Dishonored doesn’t need anymore trailers: the game is out and pretty well received all over (especially by us). But Bethesda’s PR have stitched together this video the best user content on YouTube, showing off some Killer Moves. This is three minutes of amazing stealth kills, power combos and all the general craftiness Dishonored has to offer.

I found the video a little difficult to follow at first, but there is some amazingly cool footage — if you can get past the music, which is apparently a remix of ‘Drunken Whaler’? I couldn’t hear it. Maybe watching with the sound off will help. Let us know what you think, in any case.

In our massive review of Dishonored, we likened the game very strongly to Half-Life 2, and not least of all because you’re a completely mute protagonist who takes orders from everyone. It turns out that this wasn’t always the plan: speaking to Official Playstation Magazine, creators Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith revealed that Corvo was originally intended to have a voice.

“(Making him mute) was a deliberate choice,” said Raphael (or possibly Harvey). “If we portrayed Corvo angry and seeking revenge, it might offend the nonlethal player who is seeking a stable outcome for the City of Dunwall, and vice versa”.

“We added some text input options for Corvo around alpha but never really went further. To this day, we wonder what the other version would have felt like in the game”.

The interview also revealed that the original pitch for Dishonored, in its shortest possible form, was “ninjas”.

Source: OPM

We all knew it was coming, but today’s announcement makes it official: Dishonored will indeed have DLC, with the first of three planned packs being scheduled to drop in December.

The first pack is named ‘Dunwall City Trials’, and will feature ten ‘challenge maps’, including “an arena battle against waves of enemy AI, a gravity-defying run of drop assassinations, and a race against the clock”. Dunwall City Trials will retail for $8.45, or 400 Microsoft Points, and feature a global leaderboard as well as new achievements.

The second pack give us a brief teaser only: centered around the character of Daud, it will allows us to make Daud’s own way through Dunwall and “discover Daud’s own set of weapons, powers and gadgets” what is described as a “story-driven campaign”. We’re also assured that the choices we make in this piece of DLC will affect the final outcome — we’ll find out around March or April.

The third and final (?) piece of DLC is completely undetailed — we’ll learn more “closer to its launch next year”. There’s still plenty of time to pick up Dishonored, a game that we thought exceptionally highly of, so start honing your skills for those leaderboards now.

Source: Bethblog (Thanks, Makena!)

Arkane Studios’ Harvey Smith isn’t entirely sure Dishonored needs a sequel, even as the immersive sim draws rave reviews and hungry cries of “moar”.

“Part of me would love to see future games leverage this world,” he told Kotaku.

“And part of me would love it if the vault door was just closed and that’s it. This is your one view into the Empire of the Isles and into the city of Dunwall.”

Dishonored’s setting, which draws heavily on Industrial Revolution influences mixed with occult mystery, has drawn almost as much praise as its Looking Glass-legacy mechanics. The stealth-’em-up is out now on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360; we think it’s pretty special.

Source: Kotaku

Some ATI users are reporting that Dishonored not only isn’t working for them, but crashes out leaving an exceptionally long error message about unavailable binaries.

If this is happening to you, you’re in luck — a solution has been found. Right-clicking on Dishonored in Steam, selecting ‘Launch Properties’ and adding -windowed to the end will force the game to boot up in a window and — apparently — seems to be working to stop the crashing.

The solution was suggested by a Bethesda moderator, who also advised that “I can’t say I know what it means or what the problem is, but maybe someone else does. The devs are checking this forum so they’ll be aware at least”.

If you still aren’t sure about Dishonored, why not read our massive review? There’s a code at the end to get it for $45 that expires today, as well!

Source: PCGamesN

After what seems an interminable wait, Dishonored finally arrives. Promising total freedom of choice, complex systemic gameplay and a dark, dangerous world, there’s a lot riding on Arkane’s original IP living up to expectations. We put the game through its paces on the PC, and come back with a big stupid grin on our face — and more than a little blood on our hands (spoiler free).

