A whaling city is besieged when their leader and empress is assassinated and a new world order begins. The guilty party, as if often the case, goes free, ends up ruling and the empress’ protector is set to take the fall. Unknown parties begin to help him and he takes revenge on those who have wronged his leader.
The game play for this game, the entire look and feel reminded me of Bioshock or Fallout. The latter unsurprisingly given that Bethesda created this game was well as the Fallout series. The controls allow the gamer to alternate attacks based on the left and right hand of the character, using either magic or long-range implement versus a sword. There is also a wonderful element of stealth that allows assassinations that are almost undetected. The game uses a mechanic from the Assassin’s Creed series well, allowing the gamer to hide bodies or suffer the consequences of their actions being discovered. This added an element of danger, but also encouraged me to kill more people, using a magical power that would let the bodies vanish without a trace.
The sound and voice acting were quite well done. I was surprised to discover that Emily was played by Chloë Grace Moretz (currently playing in the 2013 remake of Carrie). The cast was made up of quite a few names, including Susan Sarandon. The story had a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, it delivered a payoff that was worthy of the aforementioned Bioshock and Fallout games.
I do wish I had played this game sooner, but it wasn’t a long play through and I don’t expect it to stick with me for too much longer. The game was fun, the story was compelling, but in the end, I played it and I don’t feel it affecting me in a more profound was as other games. I only mention this because when the game came out, people couldn’t stop talking about it. Months later, I haven’t heard a peep and that might be more telling than not.