Dishonored | Capturing the Arkane | 2020 Review 

Please bear in mind that I had 53 subscribers when I uploaded this video. Hunt Down the Freeman went through Steam Greenlight on Valve's platform, and to this day remains a blatant copyright infringement of their IP on their storefront. It doesn't take a stamp of approval from Gaben himself for that to be a taken as a greenlight.

Dishonored is one of the games I've played through most, and I don't think that has anything to do with the gameplay or the plot. Gameplay is good, plot is ok, but the world one inhabits, the characters in it, and the particular artistic style really do it for me.

If you get the low chaos ending and you spare High Overseer Campbell(as both a man and then a weeper), he get's cured of his weep...ing...ness. Weeperness.

Glad I discovered this channel! One note on the non-lethal options for targets is that, while more cruel and elaborate than a simple swift assassination, they keep in line with the game’s title: the targets are left dishonored, given pathetic and miserable life sentences, much like what Corvo had faced. There could be arguments against this idea though, it’s been a few years since I have finished the game, but that is the impression I got from those non-lethal options, that the fate worse than death was to totally strip the villains of their dignity and humanity.

Tbh I love the nonlethal options because for most of them, they're worse fates than death. It's great to just damn people while letting them live. Also stealing Daud's purse is just pure fucking swag. To add on to the Daud thing, Daud himself is perfectly fine with you killing him for what he's done, but if you walk away after fighting him he's in disbelief, but if you steal his coin purse, my preferred way of neutralizing him because style, he just has a quiet breakdown over the fact that, as he was surrounded by people loyal to him, only one person would ever really steal from him and that person would also just fucking kill him. So when you just pick his pocket and leave? That sends him down a spiral that's genuinely very interesting. More so because if you role play as Corvo the cruelly merciful, letting your targets live, for a given value of living, he could infer about the other ways Corvo would fuck with him. It's just a really nice character beat into the minds of both Daud and Corvo.

You can actually save Emily in High Chaos; if you teleport and kill her captor before he can throw her off the ledge, you get a third ending with "evil" Emily ruling.

Dishonored is, in my opinion, hobbled in a weird, less than obvious way. Seriously, hear me out: The best way is to pseudo-ironman it and only use autosave points when you die. I realized this after botching stealth and being attacked by a bunch of guards. I popped slow motion and fought off four of them at the same time, with slow motion cutting out just in time for all of them to fall dead in a semi-circle around me. This was awesome, and I remember thinking it was a shame it would never be part of that Corvo's history because I'd just reload, not get caught, and go for a neatly planned out Low Chaos run. It struck me how strange it is how the "real" story of that particular run would be highly fragmented in my memory, because of all the reloading. Could I lay claim to doing a cool thing if I then officially declared it non-canon in my own run? Normally, that doesn't really bother me in games, because it's often a question of mechanics. Yes, I reloaded, because it's objectively better to have more than less health. The opposite side of the spectrum would be, ironically, text-heavy RPG's, where I feel fairly removed from the choices the game offers because they're filtered through cut-scenes and established characters, rather than my own direct actions. The Chaos system provides a good middle ground, and the fact that it hinges on your actions throughout the game means you can't turn your brain off until you encounter another dialogue choice. I'm reminded of a part in The Witcher 3, where a bunch of nobodies attack you, and I habitually slaughtered them, only later realizing I didn't need to. But the game never reminded me again. And while one might argue that fits with the world of The Witcher, I'd say it'd do so even more if it mattered. The game likes reminding you all the time... as long as the choice was made through dialogue. The difficulty of Dishonored seems to be made with this continuous manner of play in mind. Its forgiving nature means it's more or less impossible for any individual encounter to drain your resources to the point where it becomes a logical choice to reload. Wandering into High Chaos might make the game harder, but it's more far off. And your general behavior being judged, rather than a single story point somewhere, means you can't approach it as a part-time thing. I've found it shifts the difficulty from being purely mechanical, to being more psychological. You're working with a more general goal in mind, and not just getting past the next group of guards. And the potential of a slip-up impacting my overall game, rather than me just trying to beat the game, was ever present in my mind. This does add an interesting dynamic in some cases: Do you go for the Low Chaos assassination when it means lugging a corpse through half the city, and maybe ending up in a worse position than you'd be in if you just knife the sucker while no-one's looking? Choking guards becomes much less of an option when one catches you with your pants down, or when abusing Blink and quickly choking the guard down there could go wrong and alert everyone. So you become a reluctant killer, with the possible exception of people who just really deserve it. And that's why the Chaos system and the ending had a big impact on me. I kept it all Low Chaos right up until the last mission. I return to the pub to see that Emily now thinks of me as a death-headed killing machine. I travel to the island with Samuel being surly, and telling me he never wants to see me again. But I tried, Samuel. And for most of the time, I succeeded. It's easy to just sit there in your boat and lecture me about killing, but I'm the guy with the knife and the scary mask who gets sent into the lion's den again and again. You expect me to not defend myself? To stay untouched by the filth that creeps up everywhere in this damn city? You think not even trying makes you a better man? Well, good. That's why I shot the sucker with a tranq dart. I'm going to need a ride back, and Samuel can learn a lesson about maintaining principles when the choice is between seeing me one more time, or being stuck on an island full of angry traitors with very short prospective careers. That day, the fruit of victory had a bitter taste to it, and it made me embrace the more negative ending all the more. One of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, to be honest. Too bad the sequel didn't stack up in that regard, but you'll have to read about that in a different novel.

