Made official last week, Bethesda announced a brand new IP that developer Arkane Studios has been working on in secret. This game is called Dishonored and today we have our very first in-game look at what this new property will feel like.

Dishonored first made headlines a few weeks back when Bethesda‘s parent company, Zenimax, filed trademarks for Dishonored. We waited until hearing something official and it didn't take long until it was made official, alongside news that Game Informer would be featuring a cover story on Dishonored in the August issue of their magazine.

Along with the unveiling came a look at the Dishonored cover art for the issue, but not knowing much about the game, it was very "cryptic," as they appropriately describe, and difficult to understand what the game is truly about. Now comes our first actual look at the game through a screenshot and it's a little more telling, although it's also seemingly from an entirely different game than what that cover art indicates.

A picture is worth a thousand words and in this case, they're all good words. First person, detailed animations, swordplay, steampunkish pistol. What does it mean? Compare to the cover art:

Bethesda Announces Dishonored

According to Game Informer's update that came along with this image, Dishonored pits players in the shoes of a bodyguard named Corvo who works to protect the Empress. She's murdered and Corvo is wrongly sent to prison as a result of treacherous plan of Lord Regent.

This begins the mysterious story of Dishonored whose protagonist certainly isn't any ordinary man. While a trained fighter, he also possesses supernatural powers and some "unusual gadgets" that set him apart from his enemies and hence, define the gameplay of Dishonored.

Dishonored is not a hack-and-slash first person combat title, nor is it simple fantasy-based spells mixed with conventional weapons and role-playing elements (a la The Elder Scrolls series from Bethesda). Instead, it's an assassination game with stealth and tactical decision making. Think Hitman with a much vaster array of weapons and abilities at your disposal.

Game Informer provides an example of gameplay where the player can mix and match abilities to stop/slow time and knock over objects to create a distraction, and summoning rats, then transforming into one for a crafty escape. Like Skyrim, actions the player takes will impact the game and Dishonored features a "chaos" game mechanic which monitors how the player plays, whether that be precise kills and swift escapes or total killing sprees. Depending on how the player approaches the game, the story and world change accordingly.

Knowing a few examples of how the player can handle and problem-solve situations makes it unsurprising to know that Raphael Colantonio (lead designer for Arx Fatalis, another Arkane Studios title) and Harvey Smith (lead designer for the original Deus Ex) are involved in directing Dishonored. If it's as open and clever as those other Bethesda games with swords, powers and an open world, then mark Dishonored down as one of Game Rant's most anticipated titles, even if we do know little about it.

Stay tuned into Game Rant for more on Dishonored as a video with the talent at Arkane Studios will be released online later this week.

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Source: Game Informer