Dishonored

Dishonored casts the player as Corvo Attano, former bodyguard to a murdered empress, who is falsely accused and becomes a legendary supernatural assassin in the plague-ridden industrial city of Dunwall, wielding powers granted by a mysterious entity known as the Outsider. The key mechanic is Blink, allowing an instant short-range teleport, which the game combines with other powers such as stopping time or possessing animals and people, opening up an enormous number of ways to complete each mission — from silent stealth without a single kill to a brutal massacre of an entire garrison.

The world of Dunwall, inspired by Victorian London with steampunk elements powered by whale oil, is one of the game's most distinctive aspects — a unique art style with elongated characters and stylized faces gives the city an unmistakable identity, set apart from the typically photorealistic games of its time. The game tracks a so-called chaos system, where the level of violence used by the player affects the story's development, the behavior of the inhabitants, and the game's final outcome, encouraging repeat playthroughs with a different style and different choices. The levels are designed as compact yet layered sandboxes full of alternative routes, hidden passages, and details fleshing out the fallen city.

Dishonored received near-unanimous praise on release for its level design, player freedom, and art direction, and became one of the proofs that the immersive sim genre, after years of relative decline, still had plenty to offer players. The game received a sequel, Dishonored 2, and a standalone expansion, Death of the Outsider, and to this day it is rightly ranked among the best-designed stealth action games of its generation, ones players gladly return to for different approaches to the same missions. Its influence is also visible in later titles from Arkane Studios, which further developed the same principle of free choice of approach.

Why play it: For fans of stealth action with total freedom in how to approach the same missions, this is one of the best-designed games of the immersive sim genre of its generation.