Review: Dishonored: Definitive Edition

Dishonored was met with critical acclaim upon its release in 2012. It possessed an open world style of gameplay that truly felt open, alongside a mix of equipment and magical abilities that let you tackle its world and your objectives in whatever style that fit you. It was refreshing to hear developer Arkane Studios detail how parts of the game design were influenced by playtesters using abilities in ways they hadn’t even considered, such as the very handy teleporting long-jump or the drop-a-long-distance-and-possess-someone-at-the-last-second trick (that one doesn’t get a catchy name).

With the highly-anticipated Dishonored 2 waiting just around the corner in 2016, Arkane has prepared a refresher for us all in the form of Dishonored: Definitive Edition. Bundling together the original game and its challenge map and story DLC, Definitive also boasts some souped up graphics as it arrives on current-gen consoles for the first time.

For those not in the know, a quick refresher on the story: you play as Corvo Attano, Lord Protector of the Empress of Dunwall. After being framed for her murder and the kidnapping of her daughter Emily, you’re recruited by a rebel group called the Loyalists to murder your way through all the conspirators and restore Emily to the throne of Dunwall. Meanwhile, DLC packs The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches form a two-part story about Daud – the man who actually did kill the Empress – as he searches for redemption for his actions in changing the city.

The game itself is relatively unchanged from its origins on last-gen systems. Nothing has really been changed gameplay-wise from the original release, barring the default inclusion of the “Void Walker’s Arsenal” DLC that gives access to extra Bone Charms and equipping slots to use these minor perks from the outset. More noticeably, the game has had its visuals souped-up for the higher resolution of the PS4 and Xbox One, and upped to 60 frames per second (whoops! Nope. It’s locked at 30fps, but still looks damn good to me).

While these are welcome changes for this re-release, they are unfortunately not seamless. While textures game-wide have been updated in quality there is some discrepancy when it comes to one-use textures. A noticeable instance of this is in the game’s opening, where you sail past a large whaling vessel. While your smaller dinghy and its occupants are of solid quality, the whaling ship seems blurry by comparison and really takes away from the effect. Likewise, the game’s higher frame rate seems to stutter on occasion when swinging the camera around quickly, a problem for a game where you often need to move quite snappily. In all honesty these problems may well have existed I the original title, but the higher benchmark set by current-gen titles make these smaller issues stand out by comparison.

One other problem that has noticeably carried over from the 360/PS3 days is the game’s annoyingly slow load times. For a game where you often need to save and reload to properly execute tricky manuvers, this gets tiresome quickly. Given I was reviewing this title from a digital copy, there doesn’t seem to be a reason for these load times not to have been optimised.

All that aside, the game itself is still a great ride. As it turns out, I was the one to review the original game for Stevivor back in 2012 (but given this was more than six months ago, I had totally forgotten), so it was interesting to measure those first-time impressions against this release. For contrast, I tried paying the game in a frontal assault style rather than the stealth I recommended originally. I have to say, both methods are still highly enjoyable. The flexibility of the game’s world is still a winner in the modern landscape, and hopefully this will be taken another step further in the game’s upcoming sequel. For anyone who didn’t get the chance to play on original release, give it a shot for sure. Even if you did play the first time around, there’s been enough of a gap to make it worth revisiting. Try taking a different approach, and get yourself back up to speed ahead of Corvo and Emily’s joint adventure next year.

Dishonored: Definitive Edition was reviewed using a promotional code on Playstation 4, as provided by the publisher.

Review: Dishonored: Definitive Edition

The good Still an excellent, open-ended game. Higher framerate suits the parkour style.	The bad Graphical upgrade a little rough around the edges. Load times are still woeful.

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