I've spoken to people who have expressed disappointment in Dishonored's apparent departure from the slow and thoughtful gameplay of Thief, a game that Dishonored is, on paper, quite similar to. My rejoinder, of course, is to say that Dishonored follows the tradition of Deus Ex more closely than Thief. Where Thief places the player in the shoes of a disempowered but sneaky character, Dishonored - like Deus Ex - presents stealth as just one of a myriad of options for the player to use to tackle their objectives. By dint of technological advancement, Dishonored is on a technical level a better stealth game than the aging Deus Ex, but pays the price of more restrictive level designs.
Of course, Dishonored is a very action oriented game, and while some have criticized the "Chaos" system as being judgemental and another trite example of a binary morality system crammed into a game for the sake of it, the fact is that this system is surprisingly lenient with how high your body count can climb before the city begins to deteriorate. Playing "good" - or as the game puts it, "low chaos" - means taking the high road, a style of play that is in many ways demonstrably harder than chopping down guards left and right. Stealth, slow non-lethal takedowns, less-than-lethal poison darts, and smart use of powers take precedence over the easy, quick assassinations and chaotic brawls. This lends violence-avoidant or outright pacifist playthroughs a rewarding sense of genuine difficulty, the fact that the player can theoretically effortlessly kill scores of attackers but consciously chooses not to results in a weightier ethical landscape. The game tempts you to give in, and in doing so presents a moral choice that is, to put it bluntly, simply more interesting than the static and meaningless choices seen in games like InFamous or BioShock.
Of course, no retrospective on this venerable game would be complete without at least an acknowledgement of its frightfully prescient setting and story - one that has been compared ad nauseum to COVID, but in truth hearkens as far back as the AIDs crisis and beyond - where a classist government introduces a plague to an unwitting city and lets it ravage the place, in a conscious effort to purge the nation of the poor and the weak. In a game so focused on non-violence, there is no better cast of villains to cut down by sword - but the non-lethal means of neutralizing your targets can be far more karmic and satisfying.
While the level design falters at times into rote linearity, and while the AI can be less than observant at the worst, Dishonored is a modern classic, a fitting torchbearer for the revival of the immersive sim.
Of course, Dishonored is a very action oriented game, and while some have criticized the "Chaos" system as being judgemental and another trite example of a binary morality system crammed into a game for the sake of it, the fact is that this system is surprisingly lenient with how high your body count can climb before the city begins to deteriorate. Playing "good" - or as the game puts it, "low chaos" - means taking the high road, a style of play that is in many ways demonstrably harder than chopping down guards left and right. Stealth, slow non-lethal takedowns, less-than-lethal poison darts, and smart use of powers take precedence over the easy, quick assassinations and chaotic brawls. This lends violence-avoidant or outright pacifist playthroughs a rewarding sense of genuine difficulty, the fact that the player can theoretically effortlessly kill scores of attackers but consciously chooses not to results in a weightier ethical landscape. The game tempts you to give in, and in doing so presents a moral choice that is, to put it bluntly, simply more interesting than the static and meaningless choices seen in games like InFamous or BioShock.
Of course, no retrospective on this venerable game would be complete without at least an acknowledgement of its frightfully prescient setting and story - one that has been compared ad nauseum to COVID, but in truth hearkens as far back as the AIDs crisis and beyond - where a classist government introduces a plague to an unwitting city and lets it ravage the place, in a conscious effort to purge the nation of the poor and the weak. In a game so focused on non-violence, there is no better cast of villains to cut down by sword - but the non-lethal means of neutralizing your targets can be far more karmic and satisfying.
While the level design falters at times into rote linearity, and while the AI can be less than observant at the worst, Dishonored is a modern classic, a fitting torchbearer for the revival of the immersive sim.