The first Dishonored preview video takes a look at how players can sneak or smash their way through the gorgeous, supernatural steampunk city of Dunwall.
Announced in July 2011, Dishonored is the new game currently in the works at Arkane, the studio responsible for the excellent Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. As an elite bodyguard of the Empress accused of her murder, players can employ stealth, muscle, and supernatural skills in a quest to clear their name and set the world right.
The game is mission-based, but the “moment-to-moment nature of the game is very sandbox-like,” according to Arkane’s Raphael Colantonio. Players will return to a “home base” between missions where they can re-arm and upgrade their equipment, but the game world is designed to let players approach situations in a number of different ways, murdering everyone or moving entirely unseen, picking up clues by peeking through keyholes and listening in on conversations.
The concept of “Chaos” is also extremely interesting. “We’re tracking how many people you’ve killed, and when you’ve done a little thing that is considered very destabilizing versus ‘lower chaos’, basically,” explained co-Creative Director Harvey Smith. “We branch here and there with the fiction and we branch the endgames, and there are places where there would’ve been a pocket of survivors in the middle of this plague, but instead there are pockets of Weepers.”
The trailer explains several of the other ideas underlying Dishonored and of course shows off plenty of screenshots and video, all of which looks fantastic. A narrative-driven, pseudo-sandbox game set in a steampunk world touched by magic? Yes, you could say I’m interested. Dishonored is slated to come out later this year for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
