Dishonored is so good. So incredibly good. It’s really fantastic. It came out (here, at least) on Friday and I’ve already completed it, with my first playthrough taking about 22 hours.

It’s so good I was playing it until 5am yesterday morning and until 4am this morning. I just couldn’t stop, I couldn’t put it down.

I can’t really think of a comparison, as in “If you liked game X then you’ll love Dishonored” or “It’s like the lovechild of game X and game Y”. At one point I thought: “This really does feel like Thief with a knife.” But it is so much more and really any simple comparison like that does a great disservice to what Arkane have created.

Simply put: you should buy Dishonored right now.

Dishonored mission stats
Hostiles killed1
Civilians killed2
Alarms rung0
Bodies found7
No kills6/9
Not detected6/9
ChaosLow

After each mission you get a stats screen but unfortunately there’s not one for the entire game. I went through and totted up the figures for my first playthrough.

Assassination target status
High Overseer CampbellDead
The Pendleton TwinsAlive
Lady BoyleDead
Lord RegentAlive
DaudAlive
Spoilerific last targetAlive

I was always surprised to see bodies found, because I was always fairly careful. However what I think happened is that when you take out a guard the AI seems to compensate by rotating another guard into that position. So if you take someone out and leave them where they were, there’s a chance they’ll be found.

Looking back, I’m surprised how many of the main targets I left alive. There are non-lethal options for all of them and I was planning to do that every time. However, I had to ditch my plan for Campbell as things sort of got out of hand and Lady Boyle’s non-lethal option seemed a bit too creepy for me. (So I stabbed her instead. I’m such a gentleman.) And the last target in the low-chaos ending is optional, though it looks like the high-chaos ending requires you to go after more targets.

Man, what a game.