Report From the Fantasy Desk

As widely expected and much reported on these pages, the Fantasy Desk finished playing the Dishonored trilogy this weekend, finishing the last and final game of the series, Death of the Outsider, sometime around 2:00 a.m. last night.  We would have quit earlier, but we knew we were so close to the end and had been through so much to get there, that we couldn't just quit then and there. By the time we got to the mystical Void (see video above) had simply had to keep going. Besides, today is a holiday and we knew we could afford to stay up late.

We liked the game and would recommend it to others, but it was nerve-wracking as hell.  Those concerned about the violence in video games and the effects it may have on the minds of the players will be reassured to know that Dishonored rewards players for non-violence.  It's a stealth game - the goal is to try and sneak past guards, cultists, witches, wolfhounds and other nemeses, not kill them, and if you simply have to take someone out, the game prefers you to put them in a stranglehold and render them unconscious rather than kill them with your sword. The more enemies you kill, the more packs of rabid, plague-carrying rats you'll encounter later, or worse, swarms of blood flies (shudder), and the darker and more cynical are the outcomes at the end of the game.  On our first playthrough of the first game, we had killed so many characters that we could have dealt with non-violently that Sam, the boat captain who transports you to each of your missions, told us that he was so disappointed with our brutality he wanted nothing more to do with us, and wouldn't be back to pick us up after we completed the mission.  We were on our own and had to walk back home alone, as it were, after that quest.

     

Sneaking behind, beneath and above all those enemies generates an almost unbearable level of suspense.  Sure, it's just a game, but haven't you told yourself "it's only a movie" and still had the  bejesus scared out of you at the cinema?  At times, as we were playing we were literally on the edge of out seat, our heart pounding, and we wondered "is this really fun?" as we were trying to noiselessly sneak behind some dozen armed guards with a bounty on our heads.  But as soon as we completed the mission or quest, we thought, "Wow! That was intense!" and immediately wanted to do it all over, just like children who can't wait to get back on the roller coaster they were so intimidated by earlier.

All told, it took us 105 hours to make it through all three games.

So where do we go next?  The stealth and assassin missions of Dishonored were a good fit with the highly enjoyable Assassins Creed: Origins we played earlier, and the Victorian "whale-punk" setting of Dishonored was a good compliment to the steampunk of the recently completed Bioshock Infinity. But we're going to change things up a bit next (we think) and go science fiction and without all those assassinations plots (we think) and play No Man's Sky, an interplanetary exploration game next.  If it's what I think and heard it is, it should be a real change of pace from the last five games we're played (Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, and the Dishonored trilogy).   

It's been downloading as were writing this.