arkane really got shafted so many times, and have such good fluid movement and combat in their games.. but games run on oblivion's engine are still blasting

Would love to see a dishonoured 2 review! I loved both the games and I learned a lot in this review

Came to your channel for the Morrowind mega video, stayed for all the rest of this quality analysis. Your hard work is appreciated and incredible. Can't wait to see you at 100,000 subscribers and up.

quick note at 5:20 is that corvo actually returned a few days early, and ended up in a wrong place wrong time kind of situation. he wasn't supposed to be there for the assassination, and they pinned the blame on him because he was.

Where my "Flesh and Steel, Clean(er/est) Hands, Whisper Ways, Silence is Golden, Ghost, Time Management, Natural Talent, By My Hand Alone" crew at?

i think the limitations on dead bodies were because of the physics in the game, the bodies, while static, they still have rag doll physics which might be more taxing performance wise than a guard with simple walking or other animations

I can't wait for the dishonored 2 video. Just because of how actually mindbogling capeshit crazy the entire engine of the game works

This is my first time watching one of your videos, I love the structure and format of the videos, and they're relatively long, I'm a sucker for long critiques. Thank you Sir, keep doing what you're doing:)

Only my second video of yours so far after stumbling upon your 7 hour morrowind vid. Safe to say I’m glad I found the channel.

When I started following you yesterday you had 1.9k subs, so you've gained a thousand in a day! Freaking badass!

Hey man, just found your channel and I'm going through your backlog. Amazing stuff. It's rare to find such a perfect balance between humour, personality, and genuinely insightful and intelligent analysis. Love your stuff!

Very good reviews mate! Informative with a side of humor. Keep it up!

Soon you will be bigger, Just keep making this wonderful content.

Such an excellent video. Can’t wait til you have 10x the subs you do now!

Just came here from watching your D2 critique, and I must say bravo! Both were very detailed analyses that shed new light on issues I was unaware of and further clarified a myriad of gripes I had; and this is from someone who really knows the franchise well-or at least thought they did. With that said, I still of course love the game uncontrollably. And it seems you do too, yet you end both videos pessimistically. I say so as obviously the amount of time and effort you’ve put into understanding every facet shows you have respect for it on some capacity. I wish that was stated more clearly, but that’s nothing more than preference of understanding your opinion. Unless you actually do dislike this game franchise and you still decided to throw hours upon hours of your time it’s direction-all I can say to that is: mad lad. To wrap up, I love content like this. It’s unfortunate that almost any and every expansive epic, whether books, film, or games usually have just as many problems as narrative achievements, but I accept these criticisms wholeheartedly. Better not to lie and blind yourself of bad craftsmanship out of devotion to a work of art, than to become an annoying fanboy! 😂

I have to disagree about blink, "ruining the game" for some people, or making it too easy. Here's my take: modern games that bend over backwards to establish "balance" between all abilities/paths ruin the games far more. Games like Morrowind and Dishonored stand unique (amongst other reasons) because they embrace this idea that certain play styles will inevitably be more powerful, even comically so. The games provide a ton of different options and pathways that a player might take, and rather than the developer hamstringing players who want to take that god route by removing options for "balance," they allow us to choose each play through how hammy we want it. Blink-choke-blink-hide body is one of the combos that made your magic PC (in a world with very limited magic) so fun, and stand out as unique.

their discography of games is near perfect and they should be very proud of what they've developed. AAA publishers are disgusting man, Arkane deserved much better.

