Spontaneous Sunday: Dishonored

Welcome to another week of Spontaneous Sunday, this week I have played Dishonored (2012, Arkane Studios, Bethesda, Xbox 360). I've wanted to play it for a while and I have heard it mentioned  a lot recently due to the recent release of Dishonored 2, so I picked it up cheap from Cex.

"Dishonored is a 2012 stealth action-adventure video game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was released worldwide in October 2012 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Set in the fictional, plague-ridden industrial city of Dunwall, Dishonored follows the story of Corvo Attano, bodyguard to the Empress of the Isles. He is framed for her murder and forced to become an assassin, seeking revenge on those who conspired against him."

- Wikipedia on Dishonored

What do I expect from the game?

I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from Dishonored because it is a game that I've heard and seen a lot about due to its popularity with critics and gamers alike. I expected a first-person action adventure game with stealth elements. I expected its strengths to include the environment art and world design. I also expected it to have good level design, because during my time as a Games Design undergrad, we did a brief about level design and how to white-box a level and the tutors used it as an example of good level design, with multiple routes for the player to take to complete missions. Thematically, I expected it to be heavily steampunk themed and draw influences from Victorian Britain. I expected it to be a good game because of the positive reception and good reviews.

First Impressions - What do I think of the game its first few minutes?

The game's front end is very nicely done. The front end menu features an area of Dunwall - the heavily London-inspired city in which the game is set - and when selecting a menu option, the camera flies/pans over to a different part of the environment. This is pretty cool and was a good decision on the designer's part, as the environment art is a major strength of the game, so it makes sense to showcase them from the very beginning. I checked out the options menu and saw that there is a huge amount of options that you can change in terms of gameplay and UI. I started a new game and selected normal difficulty.

The game begins with the player-character arriving back to Dunwall via boat after a long journey. The player meets with the Empress, who is then assassinated and the player is framed for it by corrupt officials. The boathouse and palace environment was really attractive with interesting architecture and a view of the city over the river. One thing that I noticed from the very beginning of the game is that the graphics, or rather the art style, were not what I expected. I expected it to be photorealistic (or as close as you can on a 4 year old 360 game) but in fact it features a lot of low-poly modelling and lower-res textures. The result is an interesting stylised game world and some very attractive environments.

Having been framed for the Empress' murder, you are imprisoned and scheduled for execution. The first level of the game is your escape from the prison, aided by unidentified "friends" who provide you with a key and equipment needed to escape. Again, the environments are very well made. The gameplay, however, was not equally appealing. I found the movement and stealth clunky and awkward. I felt like the game encouraged stealth, so I decided to try and be stealthy, and reload if I was detected and forced to fight. As the prison level went on, I got increasingly frustrated with the stealth and movement which culminated in me failing 4 times to sneak across a courtyard. Finally, I decided to just fight and I destroyed all the enemies in seconds and had a lot more fun doing it, and also got a combat-based achievement... I decided then to disregard the game's subtle nudges in the direction of stealth.

I escaped the prison and entered a sewer that, while a very well-made environment with a lot to see and do and different routes to take, went on for too long and left me wanting to just get to freedom.

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

Dishonored is full of really nice environment art.

Having escaped the prison and sewer, I meet my new allies and get to explore their HQ - a pub in a run-down district of the city. Again, it's a truly beautiful and well-made environment. Dishonored has possibly some of the most attractive scenery and environments of any Spontaneous Sunday title (defeated only by Metro: Last Light). Dishonored nails pretty much every aspect of environment art including lighting, layout, architecture, models and textures. Theres also a lot to do, see and collect. I spoke to a few new characters and explored the pub area. I found a lot of books dotted around that helped to add to the lore of the game world, which is another of its strong suits.

The Distillery District was a particularly interesting environment and level, with different routes and ways to complete objectives, people to interact with, interiors to enter and side-quests to pick up. The games level design is good and the routes are interesting. I can't think of many other games that offered such varied routes through a level.

