Dishonored Mission 1: Back Home

DEAR READERS, THE FOLLOWING TEXT CONTAINS SPOILERS, AND SPOILERS CAN RUIN A GAME. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO GET SPOILED ON THE PLOT DETAILS OF THIS GAME, IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU READ SOMETHING ELSE.

Hello people, and welcome to the very first part of my Dishonored gameplay. In this post, we will learn about Corvo's previous life before becoming an awesome supernatural assassin. What (or who) got him accused for murdering the Empress, and how he started that life in the first place. So without further ado, let's get straight to it!

The game starts off with the Empress's speech. She says that she wished that there was somebody else to count on for an assignment. But there is no one else, and "The Royal Spymaster" agreed that Corvo should be sent. Then she said that "Emily and I would count the days to your return". And with that the game starts.

Wrenhaven River
"Steady hand now, watch it!" a City Watch Officer said. "Casting off, we're away!". Wrenhaven River. I have returned from my long journey, studying about a plague. Today I return from my lengthy journey, eager to tell the Empress news about the plague. On a boat in the river, I am escorted with two City Watch Officers. It's not such a long trip to Dunwall Tower, but I look around while I have the chance. "A long way to bring bad news. The sailors say there's a curse on us. Black magic," one officer said. "Superstition. For all we know there's a cure for the plague by now," said the other.
"Maybe. We live in strange times. Sending the Empress's bodyguard away for a couple of months, THAT'S unusual."
That's me. Corvo Attano, the Empress's bodyguard, also known as her Royal Protector. And it's true; there is a cure for the plague by now. Sort of.

Sokolov's Health Elixir and the Rat Plague

The Rat Plague (above) and Sokolov's Health Elixir (below)

The elixir is vital for the citizens of Dunwall, as there is a very nasty plague going on. This is the plague I talked about earlier, the one that turns plague victims into zombies. Everyday the people of Dunwall are to consume a few doses of elixir in order to keep the plague at bay. NOT consuming your doses of elixir, however, will result in (surprise, surprise) plague. This plague is something serious. It'll kill the victim after a few weeks, and even worse, turn them into a type of zombie. The plague is highly contagious and can spread easily between uninfected hosts. Amazingly, Corvo is somewhat immune to the plague, being able to trudge through the sewers and get bitten by zombies without catching the plague. He only uses the elixir as a health potion.

Dunwall Tower
After the boat went up the tower's waterlock (a device that fills a container up with water so boats could ascend up the tower), I was told to meet an Empress. As I crossed the bridge, I was greeted by Lady Emily Kaldwin, the Empress's daughter, who was apparently very close to Corvo. After asking me if I saw any whales on my long journey, she asked if I could spare a bit of time to play hide-and-seek. "Oh well," I thought. Emily said that the Empress was "busy talking to that nasty old Spymaster", so why not play spend a little time with the royal family?

Campbell's painting

Turns out it was a right choice to play with the young girl. Turns out the game of hide-and-seek was a stealth tutorial of the game. It showed me how to enter "stealth mode" and make reduced sounds. Then it also showed me how to lean from corners. Amazingly when leaning, enemies can't see the part of your body that is leaning no matter how close you are to them (as long as you stay behind cover). Needless to say, after picking my hiding spot (behind a tree a few ten metres away from Emily's counting spot), Emily gave up after a few searches.

Emily and I then met with Anton Sokolov, a genius that had given his talent to provide Dunwall with superb security systems and the vital Sokolov Health Elixir, which the townspeople use to stave off the effects of the plague. He was painting a potrait of the High Overseer, Thaddeus Campbell. "I'm not sure that painting looks like Campbell." Emily remarked. ARE YOU SERIOUS? THIS PAINTING DOESN'T LOOK LIKE CAMPBELL???

Empress's Gazebo

The actual Campbell 

Afterwards I made my way to the Empress's gazebo. I also talked with one of the City Watch Officers in the boat earlier. He talked about his niece, Callista (remember this name, it will come in handy later). When I got to the gazebo, I saw the Empress still talking to the Royal Spymaster. "They're sick people, not criminals," the Empress started. "We've gone beyond that question, your Majesty. They're-"
"They're my people. And we will save them from the plague if we can,"
"Very well,"
"We will not speak of this again." the Empress said to the Spymaster coldly.

