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It looks like Ezio and co. are getting a run for their money in Bethesda's latest, Dishonored. The new slew of screens depict more of the madness we've seen in previous Dishonored media: giant walkers, stabby knives, and ... let's call them "ladies of the night." Take a peek for yourself below.

#preview Earlier this week, I received a wood-framed clock in the mail. It was a promotional tchotchke from the people making Dishonored, the kind of thing a big video game company sends a gaming reporter to make sure they remember their game exists—and perhaps to cultivate some favorable emotions about the game. More »

Some games have problems with bugs, but Dishonored has trouble with rats. Big, evil ones that prowl in packs and can rend a man’s flesh from his screaming bones. But killer rats are the least of your worries in the dark world of Dishonored, an imaginative action-adventure from Arkane Studios and Bethesda coming to PS3 later this year. The game nimbly blends inspirations from a pantheon of modern classics: The oppressive atmosphere and paranoid politicking of BioShock, the graceful bloodletting of Assassin’s Creed, the murky morality of Deus Ex, the stealth and shadow of Thief. This is a game about skulking in dark places, eavesdropping on secret conversations, setting up the perfect ambush and beating a hasty retreat.

You play as Corvo, an elite royal bodyguard wrongly accused of assassinating the Empress of Dunwall. Locked in a prison and left to rot, you’re sprung by a shadowy benefactor and set loose to claim your revenge in whatever manner you see fit. Though Corvo is a convincing protagonist the real star here is the city of Dunwall, a crumbling seaport perched over a vast and malignant ocean on a planet that is definitely not Earth. Dunwall’s decor comes from the art director behind Half-Life 2’s iconic City 17, and the attention to detail is palpable: Steampunk carriages slide down cobblestone streets as stormtroopers patrol atop giant biomechanical stilts. It’s old and new, weird and familiar, beautiful and grotesque all at the same time. If you liked BioShock’s Rapture, you’re gonna love this.

Touched by an amoral deity called the Outsider, Corvo now wields an array of supernatural abilities, everything from teleportation and time dilation to summoning hordes of voracious rats and pushing projectiles back at enemies. One supernatural talent enables you to enter the body of a fish or rat, handy for infiltrating a building via a drain pipe or access panel. In combat, Corvo has little to fear, being a master swordsman and pistol marksman. Exotic ammunition types (explosive bullets, tranquilizer darts) and gadgets such as grenades and proximity mines further expand the possibilities. As in Deus Ex you can strike openly, spilling beaucoup buckets of blood in the process, or pull your punches by quietly choking out enemies and tucking their snoozing bodies safely away.

Whether you coldly kill adversaries or show mercy will have consequences on the game’s story — the Outsider himself is curious to see which path you follow. It will also factor in the moment-to-moment gameplay: snuff out a guard and his buddy might alter his patrol route to cover the gap, potentially disrupting your carefully laid plans. But whichever way you play will be the “right” way to play — Arkane’s goal is to put players in full control of the game’s pacing.

As you unravel the conspiracy behind the Empress’ assassination and an apparent military coup, you’ll meet a host of sketchy characters, from members of a secretive resistance movement to spoiled aristocrats and plague-stricken townspeople. Some will become targets of your wrath and will need to be dealt with accordingly, while others will provide valuable information or services.

If Dishonored sounds like your cup of tea, check back early tomorrow for the next episode of Official PlayStation Blogcast and an interview with co-directors Harvey Smith and Raf Colantonio. Have questions about the game right now? Sound off in the comments and I’ll pass along what I know!

Linear – the devil word. Scourge of freedom, the antithesis of PC gaming, the ancient enemy of anyone who’s ever roamed the Zone or steered a Dragonborn across the mountains. Or so the purist spirit often believes. Is, the question hangs so very heavily, Dishonored a linear game?

