'Experience' Dishonored Without Experiencing Dishonored

Have you ever tried to explain your favorite game to a friend or family member who just didn't get it? Did you then decide - for some reason - to do it partially in French? That's the idea behind the latest in Dishonored's development documentary series, but thankfully with slightly more subtitles than real life. Also, heaps of gameplay footage, which is always nice. It's Arkane's attempt to paint a moving, talking, stabbing, rat-based-time-bomb-creating picture of Dishonored's "experience." But does it succeed? I'll let you be the judge. But just this once.

So, in short, kill whenever you want, wherever you want. Or don't kill anyone at all ever anywhere. You can do anything, basically. Well, short of the things you can't do.

The best bits of the documentary, though, (aside from the French) come when Harvey Smith and Raph Colantonio discuss tricks players pulled off when the developers were certain there was nothing up their sleeves. I mean, I'd heard about the ability to break a multi-story fall by possessing someone, but it's still pretty neat that some random player figured it out in the middle of a tense do-or-die situation. And the mobile rat grenade? Well, that's just evil.

So right then, it's out in a month. A torturous, awful month during which even the sunniest of days won't be able to pierce the impatience-born gloom cloud over my head. I should probably stop watching these documentaries, too, seeing as spoiling the entire game for myself is beginning to look like a very real possibility - especially if Bethesda keeps releasing new episodes, er, every other day.