Arkane Studios treated show-goers to a meaty look at Dishonored during E3 2012. The game was playable at Bethesda’s stand, giving players access to a fully tooled up Corvo Atano (the lead protagonist) and letting them cut loose, mixing and matching powers and more traditional weapons to create some serious mayhem.
More revealing, however, was the behind closed doors demo component. A full half hour long, Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio, the co-creative directors on the game, used their time wisely, running attendees through two play-throughs of the same area to highlight how players can approach the same mission in radically different ways.
The mission? To infiltrate a bath house/brothel complex known as the Golden Cat and assassinate two targets: the Pendleton brothers, corrupt members of parliament.
Three soon to be dead guards.
The first run was all about stealth. There are apparently eight to ten ways to get into the Golden Cat in the first place, but for this play-through Corvo possessed a fish swimming in the water on the dockside of the complex and swam in through a vent. According to Smith, in the final game the brothers’ locations within the Cat will be randomised each time, and Corvo was able to glean their whereabouts by listening in on the staff’s chit chat. These were then marked within the game's HUD.
In both the demo and our hands-on, the ease with which stealth movement is handled is impressive. This is a game where measured players can have a real awareness of what’s around them, and stay in control. Crouched movement keeps the player silent, while the ability to lean out from behind corners without being seen is key to keeping tabs on the movements of guards. It’s immediately obvious whether a guard is blissfully unaware of the knife about to be plunged into his neck or not, because as soon as he’s alerted, graphic novel-style lightning bolt icons flash red above his head.
Corvo moved about the complex with style, either avoiding or knocking out guards, and using rooftops and windows ledges to his advantage. Of course, his many powers came in handy too. The key ones for the stealth run were Blink – which is essentially a short range teleport move, and invaluable for moving from cover to cover and crossing gaps; Dark Vision, which allows the player to see where guards and other people are through walls; and Possess, the aforementioned ability to merge your body with another, from fish and rats to humans. Powers are upgraded with runes, and these are found using a device called The Heart – a steampunk heart that players can hold in hand: it beats faster the closer Corvo is to a rune.
The kills themselves again highlighted how many options are at the player’s fingertips. One brother was in the steam room, so Corvo simply made his way to the heat controls next door and turned them up, cooking him alive. The other brother was entertaining a scantily clad, masked woman in an opulent bedroom. Corvo snuck in, possessed him and walked him out onto the balcony, locking the door behind him. He then hopped out and used Windblast to send him flying to his death.
Be gone!
The key here, however, is that the wealth of moves and weapons mean the player can get insanely creative. With a weapon in one hand and a power assigned to the other, blinking into a kill, freezing time then setting a Spring Razor trap at the feet of guards, summoning rats then blasting guards in the face as they freak out, it’s all simple. Players can switch by bringing up a wheel of powers, but they can also assign four to hotkeys for menu-free switching.
One of the reasons Dishonored stood out so much is its gameplay is both rich and emergent. On several occasions, Harvey Smith (who was talking us through the action) pointed out moves that playtesters had simply invented, which the game design now actively supports. Players can survive falls from incredible heights, for instance, by targeting someone on ground level as they fall, and possessing them at the last second. Another cool move allows Corvo to cross large gaps – simply run and jump into space, then Blink in mid-air. Blink, incidentally, is the only power that can be used as often as the player likes – it has no resource cost.
The final example was actually after the main demo, in a separate area called the Flooded District. It's basically a neighbourhood that was once well-to-do but is now flooded and ruined. People with the plague in other districts get dumped over the wall to live out their last days here. Grim, eh? Anyway, the guards patrolling this area are on Tallboys – mechanical stilts that are very reminiscent in design of Half-Life 2 and City 17. Players are able to use Windblast to blow their incendiary arrows back at them. “This was not something we planned for,” said Smith, “but something we supported once we discovered it.” Awesome. Players can also possess Tallboys to walk through to restricted areas without triggering an alarm.
While the entire game is set within one city, this isn't an open-world title; it's a linear set of missions, but each mission is a very deliberately crafted sandbox, with numerous paths for the player and almost unlimited options. It's a great approach, as it emphasises player freedom, while ensuring the world design can be succinct. That said, the way you play will have an impact across the wider game; if you simply kill everyone that stands in your way you'll wind up with a much darker end-game than if you opted for stealth. And yes, players can get through the entire game without killing anyone (presumably other than assassination targets).
In a show dominated by bombastic, action affairs that seem to take more inspiration from Hollywood than Half-Life, Dishonored is a breath of fresh air, and with less than four months until release, it’s not going to be long until we find out whether it truly can make the most of its wealth of gameplay potential.
Source : ign[dot]com
