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Dishonored 1.3 update fixes kill stat bugs, straightens out Dunwall City Trials

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Dishonored 1.3 update fixes kill stat bugs, straightens out Dunwall City Trials

I was careful, let me assure you of that. God knows I took my time. But by the time I’d hopped, skipped and temporally jumped my way through Dunwall, I’d been credited with at least two murders that I couldn’t for the life of me remember committing. Fortunately I’d caused an accident with an errant guard and a bomb back in the prologue, and didn’t retain any pretensions of a clean playthrough. But given Dishonored’s meticulous approach to score-keeping, an even slightly wonky mission stat kill list is unforgivable.

This week’s Steam update is partly about that: fixing the rare occasions when the game declares deaths unwarranted. But it’s also about Dunwall City Trials, the challenge mode released in December that’s still, for a few more days, the game’s only expansion to date.

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Hands on with Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall

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Hands on with Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall

Dishonored was all about revenge, or justice, I think. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about it. It was a game about a man, Corvo, who was so angry that he literally couldn’t speak, so instead he expressed his feelings by stabbing men and throwing them off ledges, which is probably healthier than bottling them up. The feelings I mean, not the men. 

In The Knife of Dunwall however you play as Daud, tangential antagonist of the original game, who is tormented by remorse having prostituted himself to the Lord Regent by assassinating the Empress of Dunwall, thereby triggering the events of Dishonored. Daud talks a lot. Daud has a flapping tongue and a ticking brain, which makes this DLC feel altogether different in contrast to the unsettling silence of the original. It feels chattier, Daud feels more like Garrett, so the game feels more like Thief.

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Dishonored’s The Knife of Dunwall DLC officially announced for April 16

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Dishonored’s The Knife of Dunwall DLC officially announced for April 16

A screenshot yesterday let us know that our DLC journey in the jet-black shoes of blink-prone assassin Daud would begin with the killing of the very Empress we were tasked to protect in the game proper. A press release today reveals what’ll happen next - a personal tale of redemption, to be told in single-player across April’s DLC, The Knife of Dunwall, and its planned follow-up, The Brigmore Witches.

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Dishonored’s next DLC will have you kill Corvo’s ward yourself

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Dishonored’s next DLC will have you kill Corvo’s ward yourself

Dishonored’s second DLC pack will see the player don the exquisite cracked leather gloves of Empress-killer Daud in a new story-driven campaign. This much we knew. What we didn’t know is that we’d actually be doing the Empress-killing ourselves.

Update: A tweet from the official Dishonored account promises more news tomorrow.

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Jeremy's game of the year is... Dishonored

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Jeremy's game of the year is... Dishonored

“GAME OF THE YEAR!," booms host Samuel L Jackson, before holding a long, wistful gaze with somebody in the 177th row. We're at an alternate version of coarse US award-chute the VGAs that exists only in my head, and Dishonored is cleaning up.

“Game of the motherfucking year," he sighs, swearily. He’s sitting now, cross-legged on a sticky, black stage. His anguished expression suggests he’d like the sticky blackness to open up and swallow him whole. “Sheee-it. But it won’t change a goddamn thing."

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Dishonored DLC Dunwall City Trials is out already on Steam

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Dishonored DLC Dunwall City Trials is out already on SteamThere are two reasons I’m excited to play Dunwall City Trials. Firstly, it puts me in mind of Mirror’s Edge’s Pure Time Trials DLC, an exposed-brick jungle gym created with the sole intent of pushing the game’s key mechanics to their limits - utterly abstracted, assembled by level designers with fingers still hot from the digit-treadmill of full production. Secondly, it’s a chance to play with Dishonored’s finer tools for wanton murder away from its moral scorekeeping.

At time of writing, it’s been out for two hours and neither you or I are playing it yet. What’s up with that?

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Dishonored sales “far exceeding” Bethesda’s expectations: “We clearly have a new franchise”

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Dishonored sales “far exceeding” Bethesda’s expectations: “We clearly have a new franchise”Lots of people bought PC games during the Steam Autumn Sale this weekend, and lots of those games were Dishonored.

"We did terrific numbers again this past weekend, both in stores and on Steam, where Dishonored was listed as the #1 selling title over the holiday weekend," said Bethesda man of marketing Pete Hines. “And Dishonored has really sold well overseas."

I think he means us.

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Dishonored’s Corvo wasn’t always a mute protagonist

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Dishonored’s Corvo wasn’t always a mute protagonist“Jesus H, did you see that? Those rats just devoured that guy, like, literally," says Corvo in an alternate version of Dishonored, probably. “I mean, what am I going to tell Emily when she asks what happened at work today?"

It’s a version of Dishonored Raphael Colantonio still thinks about: “We added some text input options for Corvo around alpha but never really went further."