IMO too many people went for low chaos first playthrough. I think high chaos was the intended first playthrough, with low chaos for players when they get more skilled

Dishonored and Bioshock are both tied for the spots for my favorite game. thanks for the great video!

Ah, Dishonored. The game that people up to this day mischaracterize as a stealth game even though it has more options for non-stealth gameplay and when it starts it outright tells you that there isn't a wrong way to play it while associating the high chaos ending as the "bad" ending even though the game tries its hardest to avoid that association :-P. Also one of my favorite series which i always play in the most lethal way possible as i am not a big fan of stealth - and find Emily's reactions amusing (BTW you can save her from falling in the high chaos ending, she then promises to kill everyone who opposes her afterwards :-P), both in the first game but also in the sequel too where she makes some amusingly over the top comments when she notices random objects in the world ("ah, a pencil, how i wish i could stab delilah in the eyes, force feed her her eyeballs and laugh at her as she chokes on them, desperately gasping for air" - or something like that, it has been a while since i played the game :-P). Arkane is one my favorite developers as so far they've made exclusively immersive sims and focus heavily on the gameplay side. I have a feeling that their games are designed with gameplay first and then they come up with a story to excuse the gameplay (Prey is perhaps the best example of this - the gameplay is excellent, i've played a ton of immersive sims and proto-immersive sims ever since Ultima Underworld and even some of the games that inspired that like Dungeon Master and Prey is easily my favorite... but the writing/story is at best ok). I found it amusing when in the NoClip video about the company, all their narrative designer talked about was gameplay and never mentioned narrative at all :-P.

hey i think you have some really good takes. i didnt expect to agree with everything you said in the morrowind review and i was able to sit through the whole thing. thanks for making that , it was awesome. maybe do a little piece on rebirth and tamriel rebuilt down the road if you feel like going back. not too many people have covered it

Your video is top notch. I watched the Morrowind mega vid and now I'm browsing the rest of your content! Edit: I answered my own question by rewatching the video.

28:33 wait what??...your samuel didn't fire the gun??...is there medium chaos effect in there??...for me he always fire the gun in high chaos!!

I play with most of the UI hints and markers turned off too, but I always leave the object highlight on in both Dishonored 1 & 2. And the reason is that I've noticed I tend to abuse the Batman vision power if I don't have object highlight on, probably because I'm a compulsive explorer/collector and modern games have so much detail it becomes a chore to discern which objects are props and which are actually interactable.

Great review

The world, the artsyle, the characters, the lore and the great gameplay and allowance for player freedom and creativity, love this game

I know every dishonored video there is yet this great content got past me somehow!!

30:20 The Industrial Revolution and it’s consequences...

btw you can alert the regent in castle so he will run up. After that you can do some acrobatics with his body in hands and jump off the roof. So you actually can drag his body to Samuel

5:06 very small point, there's a line saying that Corvo came back early. So the assassination was supposed to happend when he was still away

I've never played Dishonored but I'm willing to sacrifice just a bit of my time to watch this maestro's masterpiece of editing mwahaha

Oh also, good job on the video in general.

Love the video. Question for you, how do you put the little hashtag above your title?

"Bethesdecision" I'm rolling

"...industrial revolution or apocalypse. But I repeat myself." Unabomber ghostwriting these or what?

I like how you didn't dare to put the original image at 3:01 kek.

Hey dude I just found your channel and love your content. Undoubtetly you will blow up soon. Would you ever consider doing a video on Disco Elysium? I'd be thrilled to hear your opinion on it!

the mission witht the overseer begging to die because he has plague is different in high chaos in that the other 2 overseers are actually TRYING to kill him as he lies trying to convince them that hes actually healthy.

woah ok, i may need to replay this because my play through was almost completely different!

Arkane is the non autistic version of Valve. Underrated studio. All their games are just so cohesive and knows what it wants to be.

35:30 - I actually had a case - I don't know if it's a bug - where a despawned body resulted in a live guard replacing the despawned one in one of the later levels even though I was on low chaos.