Shortly after saying this, Emily tells her mother about my arrival. "Mother, look! Corvo is back!". "Thank you, Emily (turns to the Spymaster). Leave us, please," the Empress said. And so the Royal Spymaster left. Then he turned to me. "Corvo!" he said cheerfully. "Two days early. Full of surprises. As usual." He then left. As he departed from the gazebo, he told the guard who was protecting us to leave us alone. I don't have a good feeling about this guy...

Now, where was I before I got suspicious? Oh yes, I was about to speak to the Empress. "It's a fair wind that brings you here. What news have you brought?". So I gave her a letter regarding the Rat Plague. "I hope the other cities have dealt with this before. Knew of some cure," the Empress said shortly after reading the letter. "Cowards! They're going to blockade us. See if the plague turns this city into a graveyard." she hung her head, depressed of her city's potential fate. "Are you OK, mother? You seem sad," Emily said. "Yes, don't worry darling. Mother is fine," the Empress replied.

"Wait, where are the guards? Who sent them away?" The Empress asked. Wait a minute, the SPYMASTER sent the guards away! He said that we needed some time ourselves. I think that the Spymaster had- "Mother, look! What are they doing on the rooftop?" Emily asked. Wait, WHAT??? "they" (in this case, people) and "rooftops" are two words that don't mix. Unless of course, you're talking about assassins. "What? Emily, get behind me!" the Empress ordered Emily.

You can't hit me :P
The people on the rooftops teleported (yes, teleported. Another word that doesn't mix with "people") to our location. These people wore black coats with hoods and used gas masks to cover their faces. They had multiple pouches on their coat and wore long gloves. Each person was armed with a sword. To get a better idea of what they look like, here's an image of one:

Note: This dude isn't holding a sword. Sorry :(

With clothing and weaponry like this, these guys were definitely assassins. So I unsheathed my sword, drew my pistol, and got ready for combat. I was then given a combat tutorial about attacking with my weapons/gadgets. Action time. Or was it? I was given two choices to deal with the assassins: Attack (lethal) or defend (non-lethal). I chose non-lethal for some reason. After a brief tutorial on blocking enemy attacks, I managed to hold off the assailants and save the Empress and Emily. "Who were they, mother?" a frightened Emily asked her mother. "I don't know, darling." an equally frightened Empress said. Emily then hugged me, showing gratefulness for my actions. "Thank you Corvo," the Empress said. "If you hadn't been here-" (the next part may not be narrated that precisely, so don't blame me if it isn't exactly how it went)

NOOOO!!!
Suddenly another assassin appeared as if out of nowhere and (OK, there's a bit of BS coming up, brace yourselves) suspended me in the air. Then two more assassins appeared, one of them without a mask. One of the assailants attempted to grab Emily. As the Empress tried to repel the attackers from her daughter, the mask-less assassin slapped and grabbed her (meanwhile, the other assassin grabbed Emily and teleported to God knows where). The mask-less assassin then brought the Empress to a corner of the gazebo and STABBED HER IN THE CHEST. I was in disbelief as her body fell helplessly to the floor (and at the fact that she only had around three minutes of screen time) and the assassins vanished from the scene as if nothing had happened (with the exception of Emily's abduction and the Empress's death).

"He's killed the Empress!"
At this point, I was no longer hanging helplessly in the air. However, I was pretty injured, so I had to crawl to the Empress's dying body. As I held her body, she uttered her final words. "Corvo... It's all coming apart. Find Emily... Protect her. You're the only one. You'll know what to do. Won't you? Corvo..." then she died. When I got up, I saw Campbell, the Royal Spymaster and two City Watch Officers looking at me in disbelief. "Ward us all, look at what he's done," Campbell commented as the two Watch officers held me at gun (and sword) point. "Yes! HE'S killed the Empress!" the Spymaster exclaimed.

