It’s almost impossible to come to Dishonored without huge expectations. It’s a game you can’t disentangle from the history of its makers, or the heritage of the games that inspired it. Its creative team includes alumni from System Shock, Deus Ex, Half-Life 2 and Arx Fatalis. Its developer Arkane’s last job was providing creative services on BioShock 2, and before that it worked on a cancelled spin-off of the Half-Life series. 9/10