With Dishonored: Death of the Outsider fast approaching, I wanted to take a look back at the series thus far. When Bethesda and Arkane Studios first released Dishonored, it didn’t introduce new ideas, so much as use what was already done by others. What was new was the way they used those ideas, and the product that came out of it.
Dishonored combined different elements and playstyles, like the stealth gameplay of Thief, with more horror and fantasy elements as well as action. The thing is though, Dishonored innovated, not by giving you different ways to play the game, but consequences for your style, and incentive to play again. You could go through the game with as little murder as possible, or kill everyone in your path. The choices you made affected not only the endings, but how the game progressed in general.
Dishonored also took steampunk genre and played with it in an interesting way, by deconstructing such a world and then giving the player a chance to have such a world exist in an ideal state. The game didn’t encourage you to go down either route, it let you make your own choice every step of the way. Then we have the sequel. Dishonored 2 gave two characters to play as, but also gave even more ways to play than ever before. Dishonored 2 took the formula of the first game and built on it, expanding what was done, and allowing far more innovation. But now it brought it a sense of immersion like never before.
The series playing with established ideas and using them in new ways was excellent, but the developers also took the time to build a unique world with a character of its own. It is not an exaggeration to say that the genres and games Dishonored took from, now take from Dishonored, such as seen with the reboot of Thief. It has become a series that transformed gaming and pushed things forward.
There are few games that can truly force change on gaming. The Dishonored series is one of the few that can legitimately claim to have done so.
If you hadn’t seen our review of Dishonored 2 before, you can see it here.