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Echoes of Deus Ex and BioShock generate an air of anticipation around Bethesda's retro-futuristic action-RPG
A major element of Gamescom's appeal lies in its scheduling, a couple of months after E3. That allows publishers to demo games that weren't quite ready for public presentation at E3, and this year, the show's biggest debutant was Dishonored, developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. With games such as The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3 in its canon, any new action-RPG from Bethesda is bound to attract a considerable buzz. Especially so with Dishonored, which combines technological innovation and a distinctive look and feel in a bid to provide the original gameplay that we all crave.
Initial impressions of Dishonored brought to mind Deus Ex and BioShock – a pretty tasty starting point for any new game. Like Deus Ex, it's an open-world mission-based game that bends over backwards to let you navigate it in your favoured play-style, supporting multiple paths, stealth and shooting. Its visuals, meanwhile (dare we utter the dreaded phrase "steampunk"?) and the supernatural abilities your character can use, bring to mind BioShock.
Retro-futuristic plot and environment
In Dishonored, you play Corvo, once the Empress' bodyguard, but falsely imprisoned for her murder after a coup by the corrupt Lord Regent. Corvo is an assassin, bent on revenge for what happened to him, and armed with a raft of supernatural powers and a collection of gadgets. The setting is a fascinating city which, although it exists on a planet other than Earth, is designed to be reminiscent of 19th-century London. So rats, cobbles, sewers and run-down areas juxtapose with heavily protected posh bits.
Emergent gameplay
Arkane Studios explained that as little of its gameplay as possible has been scripted – instead, gameplay systems have been put in place for you to exploit as imaginatively as possible. Bravely, Arkane sets out to create "Mechanics that can be combined in ways we didn't predict," the overall intention being to let you: "feel like you authored the gameplay experience". A lofty ideal, undoubtedly, but one that will excite any gamer of a more cerebral bent.
So what's it like?
Arkane took us through a mission in which Corvo set out to assassinate Arnold Tinch, a barrister accused of falsely claiming people have the plague (which is rife in the city) in order to make a land grab on their homes. We started off in a suitably grimy, run-down neighbourhood, sneaking up and assassinating a security guard, and hiding the body in a dumpster. The entrance to the lawyers' district in which Tinch resided, we soon discovered, was protected by a Wall of Light – a crude electrical force-field. Arkane explained that the game world has just undergone an industrial revolution, leading to the development of crude, Tesla-like technology. If you find blueprints for such technologies, you can make it work on your behalf.
The first behavioural system we encountered was a swarm of rats – which are attracted to bodies but repelled by light and therefore can be used to your advantage. As one of Corvo's supernatural abilities is possession, you can use rats to sneak through tiny openings into inaccessible areas or, for example, to make a stealthy getaway after performing an assassination.
Eschewing this approach, Corvo climbed into a nearby building and worked his way into the lawyers' district, looking through keyholes to see whether rooms were occupied and finding the Wall of Light blueprint. He reversed its polarity using a junction box, so that it would stop pursuers when he was making his getaway. Arkane explained that even when you make a getaway, the manner in which you do so is important: the game tracks the chaos you cause, and adjusts the world and the attitude of the characters you meet accordingly.
Supernatural powers, attacks and adrenalin
As Corvo made his way towards his prey, we saw the game's hand-to-hand combat engine – combining blocks, dodges and punches with the ability to perform jump-down kills – and glimpsed some weaponry, including a crossbow and a revolver. Arkane explained that successful actions filled up an adrenalin meter which, when full, can be cashed in to pull off a single-shot instant kill. And a very small proportion of Corvo's massive inventory of supernatural powers was revealed. Among those powers were a supernatural jump followed by a teleport, adding crucial extra length to a rooftop jump, possession (which can be applied to animals and humans) and, when we reached our quarry, a combination of a sort of energy-blast and slowing of time, which enabled the dispatch of our quarry and his surrounding security guards.
Arkane explained that much of the emergent gameplay comes from being able to chain Corvo's supernatural abilities, which could either be used for puzzle solving (such as getting to apparently inaccessible areas) or prevailing when outnumbered or outgunned (when escaping, we encountered two mini-bosses, which were characters operating pleasingly Heath Robinson Victorian-style mechs).
What do we think?
Dishonored looks very promising indeed. It has bags of personality and a distinctive look (over which Viktor Antonov, something of a legend who worked on Half-Life 2, presides). And it doesn't lack ambition, with what, as far as we can tell at this early stage, a clever new take on the play-how-you-want paradigm (that part of the game is the territory of Harvey Smith, who worked on the original Deus Ex). At the moment, all Bethesda will say is it will be released in 2012, and we would imagine that it will be one of the company's marquee Christmas releases. Once again, Bethesda Softworks looks like it has a game that could map out new boundaries for its trademark action-RPG genre.
• Dishonored is set for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2012
Charles Arthur 01 Sep, 2011 --
Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/sep/01/gamescom-2011dishonored-preview~
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