Why I Stopped Playing Dishonored - Arkane Studios - 2012 [PC]

First off, I really think this game should use the British spelling for its title, Dishonoured. The lack of a U is just shameful. They should have probably even doubled up on the Us and called it Dishounoured. I can maintain my journalistic perspective on this game in spite of this but I feel it's high time that someone lay these facts bare.

Playing this, I can say w/ all the objectivity that I can muster, that it is one the best and most important stealth games ever made. Subjectively, I hate it. I said I hate it!

Well, hate might be a strong word but after a few decent sessions playing Doushounoured, my desire to play literally any other game on the face of the earth went through the roof whenever I sat down to play more. The game gives you deep and well-executed set of tools to dispatch enemies both lethally and non-lethally and what you chose to do shapes the world and how people react to you. This is the hook of the game, what makes it special. What you do matters and you are encouraged to experiment and find your own way through each mission.

Except you can't. I mean you can if you want but then the game straight-out tells you that killing people is going to lead to a bad ending. There's lots of ways they could have done this through gameplay or in-game storytelling. You could have NPCs telling you that things won't end well if you continue down this path or any number of things. Instead, it just flat-out states as much on a loading screen.

So, yeah, there is your issue. It builds this wonderful system and not only tries to funnel you into exactly one way of playing, the way it does so is such an awful kludge that it is hard to see why people who otherwise made such a wonderful would do such a thing. I dunno about you, but when told there's a bad ending, I avoid it. Just a thing I do. I don't like investing a couple dozen hours into something then having it tell me I did it all wrong.

After seeing this loading screen, it's like, okay, from here on out, stealth all the way. I'll white knuckle it and sneak around these people who framed me for murder and attempt to kill me on sight... Not like I would want to take the most expedient way in ending this conspiracy of people hellbent on destroying both me and the people I'm sworn to protect. The loading screen says to avoid killing people.

Once you are locked in non-lethal stealth mode, the game regresses from a fun and occasionally violent problem solving to trial-and-error save scumming. The actual gameplay (loading screens aside) actually pushes you toward killing people. You are given like ten million ways to kill people but your non-lethal means of suppressing an enemy are very limited. Sneaking around people, you have to do over and over again while you only have to kill them once. I felt like I was going against the grain when playing the game as it seemed to intend for me to.

My breaking point: I was on a mission where I had to both retrieve an item and interrogate an NPC. I dutifully sneaked around guard after guard.  I went out of my way to interrogate the NPC w/o harming him. I sneaked and sneaked back around and out of the complex of buildings I was in. I forgot to collect the item I needed. I started sneaking back around these same guards once again and said, you know what, I hate this. I said I hate it! So I quit. Feels good to get that off my chest.

This is one where I'd like to go back and do things "right" from the get-go to see how it feels. It's not too terribly tough and having gone through the first bit of the game killing people, it makes it harder not to kill people so a second time through should be a bit easier if not faster. There are a lot of games though that don't tick me off to where I don't want want to play anymore halfway through so this goes on the bottom of that pile. Good bye, Doushounourourd, I am sure I will enjoy playing you in a different life.