Dishonored is gorgeous, as you can probably tell from the screenshots. It’s a little misleading to watch the trailer, however, since the game never really gets that dark. The darkest shadows in the game only look comfortably dim at the most. The art style is lovely, either way, looking like a painted scene from Victorian London. Even the people have this painted look to their faces. If the character design and all this painterly stuff seem familiar, it’s probably because Arkane Studios did art and design for Bioshock 2.

The world is rich and detailed, and you could infer a lot just by looking and exploring. For example, there’s an interesting culture portrayed here where women never wear dresses, and often the men are dressed more extravagantly and fancier than the women. It’s also a world where whale oil happens to be the main fuel source, and everything from lights to creepy stilt-walking armatures is powered by it. It doesn’t mean much in relation to the game or story, but it does make for an interesting fantasy world.

The sound is equally impressive, with foreboding music and eerie sound effects. There’s an occult undercurrent here; so many places have that sound and feel to them, with odd wailing and wind rustling sounds blending into the background noise. The voice acting is also very well done. Aside from the repetitive mumblings of some guards, the characters in the game are all believable and convincing, creating a world of political plots and dark, supernatural undercurrents. It’s just not the darkest and moodiest world ever. Well, aside from the frequent murder, that is.

Dishonored puts you in the shoes of a bodyguard, namely the bodyguard to the Empress of a city called Dunwall. Your name is Corvo, and although you’ve spent your life protecting people, you’re suddenly thrown into the dirty work of assassination. Very soon after this, you’re introduced to a mysterious being known as "The Outsider." He seems to have taken a sudden interest in Corvo, and bestows powers upon him in a dream.

There’s an old world whaling and sailing theme to the game, though it seems to stay on the periphery. It’s a bit like having a game where all the books you read are about horses, and you inhabit a town with an economy based on horses, and horses are just running around, but you never get to ride a horse. But that’s really just an observation, rather than a knock to the game. The books and the side conversations and the secrets of the inhabitants of Dishonored all tie loosely together. The "story" of the game isn’t necessarily one single narrative, but a pieced together myriad of clues. You’re just sort of thrown in, left to figure out what it all means for yourself. This could drive some players crazy, but it’s also something that can keep you coming back for more. The fact that one of the first items you get in the game is a heart that tells you secrets when you point it at objects speaks volumes about the way the game encourages you to investigate.

The story is not laid out for you at first, but actually, that’s part of the the appeal of the game. You can easily play the game as a killer, and Corvo is very good at this. But if you look for alternate ways to reach your goals, like sneaking around or otherwise avoiding outright violence, you will learn more about the story and Corvo’s motivations. You’ll be rewarded with more venues and things to do.

You can learn new powers, many powered by a mysterious dark magic, and you can buy new equipment to make your life easier. Bone Charms that enhance various abilities and occurrences in the game can also be found and equipped. You can enhance pretty much anything, but with the open world design of the game, you’re not really pinned down at any one point in the game to a certain skill set. You can easily spend your time looking for more runes or coin to enhance your powers or equipment, instead of focusing on your current mission objectives, if you wish.

As mentioned elsewhere in this review, Dishonored isn’t necessarily the most difficult game, depending on how you want to play it. The path of absolute stealth and secrecy is difficult on any of the game’s difficulty settings, but you can just go around killing, and you can get skills and spells that help support this style of play.

Basically, there always seems to be another way to do what you need to do. You could do crazy supernatural stuff like sneak around in the body of a rat if you gain the skill of possession, which obviously makes things a whole lot easier. Or you could try to do things the old fashioned way and just creep around, avoiding the line of sight of people around you. It’s not a traditional stealth game in that you need to just stick to the shadows in order to remain hidden. You have to pay attention to where everyone is looking and where the blind spots are. This definitely makes Dishonored standout in the stealth genre, where we’ve come to expect one single way to play.

Calling Dishonored a stealth action game might lead to some misunderstandings. There are barely any shadows, there’s no stealth meter, and there often isn’t only one "approved" path to stealthiness. True, one of your goals in Dishonored can be stealth and cover. But really, you could play it any way you’d like to, as long as it doesn’t get you killed.

To this end, the game performs wonderfully. The controls are solid, with the first-person view really not feeling like a shooter at all after a while, and just feeling like an action game. Everything performs smoothly, and going in and out of combat, inventory, and spell selection is quick and easy. Getting a combination of moves like a teleport, followed by a sneak around and a grab to all work together seamlessly just feels amazing.

Dishonored’s sandbox feel may be a turnoff to some people who want a clear goal or several clear branches at least. It might make picking up the game and getting started a bit difficult. But if you give it a chance, Dishonored rewards exploration and skill in ways that are very refreshing and different from the current crop of stealth games.