Dishonored - Blink And The Stealth Genre

Sidequesting has a small editorial on Dishonored. The author writes that the games blink ability re-introduced him to the stealth genre.

I’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 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.

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.