Yes. At least in the sense that it is not an open world. It is a series of missions in a linear order, most if not all of which require you to eliminate a specific target or targets. That’s okay, though, because my understanding of the game – having seen it in action – has morphed from something like ‘steampunk Deus Ex’ to ‘magic Hitman’. In what I’ve just been shown of the game, the same mission is tackled in two very different ways, with yet more described.(more…)

Dishonored is built on the principles of a past era of PC gaming, when titles like System Shock 2, Deus Ex and Thief dominated the conversation. In recent years there's been a resurgence of this style of design with games like BioShock and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, games that can't be satisfyingly labeled with any single genre tag, that encompass multiple gameplay styles and encourages player choice instead of adherence to a rigidly defined path...

#dishonored I'm pretty excited to play publisher Bethesda's first-person stealth game, Dishonored. It encompasses a dark theme that appeals to me, as well as a very neat steampunk style that I've always enjoyed in games. More »

Pre-registration for QuakeCon 2012 begins this Wednesday, April 25, with goodies for the early angry birds. General admission is still free, but those looking to lock a seat to bring their own computer or get a "fast pass" for the four-day event will want to plunk down a bit of dough.

The three pre-order packages include: the "Swag Pack," which includes the official QuakeCon 2012 shirt (pictured), a Dishonored Tallboy T-shirt and a limited edition poster for $40; the "BYOC Select-a-Seat" is $30, with a limit of 1,500 packages, and includes the QuakeCon 2012 shirt and the ability to select and reserve a seat in the "bring your own computer" (BYOC) room.

Finally, "QuakeCon done Quick" is $50, includes the "BYOC Select-a-Seat" package, along with a "fast pass" for BYOC registration and access to every speaker, panel and public event at the show. There is a limit of 350 packages available.

QuakeCon 2012 will take place at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas, from August 2 - 5.

I went to Youtube and searched for “that immersive sim that’s being made by the Dark Messiah dude and the guy from Deus Ex“, which I’ll admit was a typo as I was really looking for “Loch Ness monster proof” videos. But to my pleasant surprise it turned up a double-header interview with the lead designers of Dishonored. Game Informer sat down in Arkane’s oddly coloured offices to talk to Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio, and while there’s nothing even remotely touching on ancient dinosaurs being trapped in bodies of water (for LochPaperShotgun), there’s a lot of chat about the immersive assassin ‘em up’s systems. They really are looking at the making the game a reflection of the player’s actions, from extreme of violence to the other. But even then Harvey Smith points out: “We do have an ideal player in mind, though. Somme body who listens and is more thorough, and is a little trickier, a little craftier and uses their powers in interesting combinations and exploits the AI.” Music to my ears. Videos have snuck into the post below.(more…)

#dishonored Here's the first trailer for Bethesda's Dishonored, a first-person stealth action game that the publisher will release this year for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. More »

Possibly the game we’re most excited about in 2012, Arkane’s immersive sim has just broken cover after a few months of silence. It is, alas, entirely pre-rendered, but it does show off the rather tasty world-design, the parkour element, the plot set-up and some of protagonist Corvo’s primary abilities. Take a look!(more…)

Don't let that evil steampunk regime push you around like that!

If "Dishonored" doesn't pick up steam as a marketable title, they can always fall back on "Steam Punk X Dickens."

#dishonored We already know from previous glimpses at Dishonored that Arkane Studios' upcoming game have shown that there's going to be swordplay and stealth. Now you can add sexy times to that list, too. More »

Arkane’s Dishonored is very exciting and feels like it’s getting nearer, but that might be an evil, supernatural trick being played on us. While we haven’t had a release date for the amazing sounding immersive sim, Bethesda have started to open up more about the setting, the world, what you do. More importantly in this crazy world of ocular pleasure, they’re releasing screenshots and video of the supernatural assassin’s redemptive bloodletting. If I cared about PR buzzwords, I’d call what follows a ‘media blast’, but I’m a loose cannon. Hit the jump for the *checks thesaurus* ‘cable peal’.

