Dishonored: Definitive Edition

Dishonored is a masterpiece. It may not be the most well-written game, but everything around that hit-and-miss writing is superb... for the most part. Dishonored happily joins the lineage of immersive sims that require thought and maybe a little bit of save-scumming on the side. The number of options given to the player at any one moment added onto the sheer scale of some of the maps means that Dishonored is a game that asks to be revisited. It also helps that it's absolutely gorgeous to look at. 2012 is a year I mostly remember for the indie games that were released (Journey, Hotline Miami, Lone Survivor, Dear Esther, Mark of the Ninja, Anna, and Lucius all came out in 2012), Far Cry 3, Spec Ops: The Line, Borderlands 2, and Telltale's The Walking Dead (sure, 2012 didn't have Skyrim or Batman, but I have no idea what people are talking about when they say it was a forgettable year for gaming. But I digress). Out of all of those games, I think Dishonored's art style has undoubtedly aged the best. It harkens back to a time in gaming where games were meant to look more artistic than realistic. Dishonored feels like a painting come to life, which is fitting considering the world it takes place in. What prevents me from saying this game is perfect and a couple of things. Neither of the things I'm going to mention is terrible or border on being bad but are noticeably weaker in comparison to the best things about the game. One, the gun isn't fun to use. I've never done a full high chaos playthrough of Dishonored because it incentivizes gun combat for those playthroughs, and it doesn't work. To clarify, gun combat works and can be satisfying, granted you've put the upgrades into making your accuracy better. Even with those upgrades, shooting your enemies never feels as satisfying as stabbing them, thanks to a lack of proper feedback. My biggest gripe with Dishonored is its story. At times, the writing in Dishonored borders on being brilliant. The world-building is fantastic. There are elements of pitch-black comedy that give the game a grimdark flavor without making it ever feel too edgy for its own good. The conflicts you're presented with feel real given the circumstances. What prevents its narrative from realizing its full potential is that I don't care about any of the characters. Corvo is about as one-dimensional as video game protagonists get, and not a lot of character development is given to the rest of the cast. The characters feel in service to where the story wants to go instead of the story being led by the characters. This is best seen in the game's prologue. The empress is introduced to be killed so that the game can center around a revenge narrative, but all we know about the empress before she gets ganked is that she has a daughter and wants to be responsible for her people. We know that Corvo is her royal protector, and that's about the extent of how far their relationship gets explored. Revenge stories need to be deeply personal to have any impact since the act of revenge is itself a deeply personal topic. What Dishonored tries to do is it tries to explore the concept of revenge through politics. The problem that presents itself through that lens is that both politics and revenge are immensely intimate subjects and combined only work as part of a character piece. Dishonored isn't a character piece because none of the characters on-screen have enough development to warrant such a label. Ironically, the best characters in the game are the ones you read about in diaries and journal entries strewn across the world. In a level where I was supposed to take a high ranking official but causing his peers to see him as an outcast, the most interesting aspects were a room where a soon-to-be-bride and her finance were spouting off exposition while I was waiting for them to leave in the other room and another room near the end of the level where a bunch of letters is stored. Each letter details the lives of people on the force. One is about a mother and father trying to get into contact with their son while another talks about trying to hide a gay relationship from higher-ranking officers. You never get to see these characters in the game. Dishonored excels at small storytelling like that, but anything major tows the line between being uninteresting and intending well but delivering poorly. Otherwise, it's a great game that you should absolutely play.