The game world and backstory are well thought out and interesting. The similarities to Victorian London and the British Empire and the steampunk theme make for are apparent, but the developers really put a twist on it and made it their own and it makes for a very interesting virtual world. It's also delivered well through books to read, people, environments and environmental storytelling through such things as graffiti, posters and items.

The upgrade system.

I should, of course, mention the game mechanics. Theres an interesting inventory and upgrade system. Soon after arriving at the pub, the player enters a dream world where they gain supernatural powers. These turn out to be some very interesting mechanics that add a whole new dimension to the gameplay - but having these powers when escaping from the prison would have really helped to make it a less frustrating experience. The Blink power, which allows the player to dash forward small distances or teleport within a short distance, is a particularly interesting and unique mechanic, which made navigating levels feel pretty interesting.

The audio was good, especially the voice acting. The game features some pretty high profile voice actors and this is apparent in the quality of the voice acting. SFX and atmospheric audio is also good and the music, while not terribly memorable, serves its purpose and suits the game well.

The game's overall aesthetic/look and feel is one of its best assets. The aesthetic is consistent and every element feels well-considered and like it all ties in together, from the UI to the environments, weapons, audio and everything else.

What don't I like about the game?

I have a very mixed opinion of Dishonored - it ticks almost every box: attractive environments, rich game world, interesting mechanics, level design, audio, voice acting... but it leaves one very important box unticked. The gameplay is not good.

I have already mentioned my frustration in the prison level. Well, this continued throughout the game. The stealth system doesn't work very well at all and the levels and AI seem poorly designed for stealth. Enemies ability to detect the player is unpredictable, sometimes they will see you behind cover from a good distance, other times they will be completely oblivious to your presence right next to them and this makes the stealth awkward. Its not easy to tell if a route is safe because the AI detection is so inconsistent.

The AI pathing/patrol routes make no sense and they don't make it easy for the player to slip by. Enemies walk around seemingly at random. I believe that a key element in a good stealth game is the opportunities to slip by enemies at just the right moment and feel a sense of accomplishment as a result. Dishonored just does not give you those opportunities. The stealth is messy and frankly infuriating at times and overall just not enjoyable at all. There's nothing fun about repeatedly being detected by an enemy while trying to sneak across an area that seems literally impossible to sneak across. Too often, I was detected and just ended up murdering a bunch of guards, which was much more enjoyable from a gameplay perspective.

The AI is also poor in other areas. One level required me to infiltrate a meeting between two officials and assassinate one of them while saving the other. While entering the building, I was detected and ended up having a fight in the meeting room which resulted in several dead enemies littering the room. The two officials entered the room for their meeting and did not react in any way to the multiple dead guards all over the room. While watching their buggy, ridiculous meeting, I was detected once again by an enemy who appeared seemingly from nowhere, and died fighting another hoard of annoying guards and decided I had had enough of Dishonored. Dishonored presents the player with an amazingly attractive and well designed city and then doesn't allow them to explore it, because they are constantly hunted and killed by guards and it ruins everything good about it. It's a huge wasted opportunity.

Final Thoughts

As you can probably tell, Dishonored and its terrible stealth system has frustrated me greatly. Overall, its a shame, because it does everything else so well and I really do enjoy the aesthetic, the theme and environments. Not to be defeated, I will probably play it again because I want to see more of what it does well, but I will probably take a much more combat heavy approach from now on because I found it more fun and I think the game works better like that than as a stealth game. I wish that it was a less hostile game because I want to explore the environments and the compelling game world without having to endure the constant frustration of being detected and attacked!

Granted, this is only my personal opinion, and I realise I'm not very good at stealth games and I don't often play them, but I can tell when poor design is compounding the issue. Also, I think the game is slow to get started, and I have only seen part of what it has to offer. Hopefully if I sink a few more hours into it, it might begin to grow on me, but I expect it be a painful process.