I enjoyed playing Dishonored. To the extent where I’ve completed two different playthroughs and managed to gain all of the achievements. Maybe that’s the problem – maybe I’ve had too much time with the game to notice things… unfavorable things that perhaps other reviewers missed while pressured by tight deadlines. Things that made me question the overall metascore of the game.

Yeah, I have to say I was quite baffled when I saw that the latest Arkane Studios’ child Dishonored has gained enough acclaim to get approximately 90 metascore (88/91/89 for X360/PC/PS3 respectively). True – it’s not a bad game, and one of few new IP’s recently introduced since the majority of developers seem to be focusing on developing games for next generation of consoles (they surely are, let’s face it – it always takes a lot of time, especially when developing on a new platform that a studio is not familiar with). Nevertheless, I’ve noticed a few issues that made it significantly harder for me to get immersed in the story prepared by Arkane’s finest.

1. Predictable story

It’s not easy to fully enjoy a game if you can predict what happens next. You know, sort of like with TV series – the predictable ones are simply boring and not very popular, whereas the ones that constantly serve its viewers interesting plot twists become hits and get prolonged for another season or two. In this case, however, the game falls into the first category of ‘totally predictable’.

The plot in Dishonored is hardly surprising – I want to avoid spoilers but if you played the game, I’m sure there were at least a few times where you thought “Oh what a surprise, as if I couldn’t feel it a mile away”.

I enjoyed witnessing the story through Corvo Attano’s eyes, it’s just that it lacked this element of surprise that gets you more immersed in the game.

2. Unrealistic stealth mechanics

Stealth games are most likely my favorite video game genre and there probably aren’t many of them made in the last 20 years that I haven’t played. Yeah, there’s nothing better than sneaking around in the shadows, planning the next move and waiting for the right moment to take action – playing ‘cat and mouse’ with your prey, if you will. Most of stealth games have their fundamental mechanics figured out right but in case of Dishonored, something evidently went wrong during the design phase, at least in my book.

First of all, if you’re used to staying in the dark just like you did in many other games then think again because ‘shadows’ are virtually non-existent in Dishonored and guards WILL spot you even if you’re tucked into the darkest corner you can find. Instead, the game forces you to stay out of sight (i.e. hiding behind boxes, walls etc.) in order to avoid detection and peak out left/right to see if it’s safe to proceed. I have to stress that these mechanics, while original, aren’t particularly well-designed. The game tells you that, paraphrasing, “sticking your head out is fine and won’t cause you to get detected as long as the rest of your body is still hidden” but it simply looks unnatural and unrealistic. Furthermore, sometimes you will hide behind a relatively short object with the top half of your body sticking out and yet, that doesn’t arouse any suspicion among the guards…

Second of all, since there are no shadows, there’s also no point in destroying light sources. Yes! Dishonored might actually be the first stealth game where you cannot destroy lights! You can blow out candles though, for some strange reason.  Not that it makes any difference, guess someone just thought it would be a nice feature.

3. Decisions seem unimportant

Dishonored allows you to decide whether you want to deal with a target in a direct way (e.g. through sneaking and delivering the killing blow) or indirect way (e.g. by choking him out, taking him to an interrogation room and branding him as a traitor, essentially sentencing him to exile). It’s a nice feature as it adds more fun to the game, especially since the indirect means are usually harder to pull off, but at the same time they’re more fun and more rewarding. However, the choices you make in Dishonored do not affect the story in any way.

It’s true that choices are most prevalent in the RPG genre (with Mass Effect or The Witcher series being two good examples of how to implement choices well) but at least there the choices you make throughout the game affect what happens next, consequently making you feel like every decision is important and should be thought through. Not in Dishonored though – on the one hand the developers give the player the liberty to choose how they want to eliminate targets, or how they want to proceed through the game (violent and bloody or sneaky and non-lethal), but on the other hand there really isn’t much difference and the choices you make hardly affect the final outcome.

4. Somewhat unimpressive graphics

I don’t mean the style of graphics – Viktor Antonov (one of the concept artists for Half-Life 2) sure did a good job in highlighting the game’s steampunk style and I have no objections here. I did not fully like, however, the questionable quality of graphics. The game definitely has trouble with anti-aliasing and also low quality textures can be occasionally noticed (e.g. I’ve seen huge low res ‘squares’ on the texture of a ship’s hull right at the very beginning of the game – it was so hideous I started thinking if perhaps some textures had loaded incorrectly). Shame, I’d rather occasionally stumble upon some clever in-game easter-eggs rather than imperfect graphics, especially within a game that has been in development for quite some time, and certainly could have been more polished than that.

Summarizing…

After what’s been said so far I honestly think 90 metascore is a bit too high. Yes, Dishonored is a good game and I’d say it probably deserves somewhere around 80 metascore, but not as much as it got, not with the sort of design flaws mentioned above. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Arkane Studios and Bethesda, I really am, especially because we live in an age where metascore is the decisive factor regarding whether developers get theirs salary bonuses or not. I just find it baffling that no reviewers noticed the above mentioned issues or didn’t think they were that much of a deal. Because honestly? I’ve seen reviewers lowering a game’s final score for less important issues in the past.

Sources:

• Dishonored review scores [Metacritic.com]