Dark Messiah of Might and Magic 10-year Anniversary Retrospective

Shortly after a similar article from Bit-Tech, Rock, Paper, Shotgun published its own retrospective for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, a first-person action-RPG from Arkane Studios, which was released on October 24, 2006.

Here’s an excerpt that describes the title as “Dishonored for idiots.” Surprisingly, it’s not a disparaging comment at all:

Dark Messiah isn’t just Dishonored for idiots, but that’s one of the many brilliant things that it definitely is. Created by Arkane before they created Dunwall and their own world of violent stealth shenanigans, Dark Messiah is a first-person fantasy game all about kicking people and monsters in the face, and hoping that the force of your boot sends them flying off a cliff or into a spike.

As Graham mentions above, physics in games is really the art of watching things fall over, whether those things are buildings, people or cars. Carmageddon was the first game that really made me stop and think about physics, and I was mainly thinking how cool it was when a car flipped onto its roof and squidged through a crowd of pedestrians, or cartwheeled end over end down a street, losing bits and pieces every time it crunched into the tarmac.

Dark Messiah was like Carmageddon but with all of the tedious bastards that had ever cluttered up an RPG or big ol’ fantasy novel instead of cars and pedestrians. Finally, I could run up to them and push them, flailing, into nothingness.

Dishonored 2 looks like it’ll let you partake in some of that same fun, but it probably wants you to try and use all kinds of fancy powers, weaponry and vertical mobility to fancify the process. That’s great and I genuinely think it might be one of my favourite games of the year if it pulls off what it’s attempting. Sometimes I don’t want Dishonored though; sometimes I want Dishonored for idiots.