That's the point of video games, right?
I have some major problems with Dishonored. I think it's clumsy, judgemental, and not sure of what it wants to be, and too short.
So why can't I stop playing it? I'm 27 hours in. I've played the game twice over, and I have yet to play the DLCs! (I was only 5 hours in when I decided the DLCs were worth buying, if only due to the Steam sale and the fact that the game was clearly wrapping up.)
Why do I like the game? First off, I'm a sucker for stealth. I like playing Skryim as an archer-assassin, Fallout as a sniper, and the Batman Arkham games as Batman. Dishonored gets a big win for that. I like the setting; scratch that, I LOVE the setting. I'm not a huge historical anything fan, but the steampunk elements really appealed to me. The plot really interests me, though I do agree with Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation that Corvo should have been more: "Wait a minute! I didn't kill her!" It might not have done any good, but it was a lot harder to swallow Corvo just taking being accused of killing his implied lover. I love open worlds that encourage me to climb on the rooftops. I love how the game encourages you to figure out your own way through the game, and is fairly smart about it. I remember having quite the shock the first time one of the guards found the body of another guard, and immediately began looking for me. The AI pays attention to what you do in the environment, and that's fantastic.
However, the longer I play the game, the more it rubs me the wrong way about a few things. As I said, it was very judgemental.
I don't mind games that have a morality meter, and as hamfisted as this game is about its, Dishonored probably has one of the better-done morality meters. (I would call Fallout New Vegas as the best, but this is a close second.) I like games where the game pays attention to you: it really adds to the immersion. The more people you kill, alarms you raise, and attention you gather, the harder and darker the game gets. You are a marker for the game's place on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs Cynicism. If you don't kill anybody, or barely kill anybody, the game is fairly light. (The achievement for completing the game with low chaos, which is how the game keeps track of how many people you kill, is called "Just Dark Enough/") Emily, the only child in the base game, is the most stark example: in a low chaos run she is called Emily the Wise, but in a high chaos run her last words in the game are: "The others are all dead, aren't they? Good. I was always gonna have them killed anyway."
For the most part, the game's reaction to how you play makes sense. The more people you kill, the more food for the plague rats, and the worse the plague gets. The exception the game doesn't account for being if you get the ability to make bodies disappear after you kill them. The more trouble you make, the more guards will be around, and the more people will be on alert for you. As you are heavily implied to be Emily's father, and that Emily knows this, it makes sense that she would take her sense of morality from you.
I also think it's neat how the dialogue changes based on how you play the game. If you complete the prologue of the game without being seen or killing anybody, you will overhear guards comment in later levels about how you were a ghost. If you complete the prologue inversely, by killing anything that moves, you will overhear guards say things like: "How many people did he kill on his way out of there?" and imply there was no way you couldn't have not killed the empress. I don't even mind how, the more vicious you are, the more desperate the people are at the end of the game. It makes sense: by this point they know you're coming, and they know you will show no mercy.
I don't know how I feel about you representing the hope of the city, however. The scene that comes to mind occurs in the High Overseer level. You come across three overseers, and what happens depends on your chaos level.
In low chaos: one of the overseers is showing symptoms of the plague. They beg the other two to kill them so they can't spread it. They do, but apologetically.
In high chaos: one of the overseers is showing symptoms of the plague. They are accused of trying to hide it, and brutally murdered by the other two overseers.
It's too early in the game for you to have a true effect on the city, and the people in it. They don't know your end game. They don't even know you're coming, but the game is still paying attention. And it has the eye of your grandmother: antiquated and judgemental. (That's how your grandmother is, right? Right.)
The morality system encourages the stealth, yes. The biggest problem I have with it is: if you are encouraged to not kill anybody, even within the plot of the game (you are able to find a non-lethal way of taking out every single person you need to in the game if you are paying attention) why does the game hand you twenty ways to kill someone? You always have a sword in your right hand, and if you play the game like the game wants you to you are never going to use it. You are still stuck with the sword, however. You can't switch it out for another ability, or anything like that.
By being given a grenade, mine, sword, two lethal and one non-lethal variant of crossbows, and a gun as weapons, along with the ability to summon plague rats to eat someone alive, the ability to possess someone and make them leap to their death (and quickly unpossess them so you don't die with them) and do things such as stop time as someone shoots at you, possess them and move them into their own bullet so they die, the game is slyly giving you a knowing wink and going: "Come on. I know you want to! I won't judge (I totally will.)" If you sneak above a guard, it will tell you if you press x, it'll just kill that guy for you. And of course, they create a whole sophisticated combat system they encourage you not to use. (The sword fighting is awesome, and you can one-shot kill people if you fight a chain of them, and upgrade an ability.)
If you take the 'kill everything' route, the game is incredibly gorey. There's a bit of psychopathic satisfaction in knowing you can decapitate someone and carry their head around that section of the level as a good luck charm. The game always slows down when you kill a target, so you can enjoy the view of your character throwing a sword in their neck.
On top of all that, while sneaking around, you will more than once find signs of humanity in your victims. It is an odd thing to complain about, yes, that you will witness guards talking about getting married, or hear about their affairs, but the game seems confused on even that. The heart mechanic, a very interesting and creepy piece of equipment that tells you the secret story behind everyone, has generic lines for guards. You can hear a guard talking to a maid about how they should just run away together, point the heart at him, and hear: "He always eats well, even as his wife and child grow thin."
On top of all that, one of the studios involved in making the game is called: "Revenge Solves Everything." The game just needs to tell me where it stands: am I a bastard for stabbing that guy, or not?
I am not denying that Dishonored is a fun game, or that you can do very fun things with it. Here's a guy who sets everything up as a horrible accident, for example. I just think if somebody had sat down in the planning stages and cleared up where the game is on just murderizing everything, it would have been an amazing game.
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