System requirements are total lies. My custom-built PC (Sasha) has been able to handle even the poorest-optimized video games to date, and I found myself eager to play Dishonored (a stealth/action hybrid developed at Bethes-oh, never mind, at Arkane Studios. Well I know who's really getting all the credit). However the requirements made Sasha look like yesteryears Apple III rather than the Alienware/Razer lovechild it is. An nVidia 460i? Minimum? It's a 360 port, not the next Pixar movie. Well screw this I thought, installed the game, set up the resolution, and proceeded to beat the game on the highest graphics. So to all you developers for PC's out there, a few pointers. 1.) Optimize your game well. 2.) Hi-res textures are always a nice option. Oh, uh yeah, and 3.) DON'T TELL ME MY THREE YEAR OLD COMPUTER CANNOT HANDLE A GAME IT CLEARLY CAN.

But I digress. Dishonored is a stealth/action game from Beth-see, there I go again- Arkane Studios in which you play as Corvo, the former bodyguard of the Empress of steampunk Russia-London. Corvo is wrongly accused of murder and must become an assassin (or already was one...they weren't very clear on the story there) embued with voodoo powers and wield gadgets powered with electrical whale oil. Which begs the question: if all the beluga whales of the ocean are electrified, who would be daft enough to try swimming anywhere in such a setting? Just sounds like a bad idea. As far as the Final Fantasy meets Eastern Bloc setting goes it works to bring interesting setpieces to the table, even when it does take nods from Thief:TDP. So kudos to the original setting and storyline.

The story isn't what draws a gamer into this particular game, though. It's stealthy murder. Or stealthy nonmurder. Or nonstealthy nonmurder. Or nonstealthy murder, which I guess could be just called murder. The point is, if you want stealth you are allowed to move without ever killing or even being seen. You can say screw it and murder everyone or pick and choose who dies. The open-ended map structure is extremely useful for such tactics, and while I felt the actual weapons and powers limited what I could physically do it made for a nice vacation from narrow corridors. And as a note to all developers, learn from Arkane Studios about how to build verticality into your maps. This alone made the large maps greater than many other stealth games beforehand.

However, I do have a probelm with these stealth/action hybrids. Many times they try to build the game so one can either blaze away or go around without being seen, but the best playthrough requires you to break whatever arbitrary rules you've impressed upon yourself. You become punished for going through the game without being seen or killing anyone because it takes away from the storyline of being an assassin (plus all the fun gadgets), but murdering everyone creates this evil ending and you have no stealth element, and many variations inbetween. Games like Thief stuck to absolutely no killing. You knew this and so focused on not being seen. To allow someone to kill in that environment would have broken the facade created by the very structure of the gameplay.

I played Assassin's Creed: Revelations again last week and wondered where the "Assassin" part went. Maybe "Mass Murderer Creed" would fit better because it fell into this trap of allowing a person to switch from silent assassins to stab-friendly and walk away still. At least in that game there were no negative consequences of choosing one or the other. Besides, wouldn't an assassin or thief make more sense scrambling madly to lose pursuers, every wrong dead body having the player hyperventilating as they shove it into a closet? I still remember many moments in Hitman like this. Why are developers so concerned with having all their bases covered? Aren't the best games in the genre not the ones that blend, but the ones that stick out?

Now I honestly can't say Dishonored is a bad game. It's good, better than average I'd say, at least a rental. Can I say that it is the new stealth game of the decade? No. But it does take a positive step in the direction, especially seeing as Splinter Cell and Hitman are taking five steps back, an escalator down, and a trip across the channel to AAA territory.

-JediLegacy (aka TheRaptorFence)