To mark the end of the 2010s, we’re celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they’re published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor’s blog.
The city of Dunwall is a paradox. As the pounding of inhuman footfalls echoes against the bruised sky, rodents of all sizes and colours scurry, silently coating the cobbles with death and disease. It’s a life of extremes, this. Pomp and poverty. Science and superstition. The haves and have-nots. Ladies whisper and giggle in lavish dining halls, heavy silk drapes pulled tightly to hide the emaciated husks of citizens lying, and dying, beyond the manicured lawn.
Games often touch us not only because of what they are, but what they’re not and, for me, Dishonored was a game that relaxed traditional gameplay in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated. It unshackled expectations, permitting me to explore Dunwall’s battered, broken environs at my own pace and in my own style.