I love the combat in the dishonored games, some of the most satisfying fps meele combat murder I've got to do in any game

I really enjoyed this video, but I do have to nitpick as a developer. The 5 bodies limit is pretty low, but ragdolls are computationally expensive, especially in comparison to an NPC that's just walking around on a pre-determined path. It makes sense to me that they'd want to limit the number of dead/KO'd bodies around the map.

After playing Prey. I will support anything this company makes. I’ve never played the dishonored series but I will now.

Wanted man: Signs his name in guest list he's trying to sneak through

"You're gonna have to do better than that if you wanna make protagonist by game 2" killed me

Fun fact, you only have to do the granny rags fight if you do both her missions and both slackjaw missions, if you do one for both or two for one and one for the other then you do lnt get it

Ooooh spicy take

I also tried to get Ghost, Clean Hands and Mostly Flesh and Steel at the same time, but I couldn't make it past the Whalers after you lose all your stuff without alerting them. How did you make it?

Dishonored Is my favourite game of all time and always will be. I have over 1000 hours in it just because I come back and play it every couple months for like 2 weeks straight and it’s not like over games we’re you play for a month or so then forget about I keep coming back because it’s perfect in my opinion, from the gameplay to the voice actors to the art style to freedom you have when playing the game,dishonored is the best game ever made in my opinion.

A prey review would be much appreciated. I liked it but got so bored I still haven't finished it.

I started replaying this game during the fall of 2022. It is interesting how much you notice and understand once you're older. When I played this when I was 12 I just k'lled people because I saw them as bad. Now that I am older I understand that isn't the best thing to do in the game.

Man. Feels bad after the recent closures

I was pretty pure stealth as much as possible, but also max lethality. I got the skill that turns enemies to ash when you stealth kill them so i killed pretty much everyone cuz i had no idea the chaos system existed when i played this game on launch

I have no idea why I enjoy quicksaving and reloading to achieve the perfect "edge of tomorrow" sequence of actions to stealth and incapacitate all the guards

Wait. You can get an invitation to the Boyle party before you go? I always snuck in or picked one up. Also it's funny that they Boyle sisters are randomized.... After 3 times in a row as a black rose, my fourth playthrough was kinda eye opening when the stalker says it's the wrong Boyle.

The problem i have with Dishonored is the fact it punishes you for killing, Dishonored 3 should have an enemy chaos system where each enemy is either high chaos or low chaos and you can kill the high chaos enemies without raising your own chaos, and you would have to listen to the enemies idle voice lines to be able to tell which side they fall on. Also it shouldnt punish us for killing our targets, because some of them definitely deserve it.

40:40 - I had to GOOGLE the location of that wall because I completely forgot that objective markers exist, yet the only answer I found was "turn on the markers" smh.

22:40 Got to pay attention to that articulation man.

I didn't know about the drama behind Bethesda withholding milestone payments to try and screw over Arkane during development (though I had heard of them basing a bonus to Obsidian for Fallout New Vegas based on critic scores, which suspiciously fell just under the mark despite having overwhelming reviews by users/players). Sucks that it's possible we could have gotten a much bigger/better Dishonored were it not for AAA interference. Good review overall, do you feel Arkane has kinda fell off the wagon lately? I heard that "Dealth Loop" is fun but not as good as Dishonored, and that Red Fall is an unmitigated disaster.

Brb, on my way to reinstall the game and do a playthrough with objective markers and the Hud turned off.

Thief games (old and new) review?

Dishonored is one of my favorite games, like, top 3

"You were drawing smiling faces when I left...."

This game deserves a remaster of this video.

Hey, what version of "Drunken Sailor" did you use, starting at around 17:40. I would really like to hear the full song. Thank you!

Great review. I personally think that this game didn't need a sequel. Second game was ok, but wasn't that revolutionary and deep as the first one.

Make a Dark Messiah video PLEASE

Out of curiosity, what's with the gag on immersive sims 'not existing?' I also have trouble seeing it entirely as its own *genre* that's a little extreme imo but there are certainly serious through-lines between Deus Ex, System/Bioshock, Dishonored, Prey (Arkane), Thief, et cetera et cetera. Is there like, a cult of super militant immersive sim fans we're making fun of? How did I miss that?

6:02 I felt your faith...

