Dishonoured

I’ll be honest, I never got far through Dishonoured. I started it several times, and each time something annoyed me enough not to want to go back to it. Although, probably at least two of those times it was the overlong opening sequence that most put me off. If I have to sit through one more cutscene where I’m supposedly being taken to my execution or life imprisonment, I will despair at the quality of writing originality in the industry.

In my first playthrough, the furthest I got was the distillery. It was the first proper level part of Dishonoured, which is linear but partially open-world, with side-quests. I fannied about for a bit, using my magic to shoot across buildings in the steampunk sort of environment, with mediaeval fears of the plague crossed with Victorian technology, Gothic and Middle-Ages architecture, with French Revolution army costumes (think Les Misérables) among the array of creepy cloaks and masks. It fits together remarkably well, making an eerily  atmospheric game.

Once I got into a proper level situation, I started to notice a problem right away. It’s a stealth game in large part, but the stealth options suck. Your most common means of stealthy, non-lethal invasion involved pouncing someone from behind and slowly strangling them. This is extremely slow, and gets dull within about four pounces.

Timeline tangents

Suggested alternative to moral choice system

The well-bashed moral choice system, I maintain should generally not be used in games. However, for people who still find the idea vaguely enticing, there are ways to adjust the style so that it is more rewarding for players.

In moral choice systems, choice is stuffed in at the end of the mission and the full ramifications of it can’t be experienced just by saving before making the decision and loading after a few minutes playing through the consequences of the choice. Sometimes such an intervention is impossible, sometimes it takes a while for you to realise your mistake. Sometimes the choice is sandwiched in the middle of a mission, complicating this ploy. But more than anything else, it shouldn’t be necessary; developers should account for player curiosity and our tendency to want the best deal out of any action.

Moral choice systems

The problem with moral choice systems is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to win with them. Gawd knows, developers have tried. They’ve written whole alternative storylines and endings just to create replay value or variety. However, I contest that there is much of either being added. Here are all the ways in which moral choice systems have panned out, and the various ways in which they fail drastically.