Dishonorable Mention

I’m in a gilded banqueting hall. It’s a balmy evening, and masked guests are milling; drinking deeply from their cups, admiring the décor, complimenting each other’s costumes and exchanging juicy gossip about the party's hosts. Servants weave in and out of the crowd, eyes diverted and brows furrowed. Mahogany tables groan under the weight of roasted hogs, a shimmering cider fountain, and a sumptuous display of fruit, cheeses and other delectable offerings that make it very clear you’re in the presence of wealth and privilege. In the next room, someone laughs loudly. I look up, and I can see fireworks bursting and crackling through the glass-domed roof.  As I wander through the reception rooms festooned with party favours, stopping to inspect the artwork adorning the walls, my gaze flits innocuously between three almost identically dressed women. These are the Lady Boyles, gracious hostesses of this fine feast.

One of them will die by my hand tonight.

The ill-fated Lady Boyle. Or one of them...

This is Dishonored, and the hands-on demo I had at Gamescom last week. It’s a game that has been turning heads since its announcement in 2011, thanks in no small part to its pedigree; the development team include alumni of both Deus Ex and Half Life 2. 

I met with Dishonored’s co-creators Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio at last year’s Gamescom, before anything more than a few stills from the game had really been shown. Spending just a few minutes hearing them talk, however, was enough to convince me that Dishonored was going to be something special. When you have developers that are so passionate and inspired about what they do and where their influences come from, it’s hard to not be drawn into their world.

And the world of Dishonored is certainly compelling. The intricacies of its gameplay and combat ideally need a gradual introduction, rather than the everything-unlocked-at-once approach I experienced, but the picture the game managed to paint in that time, of a dystopian world struck by both shameless decadence and crippling poverty, is as vivid as any I’ve seen for quite some time.

The creepiest masked banquet you will ever attend.

Set in the industrial city of Dunwall, Dishonored sees you play as Corvo Atano; a once-legendary bodyguard who is framed for the murder of the Empress in his charge, and is thus forced to become a ruthless assassin in order to exact revenge on those who wronged him. Like my quarry tonight – the Lady Boyle; a supporter of the oppressive Lord Regent who assumed power following the Empresses’ death. 

And so my hunt continues. This affluent party where I now find myself is in stark contrast with the decaying alleys just beyond the mansion walls. In just the next street over, I ran into violent ‘weepers,’ victims of the virulent plague afflicting the populace. Their eyes ooze blood, and their desperate, angry cries echo after me as I flee. I also had a close encounter with a ‘Tall Boy’ – a stilted trooper who patrols the city high above the putrid miasmas that fill the cobblestoned streets. Swarms of rats, symbols of the fetid state of affairs in all ranks and classes of Dunwall, pour out of every nook and crevice.

 Similarities between the festering Dunwall and City 17, Half Life 2’s ominous metropolis, are inescapable. Unsurprising, as both are the work of art director/conceptual artist Viktor Antonov. With Dishonored, he blends Victorian Steam Punk aesthetics with the rotted architecture of seventeenth century London slums, where the Black Plague and the Great Fire had taken its toll on the trampled underclasses, and the gap between the rich and poor had never been so wide. But where mind forg’d manacles held the unfortunate majority in place historically, in Dishonored the downtrodden have teeth.

Great party - shame about the hospitality.

I identified the correct sister quite quickly, thanks to a loose-lipped guest in a moth mask who I’d plied with cider. A gentleman who claimed to be Lady Boyle’s lover had also approached me. If I left her alive but unconscious in the basement, he pleaded, he’d whisk her away and she would never be seen in Dunwall again. This is something developers Arkane Studios have promised; that all assassinations will have the option of a non-lethal resolution. They’ve also promised moral choices with non-linear consequences, and plenty of different avenues of exploration for each level.  In other words, there won’t just be an ‘action’ path and a ‘sneaking’ path, as tends to be the case with a lot of games that claim an emphasis on player choice.

My short time with Dishonored was cut even shorter due to an overlapping appointment on the other side of Koelnmesse, so my Lady Boyle, though unmasked, was left to enjoy the remainder of her banquet unscathed. It was disappointing to say the least, but if anything, this unresolved mission left me hungrier for more. Reading up on the paths other players took is staggering; there is an unbelievable amount of freedom if your imagination is up to task, and each available solution is more inventive than the last.

I’m even more excited by Dishonored now than I was a year ago. Players are gifted a beautiful, bustling world and a variety of tools with which to influence and shape it; where what you do or don’t do will have a knock-on effect to the events that follow. It’s a dense, rich, characterful world where you rightfully feel very, very small indeed – as small and insignificant as one of the rats you can possess.

