By Mario Orozco

Using stealth is one of my favorite ways to play and experience a game. Something about sneaking around and taking out enemies one by one has always been appealing. This week, Mar’s Gaming Garage will be looking at Dishonored, a stealth-action game set in the plague ridden city of Dunwall.

Dishonored follows the Royal Protector, Corvo, who’s been framed for the death of the empress and the kidnapping of her daughter Emily. The story of the game is a simple one — you break out of prison to take revenge on the people responsible and restore Emily to the throne. 

What brings the story to life is how your actions affect the way your allies perceive you and can change the outcome of the story. Playing the game non-lethally will result in a good ending, but that’s the boring way to play. Personally, I tried to play the most chaotic way possible and took the lethal approach to most situations. The game gives you so many different ways to take out enemies that playing peacefully seemed like a waste of resources.

The place where Dishonored shines is in its gameplay. Like I said earlier, I love stealth games, so I obviously loved every moment of this experience. The game implements supernatural abilities that Corvo can use to teleport, see through walls, summon plague rats, and even stop time. These features set Dishonored apart from other stealth or assassin games and allow for creative ways to get through missions and take out enemies. 

Dishonored is hit or miss for me when it comes to its characters. The issue isn’t with the characters themselves or their personalities, but the way they switched up on me. If you cause a lot of chaos throughout the game, the other characters will lose trust in you. I was very offended when my boat driver called me a bad person. I may have taken out hundreds of soldiers unnecessarily, but I have feelings too. 

This leads into something I didn’t like about the game. Dishonored gives you a clear motivation to want to watch the world burn around you. You are forced to watch the death of the empress that you swore to protect, the kidnapping of her daughter.To top it all off, you’re framed for it all. This to me seems like plenty of reasons to want to tear the system down, so it’s kind of annoying that the game punishes you for it. In my heart, the bad ending is really the good ending. 

Overall, Dishonored was one of the most fun games I have reviewed so far. While the story doesn’t match up to some of the others I’ve played, the gameplay is phenomenal and carries the experience. Dishonored took me 15 hours and 7 minutes to beat, and I rate it a 4 out of 5. If the game didn’t make me feel so guilty for the way I played it would’ve been higher, but I still recommend it to anyone interested in stealth games. 

If you have any games you would like me to review or any thoughts on this review, you can email marsgaminggarage@gmail.com.

Mario Orozco is a writer and assistant social media editor for The Lumberjack. He transferred to Cal Poly Humboldt in 2022 and his favorite game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.