'Dishonored' launch trailer goes for the jugular

Tasked with taking down the powermongers in a plague-ridden city ruled by elitist overlords, ex-royal protector Corvo has not only his training but a neat line in supernatural ability to fall back on.

Time slows down, rodents are spewn from the ground, and Corvo flits from place to place in the blink of an eye.

While the launch trailer might give the impression that Dishonored is all about bloody assassinations coupled with a lucious and distinctive art style, that's not quite the whole truth: the game's versatility means that players can select their own approach to mission completion, whether that be stealthy and shadow-hugging, all-out sociopathic, or the way of a soft-touch and non-lethal assassin.

Those are among the reasons why the effort from French studio Arkane has been receiving such universally high scores from review outlets.

The wallet-twisting consumer reality is that Dishonored releases at the same time as another game of unusually high quality, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and at the start of video gaming's annual retail crunch.

Both titles offer a unique and exceptionally well-executed vision, remaining worthy of their links to the best of years gone past -- in Dishonored's case, Deus Ex, Thief, and BioShock; for XCOM, it's the strategy series UFO as seen through the lense of Civilization studio Firaxis.

Dishonored - Launch Trailer: youtu.be/XMCzCvR-O8M
Official website: dishonored.com