Dishonored: Freedom to Choose

I want to make it perfectly clear right out of the gates that I loved Dishonored much more than I thought I would. Every once in a while, I'll buy a game on a whim, just for something to hold me over until Assassin's Creed III comes out - and then I end up playing that game rather than buying AC3. Actually, this has only ever happened once with AC3 specifically, and it happened with Dishonored.

The thing that this game does better than any other game out there is make you feel as though you have a choice. Plenty of games give you a choice, but few actually make you feel as though you chose to choose. Let me explain that.

In most modern RPG's you are given a very obvious choice. Do you anger this mercenary and earn his ire? Or do you make friends with him, pledging him to your cause? You see, you know you're making a choice. So yes, you can affect the game in meaningful ways, but it still feels superficial, as though the game was calling out, "Decision point! Time to choose!"

Dishonored hides your choices. Some may hate this. Some may say, "But if I don't know I'm choosing, how do I make the right choice?" And to that I answer, by doing what comes naturally. Too often in games we see that fourth wall. When faced with a choice, we do not ask ourselves, "What would my character do here?" Instead, we ask, "What is going to help me win this game?" I've done it. I've kept characters alive whom I've hated simply because I know they're powerful. Other times, I've acted in the interest of my personal story - deciding to get rid of characters I know could help me.

With Dishonored, I never felt like I was choosing to win. I was choosing because I, as Corvo, would do this thing. But it was more than deciding who to kill or who to keep alive. It was the decisions like, 'Do I use this vent to enter the mansion?' Or 'Do I take this secret passage or keep exploring?' This game did a wonderful job with immersing me so fully in its world that even decisions such as when to use bullets as opposed to crossbow bolts felt meaningful.

The lesson here is to allow your player to be immersed in their decisions, don't give them a menu that explains what each choice is. When you allow the choices to evolve naturally out of what the player wants to do while immersed, that will only add to the immersion.

Also, this game has the best end credits song I've ever heard. Listen to it.