A Fair Colp: How Dishonored’s Blink Ability Re-Introduced Me to the Stealth Genre

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’ve avoided stealth games ever since I played a Japanese demo of Metal Gear Solid. Not only could I not read Japanese, but I had no idea how stealth games worked. I couldn’t run around and shoot every guard in the head, and when they saw me, it was all over. I wanted to like it, but I was overwhelmed. I was frustrated.

Those emotions became familiar to me. I got excited about games like Hitman and Splinter Cell, brought them home, popped them into my console, ripped the discs out and left them at the bottom of my stack of games. I couldn’t find a stealth game I enjoyed, and I began to believe I would never. So, I quit playing them.

I remember flipping through the Dishonored issue of Game Informer. The cover said it all for me. A Victorian-era setting, a cool mask, rats, and a rad art style. I was sold. I stopped reading as soon as I found out it was primarily a stealth game. I had been tricked into that before, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again.

I had forgotten about Dishonored until it finally released.. Out of some tortuous need to see what I was missing, I watched a few videos of other people playing it. And that’s when I saw the blink ability, broke my years-long abstinence, and finally played my first stealth game.

Blink remedies my problems with the stealth genre. In some ways, Batman: Arkham Asylum did it with Batman’s ability to grapple to gargoyles near the ceiling, but blink isn’t tied to specific rooms, and it not only allows vertical movement but horizontal too. It ignores the confinement of stealth games, speeds up the laborious process of sneaking, and gives me options when I’m caught.

Blink would be nothing without level design that incorporates it. In Dishonored, I always feel like I can control a situation by adjusting my position. If a guard is about to walk around the corner into the hallway I’m crouched in, I often have a way to escape. In my experience, that would be when you restart from the last checkpoint or hide in a locker for two minutes in any other game. And while I’m waiting for a guard to patrol toward me, I have the time to blink to a nearby room and disable two others. With blink, there’s no waiting.

It makes you feel like a god. But that’s not to say Dishonored is all a power fantasy. It still has its tense moments. They happen sporadically, and are usually caused by me. I was exiting a small building holding an unconscious guard over my shoulders and another one got hit in the face when I opened the door. Oops. I dropped the body before he walked inside, jumped out a window, and circled around the building before he even saw his colleague. I didn’t breath until two guards lay crumpled on the floor, and when I knew it was safe, I let out a euphoric gasp.

That event unfolded during the first mission in Dishonored’s Knife of Dunwall DLC, and it reminded me why a stealth game was one of my favorite games last year. In moments like that, I had multiple ways of dealing with the guard. I could have fought him, I could have blinked above the building and waited, or I could have re-entered through the window when he turned around. I never felt stuck. I never felt overwhelmed. I never felt frustrated.

Thanks to Dishonored and blink, I’ve been able to overcome the barriers of a genre I’ve wanted to love for a long time.