A rat that’s about to bring a plague down on the heads of your enemies.

World Of Warcraft: Panda-ing To The Masses?

Pandaria has gotten me all misty-eyed for the old days of World Of Warcraft. I created my first account in 2006, and though I find myself logging in less and less as of late, there was a time when I was a hardcore WoW player. Starting off as an Orc Hunter before graduating to my Main - a Night Elf feral Druid - I still remember my first trek across the barrens, and the first time I set foot inside the bustling city of Orgrimmar. I remember saving up and grinding enough gold to buy my first Striped Frostsaber mount, and proudly equipping the spoils of my first successful instance. Back in the days of the original World Of Warcraft, it was, simply, a very exciting game.

Fast-forward almost eight years and soon to be four expansions, and for me at least, WoW has lost its charm. Or perhaps, after six years of endless fetch and kill quests, I’m just incredibly jaded.

Skidoosh.

The newest expansion, Mists Of Pandaria, promises to introduce a slew of new content to the ageing world of Azeroth following the dramatic upheaval Cataclysm caused when it launched in October 2010. Despite the critical success of that expansion, the MMORPG giant has been haemorrhaging subscribers recently, dropping from a peak of 12 million just after Cataclysm’s launch to the current total of approximately 9.1 million. And whilst 9.1 million active subscribers each paying £8.99 per month still nets Blizzard a tidy sum, it paints a pretty damning picture of a big fish currently floundering in a rapidly shrinking pond. What they really need, at this crucial juncture, is something truly special to entice players into starting up their subscriptions once again.

Could the answer to Blizzard’s woes lie in a race of drunken anthropomorphic Kung Fu Pandas?

I’m not sure what it is about the Pandaren race that bothers me so much. In a world currently populated by Goblins, Werewolves, the bear-like Furbolgs and the Tauren – a race of Cow-People – tossing pandas into the mix isn’t too much a stretch of the imagination. And yet, something about them just strikes me as tonally wrong. 

WTB Portal to Stormwind... anyone? Helloo..?

 
The Pandaren aren’t even a new gimmicky invention, cashing in on the success of Kung fu Panda as many have suggested. Players familiar with Warcraft 3 will remember Pandaren ‘brewmaster’ hero Chen Stormstout aiding beastmaster Rexxar in The Frozen Throne way back in 2003. But even then, they were something of an in-joke. Blizzard art Director Sam ‘Samwise’ Didier has admitted as much, stating that his affiliation with pandas stemmed from a nickname bestowed on him by his brother. Over time, the ‘Pandaren’ people were born from various doodles and references by Didier. But what started as a gag intended only for his family eventually became part of Warcraft canon. 

Although embraced and even requested by some WoW fans, it could be perceived that their inclusion as the newest playable race in Azeroth is indicative of a lack of imagination on Blizzard’s part. For most, it just feels like what it essentially is - an in-joke we’re all on the outside of.

The Mists Of Pandaria expansion brings with it new challenge modes, the new continent of Pandaria, the playable Pandaren race and the Monk class, a martial arts class that can specialise in tanking, damage dealing or healing via the revamped talent trees. 

One big - albeit odd - family.

I stopped playing WoW regularly a while ago, mainly because I simply didn’t have the time to dedicate to a guild or frequent raiding, the focus of most end-game players. If you can’t keep up, your gear and equipment will date fast, leaving you unfit to hold your own in most high-level dungeons and instances. When I last tried to get back into WoW after a lengthy hiatus, I just wasn’t good enough. 

However, many long-term players have recently bemoaned the fact that the game has gotten easier with each subsequent expansion, to the point that many veterans believe it’s now too dumbed down. Blizzard are caught between a rock and a hard place; between trying to keep existing and long standing subscribers happy and consistently challenged, whilst netting themselves new players without completely baffling them with centuries of lore and almost a decade’s worth of gameplay intricacies.

In my eyes, WoW is looking and feeling increasingly old and haggard, and not even fuzzy fighting bears can cover that up. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been with it for such a long time that I notice the tired formula more; I’ve poured countless hours into it and I don’t dare count how much I’ve spent in expansions and subscription fees. 

I still remember the thrill and Thrall of those early days; the brilliant community, the frequent flashes of Blizzard humour, and the epic moments of entering an instance and emerging a hero. Talking about it now almost makes me want to go and play it all again. But in truth, the idea of playing WoW now is probably a lot more fun than actually playing it. I remember all the great moments, but after that initial wave of nostalgia comes the crashing realisation of how mundane a lot of the questing and repeated raiding has become.

Eight years might be long enough.  However Blizzard fare with this new expansion, it’s probably safe to say that they’ve lost this subscriber for good. And that’s the black and white truth.