for someone who's never played a game like these before. It's eminently accessible, with a striking aesthetic, and an incredibly smooth engine (even when it was new, it always shocked me how responsive and quick to load it was, with very little in the way of janky shit or weird bugs.) It's almost the platonic ideal of immersive sims, a game where your choices do matter, designed by people who understand what imsims are all about. The immersive sim scene (represented by AAA developers, indies and everywhere in between) has grown quite a bit in the decade-plus since Dishonored came out, but Dishonored is still one of the greatest in imsim history.
What an honor.
Returning Home
This chapter serves as a prologue of sorts to the game. It starts with you arriving by boat at Dunwall Tower, the seat of power for the Empire. You can hang out with little Emily for a bit, or go straight to the Empress herself. Given that this is a prologue, the course of events here is preordained...
Dishonored
You start the game proper in that classic fantasy game starter setting: a prison. Coldridge Prison is an imposing monument to institutional violence, all high ceilings, metal and concrete. In practice, though, it looks bigger than it actually is; it's pretty much a tutorial mission and as such is a linear path that nevertheless winds in on itself as you make your way to the exit. Eventually you'll find your way out into the sewers, which are much more obviously straightforward, but you'll get your first signs of the dire state of Dunwall down here.
The Hound Pits Pub
Similar to UNATCO Headquarters in the early part of Deus Ex, the Hound Pits Pub — or what's left of it — will serve as your central hub for the rest of the game: a lonely little pub with some rooms upstairs, and the surrounding area, including a workshop in back. It's not the cheeriest place to be, at least early on, but you'll have the opportunity to meet the locals. There's not a lot to see when you first get here, but new places will sometimes open up. This is also where you sleep, and when you sleep, you dream...
High Overseer Campbell
For your first job as an assassin, you've been tasked with removing the head of the local religion, which means breaking into the Overseer headquarters. There's actually two parts to this mission: first, you'll need to land by the river and make your way through the streets. The City Watch are everywhere on the main thoroughfares, but the side streets are controlled by the Bottle Street Boys, street thugs who control a local distillery and who have been harassing Granny Rags, a blind, elderly woman who's come down in the world but knows a few very dark secrets. The Overseer headquarters consists of a large, vaguely fashy building with barracks, storage and a workshop out back. Getting inside can be tricky, especially as even the upstairs hallway is well patrolled, but it's possible to sneak around the back. You'll want to explore back there anyway, as there's some stuff to see and do that may help.
House of Pleasure
You're sent back to the same district from last time, but headed in a different direction. In a supreme irony, the notorious Golden Cat Bathhouse is right around the corner from the Abbey of the Everyman. The task is twofold: get rid of a pair of troublesome nobles and rescue the Empress' daughter Emily. The Golden Cat is a fancy enough place, for these sorts of things, but well-guarded. There's lots of ways in and out, and if you're willing to make some deals, you'll have more options for accessing the place. The artist's building and the tunnel to the Golden Cat's service entrance are also open to you now, though the latter will be of little use to you without the key.
The Royal Physician
This one reminds me of my favorite Thief: Deadly Shadows fan mission, The Bridge. As that might suggest, this level is set atop a bridge, one of those old medieval bridges of the kind they used to build houses on. It's a long walk from the starting end to your target at the far side. The mission design makes excellent use of the space, though, with buildings on either side allowing you to travel above the heads of the City Watch — or below their feet.
Lady Boyle's Last Party
Time for a different kind of stealth. Lady Boyle is an important figure in the regime, but the problem is, there's three of them, and you don't know which one it is. Lucky for you, the Boyles are throwing a masked ball tonight, and you so happen to have a mask. Getting in is easy; going undetected is harder, especially if you don't have an invitation, or if you're somewhere you're not supposed to be. It's a cool mission, but it's one of those kind of hit jobs where the lethal option might be the more moral one.
Return to the Tower
It's time to bring things full circle. The last time you were here didn't go so well; now's your chance for revenge. The place is made up of a few different areas spread across two maps. The front yard is easily navigated, but the best way inside wouldn't be the front door. The interior is expansive, and suffuse with all the symbolism of fascism, including statues of the Lord Regent himself. Humble guy. There's lots of chandeliers to help you get around unseen, similar to the Abbey. Fun fact: if you kill the radio guy, his replacement is voiced by none other than Carrie Fisher!
The Flooded District
You've been betrayed and left for dead. Lotta that going around lately. Thrown into a forgotten corner of the city, you've got what's probably the longest mission in the game ahead of you: make your way out of the Flooded District and back to the Hound Pits Pub. The Flooded District is a dreary, haunted place, home to weepers, legions of rats, and Daud's little assassin club. There's three parts to this mission; Daud's territory is first, a sprawling, flooded industrial zone that's worth exploring just so you can get your stuff back. Next is a City Watch outpost where they've been killing anyone unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the wall, sick or not; the biggest threat here are Tallboys, who dominate a sprawling area that unfortunately also happens to be where the exit is. Lastly is a quick trip through the sewers, more linear than anything but like much of the rest of the game, reminiscent of Half-Life 2.
The Loyalists
This one's real short, and it's familiar territory: you're back at the Hound Pits Pub, but there's City Watch everywhere. Your main task is to escape, but some of your friends could use a hand, too. Other than that, if you've spent any amount of time running jumping around the area, you should know this place by heart.
Light at the End
The final chapter of Dishonored takes you to a place you've been able to see throughout the game, a high-tech island fortress complete with lighthouse. A sprawling concrete gatehouse occupies much of the island, heavily guarded and the most obvious way in turns out to be a dead-end without the proper key. Getting to the lighthouse proper is a task and a half, but the lighthouse itself, practically a small mansion on stilts, is lightly defended. Depending on how you've behaved throughout the game, the weather will be different, which I thought was cool. The screenshot is from the low-chaos path; the high-chaos path goes full Disney movie finale with rain and thunder.
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