I'm pleased to report that my little stratagem is working.  Since July 28, I completed the 2012 role-playing video game Dishonored in 42 hours of play (according to the Steam statistics) and found it quite enjoyable.  Today, I started on the 2016 sequel to the game, Dishonored 2, and while the original was good, the improvements make the sequel even better.

The game relies on stealth and strategy over brute force, not unlike the recently completed and highly recommended Assassins Creed Origins, and is set in an odd, pseudo-Victorian England, not unlike the interesting but ultimately disappointing Bioshock Infinite.  Specific dates mentioned in the game put it in the mid 1800s, but the technologies used in the game did not exist at that time, or ever exist at any time for that matter.  It's not quite a steampunk setting like in Bioshock (there's no steam power anywhere on display), but since everything seems to run on whale oil, the game has been termed "whalepunk." 

Whalepunk or not, I like the industrial marine setting - it reminds me of the Far Harbor DLC for Fallout 4.  The story line is interesting and the characters are sufficiently conflicted and complex enough to make them more than just mere action figures.  This was especially true in the Daud the Assassin DLC for the first Dishonored (I'm still in the early parts of Dishonored 2 now and haven't gotten to the DLCs yet).  Actors voicing the characters' lines in Dishonored included Susan Sarandon, Brad Dourif, Carrie Fisher, Michael Madsen, Lena Headey and Chloë Grace Moretz.  For the sequel, the developers brought on Rosario Dawson and Sam Rockwell,

As I said above, the game rewards stealth and strategy over melee and murder, even if the trailer doesn't quite convey that.  It's not one of those games where you're just running around shooting or slicing up the enemies, but instead you have to devise clever ways to sneak past the enemies without being detected.  You employ clever combinations of alleyways, rooftops, sewers, and walkways to get around, and some of the puzzles that have to be solved (how can you get past 30 soldiers in an empty ballroom without being detected?) can be quite challenging (the answer to the question involves chandeliers and skylights).    

After I get through Dishonored 2 (hopefully in more than 40 hours), I've still got Death of the Outsider, the third entry in the Dishonored trilogy to look forward to.  While it may not all last me until the end of the year, it should at least extend beyond the Labor Day weekend, and there's a slew of new games supposedly coming onto the market after that.