You know, after reading the possible scenarios as consequences to your decisions based on your skills and the above quoted part, aren't those giving you a bit of an overkill god status? I don't mean to sound all critical, it is just a question that popped up in my mind instantly. I'm sure the game will be well thought out, but for example in Thief, the only extraordinary skill of the protagonist is the fact that he is not to be seen if he doesn't want to, which makes the game simply more forgiving, because even if you make a risky move, you're not awlays to be spotted like a shining figure. Aside this, you had no god like powers and this made gameplay so immense thrilling, it was all about thinking, weighing and patience.
As said, I'm sure Dishonored wil be well balanced out, but it just seems "to sweet" to be good. Personally it sounds a bit like a god-game.
It really depends how intelligently they design the levels, the encounters, and what kind of trade-off there is for choosing to spec out your character in powers. Bioshock was a game that tried to do a similar thing, but in my opinion it failed dismally at it because the levels were basic corridors, the enemies had very little variety requiring minimal combat tactics, and anybody could switch their character build with almost no consequence.
And I have an important request of information: In the PC version will there be a fully functional quicksave system again?
Too many games these days forget about quicksaving because all the effort on consoles goes into foolproof autosave checkpoints (or whatever the real reason may be). Human Revolution does this right and past Arkane games have also but after reading this multiple choice thing I was reminded of how often I used to replay certain segments of Dark Messiah (trying to complete an area taking the least possible damage, killing in the most heroic, choreographed way possible etc.) and I realized that it was a make or break element of the game for me. I wouldn't have had even HALF the fun without all the experimenting!
This Eurogamer preview suggests that there is a save-anywhere function
even on consoles.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-05-dishonored-preview