Bethesda has released the haunting Druken Whaler song as a free download, encouraging fans of the upcoming Dishonored to remix the eerily re-imagined sea shanty, that originally debuted in the game's impressive E3 gameplay trailer.

A developer blog from the song's composers explain how the traditional drunken sailor song was chosen to match the game's atmosphere with it's pseudo Victorian-era London, sci-fi, steampunk, mutant whaling town vibe.

The new lyrics for “The Drunken Whaler” are darker than the original song, so many of the discussions revolved around which verses would best inspire Bethesda's editor, Salinee Goldenberg, to craft a three-minute story from the gameplay footage. The group decided on using the voices of ordinary children – rather than a professional youth choir – to achieve a dark, haunting quality to the music. This created an interesting juxtaposition between the innocence of the voices and the brutality in the gameplay footage.

If you missed it, you can catch the E3 trailer below (HD page here), grab the MP3 as a direct download from Bethesda right here, or grab the stems for the song's individual tracks and have a crack at Bethesda's promotion remix competition.

Dishonored is due in Australia on October 11th 2012 for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.