My personal introduction the world of immersive sim and it was an excellent one. The world and atmosphere of the Empire of the Isles is one which I fell in love with. Thematically a really dark world that is being ravaged by the rat plague when our story takes place.

I'll keep it spoiler free while the main story isn't the most compelling and gripping story ever it does it's job well with being simple albeit predict at times. The main strength of Dishonored is player freedom. The game offers you the tools to get the job done, the main one that you will certainly using most of the time is the blink ability, such a simple ability, teleporting a short distance to a desire location can be used in so many different ways that you almost don't even notice. For example in my first playthrough of this game (low chaos I'll touch on the chaos system later) I often found myself using blink to blink away to safety after knocking out someone, or using blink to close the distance to achieve a knockout. It's silly but it's fun how much a simple ability can truly be used in so many different ways. Also do yourself a favor don't play with Dark Vision, it's so stupidly overpowered that it makes the game less fun, I think Dishonored 2 did a fine balance with reworking it to make is less of a crutch for players. Also the world is so well crafted that having that annoying filter all the time ruins it.

The Chaos system is, I'll be honest it's a great idea that in my opinion does not reward you enough for going high chaos. I LOVE the aspect of the world changing becoming more bleak if Corvo goes around killing everyone but the ending it gives you is a bit too much. My first playthrough was low chaos and I found the conclusion to be well earned. However in my second playthrough, I discovered the beauty of high chaos. High chaos is way more fun than low chaos, the creativity that you can have killing the guards is so much fun. One of my personal favorite moments in one of my high chaos playthroughs was the use of Bend Time and Possession as I make a guard walk into his own bullet that he had just fired.

I do want to mention the weird and quite frankly cruel "low chaos" options when it comes to disposing of the targets. I think the most alarming one is Lady Boyle, the low chaos option being to force her to go with a pervert who is madly in love with her, with the implication being that she will fulfill the rest of her mind as a sex slave is quite frankly incredibly troubling. I feel like the only flaw of the game does lie with the chaos system and the way it limits player interactions, if Dishonored 3 ever comes out I pray that it is finally removed.

The levels for this game are so fun, Lady Boyle's last party is my favorite with the sister that is Lady Boyle being randomized each playthrough, It's crazy to me how the sequel IMPROVES on the already great level design in this game. Each level has so many ways you can tackle it, it just brings me so much enjoyment in new playthroughs of finding out about stuff I never knew you could do.

Overall, I love this game. Is it partly due to it being my first immersive sim? (a genre I love so very much) perhaps, but even today Dishonored stands out as a Immersive Sim classic which in my opinion is a must play game.