Campbell, Burrows and the two officers holding me at gun (and sword) point

Ex-CUSE me, I killed the Empress? Well, too bad you guys weren't here before. There were these guys in gas masks that had swords. THEY attacked and killed the Empress. THEY teleported in here and abducted Emily, not ME. Ah, never mind. After all, I was the one that was holding the sword and was holding the Empress in my hands. It's evident that I'm the perpetrator, no one's going to believe in magic. Carry on with the false accusations that I murdered our fair ruler. And anyway, if I was the bad guy, what WOULD I have done with Emily? Killed her? No body. Abducted her? No accomplice to carry her away. Did anything bad to her? NO EMILY. Take THAT!!!

"What did you do to young Lady Emily, traitor?" The Spymaster demanded (I would have loved to tell them, but as I said before, first they wouldn't have believed me and second, I didn't do crap to Emily (except protect her from a group of deranged assassins), so nya-nya-nya-nya-nya to you guys). "Her own bodyguard. Ironic," Campbell remarked. "I'll have you beheaded for this, Corvo!" the Spymaster threatened. He then turned to the officers. "Take him." he commanded. And with that, the officer to my left swung his sword hilt at my face. Then everyhting went black and thus, the game officially started.

Introduction

DEAR READERS, THE FOLLOWING TEXT CONTAINS SPOILERS, AND SPOILERS CAN RUIN A GAME. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO GET SPOILED ON THE PLOT DETAILS OF THIS GAME, IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU READ SOMETHING ELSE.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have decided to create a new blog. This time I want to make a blog about playing games, one of my favorite activities in the world. I thought, "well, if you're having so much fun playing games, why don't you just tell your story to the public? It's better than shutting your secrets inside yourself, no?". And that's how this blog about gaming came to be in the first place.

This is my first EVER blog about games, and this blog is going to be about this great game named Dishonored. It's about a disgraced former bodyguard named Corvo Attano who was framed for killing the very important empress he was assigned to protect. After escaping the prison, he is now free to take revenge on those who have wrongfully accused him of the crimes he didn't do.

Dishonored is a first-person stealth game which in my opinion, is really special. It's different compared to most games nowadays, where the objective of the game is pretty straightforward: kill the main bad guy, and kill everyone you meet along the way as well. That isn't how Dishonored works; in this game you are given more freedom. You can either become a ruthless killer who murders anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path, or you can be a sneaky ninja, who kills as little people as possible, leaving no evidence behind.

The game has a chaos system, which is used to decide how the game will go. Killing more enemies will result in high chaos. In turn, high chaos will result in more guards, zombies and flesh-eating rats (seriously. In this city, there is a plague that turns its victims into zombies and is spread by man-eating rats). High chaos will also influence your allies' reactions toward you (civilians will rat you out to the guards, and your allies will react more coldly to you, etc), and ultimately give the game a darker ending and more story-related deaths along the way.

Playing all stealthy and rendering enemies unconscious however, will result in a lower rat and zombie population in the game. The quantities of guards in the missions will also decrease, and civilians will act neutrally towards you. Your allies will also be more friendly and there will be less story-related deaths along the way and the ending will be less dark.

Dishonored takes place in the steampunk-style city of Dunwall, where all the technology is quite modern (and sometimes even more advanced than today's machines). In this city, a rat plague has struck and the city is struggling to cope with it. Corvo is supposed to do his missions in this cursed city, accompanied by all the rats and zombies. But will he succeed?

Fortunately, Corvo doesn't have to face the dangers of Dunwall with flesh and steel alone; he is also given an arsenal of various superpowers by a mysterious entity. His superpowers start from giving him more health and improve his agility until being able to freeze time and possess animals and human beings. He gains and upgrades these superpowers by collecting "runes". Check out the awesome array of supernatural abilities Corvo can use:

You know what? There's just so much lore in Dishonored, I couldn't tell you all about the game in this very post. I'll tell you more about the lore as we go along the game, shall we? For now, see you until the next update!