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Dishonored DLC will feature a new player character; Dunwall City Trials challenge maps due in December

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Dishonored DLC will feature a new player character; Dunwall City Trials challenge maps due in DecemberDishonored’s reception has been noisily good-natured, and now everybody’s had a chance to get stuck into the back of an unsuspecting guard or two thoughts have turned to DLC. Which rat in Dunwall’s sprawling narrative would Arkane choose to run with, we wondered? The answer, for now, is none of ‘em.

Dishonored’s first helping of DLC will be a set of ten challenge maps called Dunwall City Trials. But don’t worry - there’s a whaler’s boat on the horizon, and its name is The Next One Will Be Story-Driven, with a New Player Character.

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Dishonored art directors redesign London’s Shard skyscraper

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Dishonored art directors redesign London’s Shard skyscraperJust as gaming’s best stab at New York lies not with Crysis 2 but in the profound greys of Liberty City, London’s finest digital incarnation is known by another name: Dunwall. Dishonored’s steampunk clock towers and dilapidated docklands are ripped straight from the capital - and what is Samuel the Boatman but a transplanted cabbie?

In acknowledgement of the game’s debt to the city, Arkane art directors Viktor Antonov and Sebastien Mitton have applied Dunwall’s aesthetic and thematics to real-life LDN skyscraper/obelisk The Shard. See the results after the break.

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Dishonored crash issues affect PC version, Bethesda advise workaround

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Dishonored crash issues affect PC version, Bethesda advise workaroundBethesda’s Dishonored forums are, for the most part, composed entirely from posts of celebration, loss (“No map? Is this a joke?"), and minor spoilers, but the odd fatal technical hiccup is beginning to crop up here and there. One major issue seems to stem from an ATI graphics card, causing the game to stop responding and display a voluminous error stream before promptly crashing to desktop.

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This is not a Dishonored review

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This is not a Dishonored reviewDishonored launches on Friday in Europe and tomorrow in North America. It's a videogame all about what it might be like if Derren Brown went mad one day and decided to murder government officials using his eerie supernatural powers. We've all been playing Dishonored, here at the big lighthouse in which the PCGamesN crew live and have adventures together, and now we're ready to discuss precisely what we think about it. Chairing this meeting of opinion, and steering the good ship discourse, is PCGN editor Tim Edwards — here's what we thought of Dishonouuured.

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A Dishonored non-lethal playthrough will take at least 22 hours; longer if you’re not an Arkane level designer

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A Dishonored non-lethal playthrough will take at least 22 hours; longer if you’re not an Arkane level designerHow long is Arkane’s fraying, many-pathed piece of string? 12 to 14 hours is one official line, for “very direct players" - 12 to 28 is another. And if you’re planning on taking a sneaky-sneaky, quietly-quietly, strictly-no-stabbing approach, you’re reportedly looking very much at the upper end of that scale.

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Bethesda invites you to remix Dishonored's Drunken Whaler tune

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Bethesda invites you to remix Dishonored's Drunken Whaler tuneBethesda have released ominous sea shanty The Drunken Whaler as a free MP3 download. The music accompanied Dishonored's award-winning trailer, which you can see below. They've also just launched the official Drunken Whaler remix contest, inviting you to download the song's stems to create your own original composition. I've given it a shot. Let me know what you think.

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Dishonored's Rat Assassin now on iPad

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Dishonored's Rat Assassin now on iPadDishonored is getting close now, the stench of its plague-ridden streets starting to waft up the nostrils and curl around your brain, making it crinkle and shudder. It’s going to be good, Tim’s played as much, but if you’re itching for a chance to get a little closer to it (and that itch isn’t from a rash or boils), and you’ve got an iOS device, then you can download Rat Assassin, for your iPhone or iPad, now.

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Latest Dishonored dev diary shows the conception of Dunwall, plus a crocodile dog

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Latest Dishonored dev diary shows the conception of Dunwall, plus a crocodile dogThe second Dishonored developer documentary goes into some incredible detail about how Arkane created the twisted, quasi-real city of Dunwall by studying London smog, British morphology and quirky urban smokestacks. There's a lot of information to absorb in the ten minute long video below, but you'll come away with the sense that there's not an inch of this game world, nor a line of dialogue that hasn't been deliberated over and justified by a committee of clever people.

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Cinematic action is a terrible goal for games, claims Dishonored dev

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Cinematic action is a terrible goal for games, claims Dishonored devThe Dishonored devs have been speaking to GI.biz about videogames. Their videogames versus everybody else's videogames, to be more precise. To be even more precise: the way their games work in direct contrast to the Hollywood-minded, cinematic popcorn blockbusters that dominate the charts and rake in mountains of publisher-influencing cash. It's a superb read, I suggest you go read it, that re-affirms an impression I've had of Dishonored since it was first shown: that it looks, feels and moves like a 90s PC game in a way so few games today do - because the team behind it are making the game they want to play.

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