Dishonored
Every month we celebrate the most important, innovative, or just plain great games from PlayStation’s past. This month, we take to the roofs of Dunwall as we revisit the uniquely British fantasy setting of Arkane’s cult classic
Claiming that a film, novel, or game’s setting is a character in its own right is one of the oldest clichés in the book. While it’s not quite accurate to describe Dunwall – the fantasy city where Dishonored takes place – as a character, it certainly shines brighter than the game’s nominal star, the maskwearing Corvo Attano.
Corvo is your standard vengeful man on a mission. Formerly the bodyguard to Dunwall’s royal family, at the start of the game Corvo is framed for the murder of the Empress, the very person he’s supposed to be protecting. It’s as good a reason as any for a roaring rampage of revenge, but really it’s just an excuse to explore the world laid out by Arkane Studios.
Dishonored’s developers have been open about their inspirations: London and Edinburgh, particularly as they existed in the mid-1800s through to the 1930s. And if you’ve ever lived in or simply visited one of these cities, Dunwall will feel immediately familiar. Arkane might be based in France – and visual design director Viktor Antonov, Dunwall’s primary architect, is Bulgarian – but it’s the most perfect caricature of a British city you’ll ever visit in a game.
Tall chimneys puff smoke into an already grey sky, faded advertisements are painted on bare brick, and you hear the occasional sound of seagulls overhead. A thick wedge of brown water drives right through the heart of the city. The semi-permanent haze might just be a workaround for technical limitations, but perfectly evokes memories of morning fog.
While the primary influence is Victorian, Dunwall also pulls from earlier in Britain’s history (the rats of the Black Plague, the armour of Civil War roundheads), and closer to the modern day – some buildings are crumbling semi-ruins like they were caught in the Blitz, others are metallic structures that wouldn’t be out of place in the London skyline today. It almost feels like home, until an eyeliner-wearing god strolls into Corvo’s life and hands him magical powers.
These powers open up Dunwall brilliantly. There is a single mandatory ability, Blink, which lets you teleport
AN EYELINERWEARING GOD STROLLS IN AND HANDS YOU MAGICAL POWERS.
a short distance to reach areas that would be off-limits to any normal person. As you progress through the game, you can choose others to unlock and upgrade, such as Possession, which lets you jump into the body of a rat and scurry through tight tunnels.
There is always a variety of routes to your objective, many of which let you skip entire rooms full of enemies. Blink to the rooftops and you’ll find yourself ducking through open windows into hidden rooms packed with handy supplies and extra snatches of story. Dishonored thoroughly rewards exploration, because it wants you to see as much of its world as possible.
DUNROAMIN
As you explore, you might come across a ‘wall of light’, one of the electrical forcefields that are lethal to any unauthorised person who steps through them. Or ‘tallboys’, the spindly-legged walkers that present a formidable threat if you try to attack them head-on. These technological marvels bear the unmistakable mark of Antonov, looking like they could be lifted straight out of Half-Life 2’s City 17, which he was also the architect of. Or maybe you’ll find a shrine to the Outsider, the aforementioned nonemore-goth god, with a rune stone buzzing at its centre. Whether it’s science or magic, these fantastical presences serve as a reminder that this is not our world… but even so, there’s just enough of the familiar mixed in to make Dunwall feel brilliantly real, and absolutely unique. A classic setting for a classic game, indeed.