It's one of the unfortunate aspects of people wanting mastery of a game, is that they search to break the game down to numbers, and do the most efficient thing every time.

Other than Deus Ex, which has been mentioned, I felt the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's assassination mission where you and a handful of suspects are locked into a house during a dinner party was pretty clever.

This was one of the few really new and good games in the past 5 years. I hope the sequel won't be just a repack like others are.

This is a very excellent article, and I'm not just saying that on account of the bias I have toward Dishonored, it being my very favorite game ever made.

What to I want to see more of on kotaku? Fucking exactly this. This article is the tops

Good write up.
I had a lot of fun with Dishonored because I never felt compelled to restart a level because something went terribly wrong. But I did restart levels to try different methods to accomplish the same goal. And going through the game to get the high chaos ending on a second play is crazy fun.

The lethal route has achievements of its own too. What author was saying is that it's not like if you play violently, you get a new costume, but if you play stealthily you get a special item that makes you invisible to all enemies. That's what he means by "incentive". There isn't one path that is clearly better than…

I love stealth games but the first few Splinter cell games irritated me to no end because I HAD to play the way the developer wanted me to. There was no freedom to play the way *I* wanted to. Chaos Theory actually got that right, then they screwed up with Double Agent, one of the WORST Splinter Cell games in the…

In the hitman games you're rewarded the most for making the deaths of your targets look like an accident. Figuring out how to do that can be very difficult, but when you pull it off, it's extremely satisfying. Of course you're suppose to do that without killing anyone else, so I suppose that's the equivalent of a…

I think the next step will come when the missions themselves can be ambiguous...not killing because the information you have gathered indicates that there might be additional use by not doing so (maybe the person offering you the missions isn't to be trusted) or that telling the person you are here to kill them but…

I think Hitman: Blood Money was my favorite stealth game. Absolution wasn't bad, but it lost some things that made Blood Money great.

My favorite open ended choice was fighting the assassin who killed the Queen. It was very much "I don't know how to do this non-lethal!" so I grabbed the objective and jumped out the window, and was super surprised it let me.

I loved Dishonored. This mission really reminded me of my favorite Dark Brotherhood mission in Oblivion. It plays out differently (of course since you have to ensure everyone is dead) but the options of choice are all there.

It was my favorite level in the whole game. I loved it especially because it did the opposite in every regard than what I would expect, especially since every level before it was more like a traditional stealth game. I would love to see more games that are more about "hiding in plain sight".

I don't wanna call Dishonored a stealth game. It transcends stealth. What you focused on in this post is the straight up deception angle of the game. Dishonored is a deception game more than simply a stealth one! But it's also really neither because you can play through it like a murderous maniac without any stealth…

I loved this mission. Favorite level in the game. I personally waited until AFTER I had finished my task and made signing the guestbook the last thing I did before leaving the mansion. It just had such a "Count of Monte Cristo" vibe to it, mingling with the hypocritical nobles, duping all of them as you carry out your…

I remember this mission and it was awesome. I ended up getting Lady Boyle to follow me out of the party at which point I bludgeoned her to death in a stairwell. I think the first time I was discovered so I had to redo it and then escape.

Dishonored, in yet another clever twist, makes the non-lethal route seems to be the worst one. You can kidnap Lady Boyle and deliver her to a man in a boat, who will take her… somewhere. Dishonored has non-lethal options for other targets as well, and while all of them effectively ruin the lives of the very bad people…

Lady Boyle was one of the few people I decided to kill rather than just go the non-lethal route with. But not because her punishment was the worst (I still think the Pendleton Twins got the worst one) but because I felt it was the least deserved. But it really was an awesome experience to see the non-lethal mission in…