I'm probably just dumb but how do you get Campbell and Curnow in the secret room together? I've played the game over a dozen times and have never seen that, thanks.

I've played through this game so many times, every possible way & every possible difficulty.. many, many more times I'm comfortable admitting 😂 second one was not so hot but still good and death of the outsider is really damn good too.. at least to me..

6:22 I found that this problem goes away on Hard

Jebus, that intro really hits. When I thought these companies were scummy just for horse armor and putting skyrim on my fridge before even announcing that we'll get the sequel when Im in my retirement home telling my neighbors they'd have savings if they didnt let their kids gamble it all away to get this year's line up in madden 2070.

Wait. Did he not cover the endings?

I legit did not know the heart was the emperess's until Dishonored 2

First time viewer here. What does this dude have against immersive sims? I don't agree with how the genre is named but its definitely real and its known for having quality and relatively niche games

I don't really have anything to add to the conversation, just throwing something out for the RU-vid algorithm. Love this kinda content, it's an absolute injustice that it has so few views.

Been playing dishonered for years, done every achievement. But I still suck at this game, that’s what makes it fun!

"Dishonored can't be an immersive sim if immersive sims aren't real" hahhaha whooo! Now there's a hot take I can get behind

I miss the Dishonored series as a whole.

Seems very likely Bethesda did this same trick on Human Head Studios when they refused to release the nearly complete Prey 2, cancelled the game, and "gave the IP to another studio." After their next game flopped Human Head folded and was immediately acquired by Bethesda under a different name. Bethesda, then announced that Prey 2 had NOT been cancelled and, now also owning Arkane, mandated that their sci-fi survival horror immersive sim be titled Prey despite having no relation to that IP, which was part of the reason for its commercial failure. After Prey's commercial failure, due to Zenimax/Bethesda exec's desire to cash out and be bought out by another company, most of their top single player developers were then pivoted to making monetizable multiplayer/ live service games, leading to Fallout 76, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and most recently Redfall, which lacked vision & focus (bc nobody at Arkane wanted to make it and more than half of the previous team had left) which was eventually released as a terrible looter shooter after the Microsoft acquisition. So the tragedy of Arkane making Redfall starts way back in the late 00s or early 2010s with a completely different studio making a totally unrelated game. Bethesda systematically fucked over the studios it published in order to acquire them more cheaply, re-assigned studios to develop ill-fitting IPs or forced them to churn out bad games they didnt want to make, an exodus of talent from these studios behind the scenes, burnt out by Bethesda/Zenimax's dodgy, demanding management, all leading to the Microsoft acquisition, so the same execs who destroyed their own company in the name of ~making it more profitable~ could cash out, leaving Microsoft with a hollow shell of the company they bought; a post-Fallout 76 Todd Howard and a raft of IPs that are only as good as the studio developing the games.

god i fish for an arx fatalis sequel that would ahve been so good damn., what could ahve been

21:50 That's pure fanfic. Lady Boyle gets handed off to a noble admirer, not some modern day redneck. I'm pretty sure he mentions his estate on a private island; much more luxurious than some dude's basement. I'm pretty sure she'd be willing to stay on his island too, after he explained that it was the only option to stop her from being assassinated that night, even if she might not ever be interested in him.

I myself found the "moral choice" option in this game a Sophie's Choice. You can strait up murder someone or you can make their life unbelievably miserable and then die. I never felt like the good guy in the game. In fact I felt like the evil guy a D&D group would quest to and take down after I placed my puppet daughter on the throne. Scar from the Lion King was not as murderous and cruel as we were in that game and everyone knew he was the bad guy!

I went with sparing Delilah because I figured Daud was a man who had had enough killing.

Actually corvo came a day early corvo wasn’t supposed to be framed or at least it wasn’t planed

“Bethedescision” 10/10

I remember one play through I didn’t kill anyone until the last mission. Then i killed everyone on that level and got the best ending lol

Dishonored is definitely one of the games.

is PatricianTV working at Bethesda PR ?

I can't remember that delilah charakter at all O.o

Dishonoured is one of my favourite games. I play it at least twice a year. It’s a shame the sequel didn’t have the same impact. It’s also a good thing there were no other games after 2 that would make things even worse. They did wonderful work on Prey as well, and I play it regularly too. It’s just a shame Arkane’s spark seems to get less and less bright with every game.