Lead writer on Dishonored Austin Grossman has confessed to Kotaku that he thinks his character, Corvo, is better than other silent protagonists — namely Doctor Gordon Freeman himself! Remember, before you put on your Nasty Internet Comments hat, these are Grossman’s words, not ours:

“I hate what Valve does with the silent protagonist. I find it incredibly awkward and really creepy. I find Gordon Freeman creepy as hell,” he told Kotaku. “It’s people talking at him, about him and sometimes even for him. He just happens to be in the middle of this whole thing.”

“The difference between Dishonored and how it works in Half-Life 2 is that it’s a lot more personal. I think you get that involvement because the character has personal relationships with people from the beginning. And it’s very clear that people have [censored]ed with you in a very personal way. I’m biased, of course, but I think Dishonored grips you much more viscerally, more emotionally. And that’s on purpose. Corvo doesn’t talk and I think it works because everybody knows what Corvo would have to say.”

Mostly, ‘I’ma stab you good!’ I think.

Source: Kotaku

Adelaide’s The Pad bar is set to play host to an official, Bethesda-approved Dishonored Masquerade Party this Friday night from 6PM onwards. The Pad — formerly known as The Pimp Pad — will be giving out prizes and giveaways all night, including a ‘best dressed’ prize, a ‘best mask’ competition, and a bunch of other wacky steampunk-themed goods.

Attendees are asked to arrive wearing “elegant and fantastical costumes with steam technology aesthetics”, with Dishonored-themed drinks available all night. Click here for a gander at the invitation and, if you’re going, leave us a photo of your mask!

Each mission has a target, and clumsy would-be assassins will face some nasty fights, but Dishonored doesn’t have boss fights. Designer Harvey Smith told Kotaku that this was a deliberate move to distance the immersive sim from cut-and-paste game design.

“We’re very conscious of tropes in video games that are kind of lazy, frankly. Or dogmatic is the better word perhaps. You know: here’s a boss, he reveals his weak spot, you gotta hit it three times and then three times again, whatever,” he said.

“We never really felt the need for boss monsters. And it seems like a dogmatic feature. And sometimes it’s brilliant, right? One of my favorite games of all time was Shadow of the Colossus. If you count those as boss monsters, then wow—way to take that whole feature and make it your whole game and do something utterly brilliant. And it’s one of the best 100 games of all time in my opinion. But in our case it wasn’t the focus, and we are kind of careful about avoiding those kind of dogmatic tropes that video games are built on.”

Smith also commented that Arkane Studios avoided describing Dishonored as “steampunk” and tried to leave out design elements typical of that aesthetic for similar reasons.

“One of our tenets was avoid this overly familiar because god, if you’re gonna spend X dollars on something and X years of your life, you don’t have to do exactly what everybody else has done or what you’ve seen. You don’t have to draw your inspirations from what else is on the shelf.”

Dishonored releases on October 11. Start practicing your best pull-a-sickie phone voice.

Source: Kotaku

The Bethesda Blog is pleased to announce that Dishonored has gone gold – which means development is complete, it has passed certification and is ready for manufacturing. This is quite an impressive feat as Arkane has prepared 30 versions across all platforms, territories and languages.

That’s really all there is to say about that, except that Dishonored launches locally on October 11 and we are giddy with excitement.

Source: Bethesda Blog

The last of the ‘Tales from Dunwall’ animations is up, this latest episode being the most confusing and probably the most important. This latest episode, called ‘In the Mind of Madness’ stars a man named Piero, who is a key figure both in the city of Dunwall itself and Corvo’s story. I’ll be sad to see these go, as I’ve enjoyed watching Dunwall’s story unfold each day, but if you haven’t seen the first episodes, check them out here and here, respectively. Watch the final episode below, and let us know what you think of the Tales of Dunwall as a whole.

Yesterday, when the first episode of ‘Tales from Dunwall’ came out, we weren’t sure when the next episode of the three part series about Dishonored would show. Well, we didn’t have to wait long, it seems, with the next episode ‘The Hand That Feeds’ out now. This episode is a cautionary tale, starring a young boy who accepts supernatural aid from The Outsider. This episode is as dark and yucky and utterly tone-setting as its predecessor. Check it out below.