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#dishonored It's been quite a while since we've heard anything from Arkane Studios' steampunk/sci-fi/assassin game Dishonored. More »

I was this close to falling asleep there, but then Dishonored footage landed and my heart-rate spiked. Just a couple of minutes of non-action footage interspersed with Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantino talking about their amazing sounding immersive sim. It’s kind of not saying anything new: you’re a supernatural assassin, a sandbox game that enables the player to explore how they want to play with the magnificent tools, the possession, teleporting, stopping time. But this is the first I’ve heard about the eavesdropping component, where you listen for clues and the game changes your goals. It’s starting to look and sound like a combo of the best bits of BioShock and Hitman. Watch, watch now you fools!(more…)

Games like Deus Ex and System Shock 2 are not easily labeled with genre tags. They occupy a strange middle ground in which elements of stealth, action and story are all blended together to varying degrees, though have a few common traits. Each game is designed to accommodate the unpredictability of ...

#dishonored I've been afraid to write about Dishonored. For weeks after I saw a guided demo in a room with other game journalists, I've looked at my notes and thought, Everything I have to say is negative. I don't want to be negative. It's too soon to be negative. More »

#dishonored First-person action game Dishonored oozes style, but I'm still not clear on whether I should be excited about this game. More »

Some new shots of Dishonored have appeared. Now that I’ve finished Deus Ex, and thus can no longer anticipate it, I’ve officially decided that Dishonored is going to replace it. Officially. It just looks like it’s going to be everything I want from a PC game. So if it’s not, Arkane are going to find a disproportionate amount of poo in their sock drawers. Meanwhile, five new screenshots have been released. Of which two are good, one is okay, and two are so terrible that if I’d had the cheek to submit them to any editor for a magazine I’d have been hanged in public.

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Following a demo showing of Arkane’s remarkable retro-future, supernatural stealth/action immersive sim Dishonored (as described here), I roped project leads Harvey Smith (one of the minds behind Deus Ex) and Rahael Colantonio (co-creator of Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah) into a chat.

A chat about what? About choice, about avoiding compromise, about making rats believable, about possessing fish, about arguing with art directors about chairs, about why publishers are getting behind immersive sims again, about how to make sure mainstream audiences play them, about Deus Ex, and why this is the most liberating project Harvey’s worked on since that game…(more…)

Arkane co-founder Raf Colantonio is playing his new game all wrong. This is the first time I’ve had a first-hand look at Dishonored, the immersive sim from folk who’ve worked on the likes of Deus Ex, Half-Life 2 and Dark Messiah: Might & Magic, but I can tell you, right now, that one of its creators is playing it wrong. At least, that’s what my brain’s screaming at me. And I, too, am wrong.(more…)

#dishonored Four new screenshots from Bethesda and Arkane's upcoming first-person stealth game Dishonored have surfaced, and they look just about as interesting as everything else we've heard about the game. More »

A few more (frankly fairly weak) shots of Arkane’s immersiony stealth-assassin game Dishonored (which straddles genre somewhere in a place that is definitely NOT steampunk, but might be regencypunk, or something) have emerged from the honking info-pipes of Gamescom. Head below to check them out, and click for full size.(more…)

Dishonored, the latest game from the crew at Arkane, and the first to be published by its new corporate overlords at Bethesda, still has that new game smell. Take this screenshot above, for example: Did you realize that this "retro-futuristic" world, based on 1666 London and powered by whale oil, had leggy robot flamethrowers? Strange, that new game smells kinda smells like burning.

Also spilling from Bethesda’s bosom this new week are a few shots of Dishonored. If you didn’t catch up on what that one’s all about, check out the video here. But key points: Made by Arkane (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah), who now boast Deus Ex’s Harvey Smith, working on a game that is aiming to reproduce the style of Looking Glass. YES PLEASE. You can see the five new shots below.

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#dishonored Recent Game Informer cover game Dishonored is a first-person stealth game set in a mysterious, malleable world that is bent by player choice. That's about all I know. More »

While inching through a bleak, watercolor world with a blade in hand, a swarm of rats streams through a security door. It seems like nothing more than a random environmental detail at first. They attack if you do, but otherwise the rodents leave you alone. Soon you find a woman being accosted by thugs. After the fight to save her, the woman flees into the shadows and is promptly overwhelmed by the very same rats that bring her down in grisly fashion...