Dishonored Stalk Dunwall your way

You are Corvo, once bodyguard to the Empress, now blamed for her murder and wearing a disturbing mask that is your calling card. Dunwall is an industrial whaling city where steampunk machinery runs on whale oil and plague empties whole districts, ruled by a corrupt government while dark forces hand you powers beyond any common man.

You pick through the wreckage of that life mission by mission. Guards, desperate civilians, noble parties and quarantined streets tell you how far the city has fallen, and notes and overheard talk fill in who betrayed you. It is dark and tense, and the story stays easy to follow while your choices decide what kind of revenge this becomes.

Each assassination is yours to plan. You slip through levels using shadow and sound, unseen by foes, or draw weapons and meet the response head on. You stop time to line up an execution, possess a living creature to pass a patrol, then blink across to a rooftop.

Sword in one hand and crossbow, pistol, grenades, mines and sleep darts in the other gives the joke version of subtlety: choke the guard and tuck him in a dumpster, or summon a rat swarm and let Dunwall clean up. Killing more spreads plague, rats and patrols and changes events and endings, so mercy takes more patience and murder takes less explaining.

The fun is combining what you carry. Teleport for quiet entries, possession for passing as something small and harmless, stopped time for repositioning a fight before it starts. Layer those with unusual gadgets and an upgrade system for deadlier abilities and devious tools, and one target can fall five different ways.

Runes, bone charms, blueprints and paintings tucked off the main route reward poking into side rooms and alleys. Missed paths stay missed until next time, which is why missions hold up to replays: same target, different toolkit, different Corvo.

Dunwall is the other lead. Whale-oil industry, stark rich and poor districts, religious Overseers, broadcasts and abandoned rooms make a steampunk city where industry and the supernatural collide. The painterly art direction still reads clearly after all these years, more oil painting than photograph.

How you play lands visibly. Move like a ghost and resist corruption, or leave destruction and watch the world darken around you, with multiple endings to show for it.