I haven’t mentioned Dishonored yet, which feels dishonourable (with a ‘u’, the correct way) on my part because the game looks both interesting and awesome. Now I’ve got some new pictures and an excuse to write about it.

It’s been developed by Arkane Studios who made Dark Messiah (groan) and Bioshock 2 (oooh). But the real ace card for Dishonored is Harvey Smith, a man responsible for a few little games like Deus Ex (the original one) and Thief: Deadly Shadows.

Dishonored is set in the steampunk city of Dunwall, looking a lot like late 19^th century England. You play as Corvo, former bodyguard of the Empress and recently framed for her assassination. The game is first person but focuses more on open world exploration and offers multiple options to tackle objectives, much like Thief and Deus Ex. While there’s plenty of sword play and flintlock pistol action, magic plays a big part as well. Apparently you’ll be able to freeze time when someone shoots at you, then use telekinesis to move them in front of their own bullets, then unfreeze time to watch them shoot themselves. Hilarious.

Additionally, although I’m not sure if its plot centric, but the entire city and all the technology runs on whale oil, so it’s actually blubberpunk, not steampunk.

Dishonored is due out towards the middle of 2012.

Despite the first person perspective the game will have a much bigger focus on stealth than running and gunning (or stabbing)

I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure chicken legged robot walkers were relatively uncommon back in ye olden times

Berty 'cuddles' Johnson just wants to find love... yes run, run for your life!

Judging by the corpses in potato sacks, this gentleman is an UN-savoury character

Time for some stealthy stabbing, carpe jugular

Even the bridges look sinister in this game