On my third playthrough I promised myself I’d stifle my internal need to play as a silent assassin and go crazy, creating a good amount of chaos and utilizing all of the available powers. How did it go? I ghosted almost all of the main missions and got rid of each target non-lethally. I apologize, it’s stronger than me.
There have been so many wonderful critiques and video essays about this game (I especially recommend the ones from Kaldini on YT), so I’m not going to even try to outdo them and instead keep this short. The game has many flaws, some more obvious than others, such as:
the simplicity of the morality/chaos system;
enemy AI can be disappointing, even on higher difficulties;
many charms and powers are not very useful unless you’re going for an aggressive playthrough, which the game pretty much openly discourages through its endings;
lots of coin to collect, not many things to spend it on;
fuck river krusts, seriously.
awkward ending with a bunch of static images;
very limited number of character models.
Sure, many of these are serious drawbacks that I’d love to see eliminated from the game. But even with those, “Dishonored” is to me a perfect blend of freedom awarded to the player in each level, amazing lore and great visual style. There are so many ways to eliminate each target and like any good stealth game (can’t treat it as a purely action game, sorry), it makes you feel smart about finding your own path and getting rid of the targets the way you want to do it. I’ve finished the game three times at this point and I’m still reading about many possibilities I have missed. The world of “Dishonored” is very well thought out with the Outsider being a particularly fascinating character, and the visual style has aged really well.
DLCs included in the definitive edition that focus on Daud in many aspects are even better than the base game, with the wonderful level design and multitude of varied objectives. Daud is also a pretty interesting character brought to life expertly by Michael Madsen.
There have been so many wonderful critiques and video essays about this game (I especially recommend the ones from Kaldini on YT), so I’m not going to even try to outdo them and instead keep this short. The game has many flaws, some more obvious than others, such as:
the simplicity of the morality/chaos system;
enemy AI can be disappointing, even on higher difficulties;
many charms and powers are not very useful unless you’re going for an aggressive playthrough, which the game pretty much openly discourages through its endings;
lots of coin to collect, not many things to spend it on;
fuck river krusts, seriously.
awkward ending with a bunch of static images;
very limited number of character models.
Sure, many of these are serious drawbacks that I’d love to see eliminated from the game. But even with those, “Dishonored” is to me a perfect blend of freedom awarded to the player in each level, amazing lore and great visual style. There are so many ways to eliminate each target and like any good stealth game (can’t treat it as a purely action game, sorry), it makes you feel smart about finding your own path and getting rid of the targets the way you want to do it. I’ve finished the game three times at this point and I’m still reading about many possibilities I have missed. The world of “Dishonored” is very well thought out with the Outsider being a particularly fascinating character, and the visual style has aged really well.
DLCs included in the definitive edition that focus on Daud in many aspects are even better than the base game, with the wonderful level design and multitude of varied objectives. Daud is also a pretty interesting character brought to life expertly by Michael Madsen.