Dishonored (2012)
Dishonored is a 2012 puzzle video game made by Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks.
Corvo Attano guarded the Empress until the day he was framed for her murder. The city of Dunwall festers under a rat plague and a corrupt regime, its streets patrolled by masked guards and clanking walkers. A shadowy figure grants Corvo strange powers: blink across rooftops, freeze time, possess a rat or a guard. Every target can be killed outright or removed by quieter, stranger means, and the city itself darkens or steadies depending on how much blood you spill. Arkane builds a whale-oil dystopia dense with routes and secrets, where mercy and murder both carry a cost.
Quick answers
What is Dishonored about?
Corvo Attano guarded the Empress until the day he was framed for her murder. The city of Dunwall festers under a rat plague and a corrupt regime, its streets patrolled by masked guards and clanking walkers. A shadowy figure grants Corvo strange powers: blink across rooftops, freeze time, possess a rat or a guard. Every target can be killed outright or removed by quieter, stranger means, and the city itself darkens or steadies depending on how much blood you spill. Arkane builds a whale-oil dystopia dense with routes and secrets, where mercy and murder both carry a cost.
When was Dishonored released?
Dishonored was released on 9 October 2012.
Who made Dishonored?
Dishonored was made by Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks.
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Explore Dishonored guides
Dishonored in our writing
- Companion guide: Assassins & Hitmen
- Companion guide: Heists
- Companion guide: The Immersive Sim: The Complete Guide to Player-Driven Worlds
- Companion guide: Revenge & Vengeance
A few thoughts on Dishonored
The Blade Runner score wraps the same grimy, industrial dread around Dunwall's canals and smokestacks. For Revenge & Vengeance stories built on betrayal and a rotting city, try Alan Moore's From Hell in comics and the film V for Vendetta, both patient studies of a wronged figure moving through the fog.
Gothic conspiracies where the ruling class hides something rotten
Dunwall runs on secrets, and Dishonored spends its whole plot peeling back the nobility's polished surface to find the plague and corruption underneath. V for Vendetta's fascist state, From Hell's establishment conspiracy, Largo Winch's corporate power games, and Sherlock Holmes' fog-bound London mysteries all share that same appetite for finding the rot behind respectable doors.
Anti-heroes granted uncanny power by something not quite human
A mysterious figure hands Corvo powers no ordinary man should have, and Dishonored spends the rest of the game asking what he owes for them. Fullmetal Alchemist's state alchemists bound to unnatural forces, Kamen Rider's monster-tech transformation, Astro Boy's built-not-born existence, and Assassination Classroom's alien-granted mission all wrestle with gifts that come from somewhere inhuman.