Dishonored 2

Overview

Dishonored 2, developed by Arkane Studios SA, is a direct continuation of the story from the original game. Having avenged the death of empress Jessamine Kaldwin and rescued their daughter Emily, Corvo Attano resumes his duties as royal protector for the new empress at the heart of Dunwall. Unfortunately a life of luxury behind palace walls has dulled the senses of tired and aging Corvo, while youthful curiosity of the outside world likewise distracts Emily from spotting a sinister plot brewing right beneath their feet. The sudden arrival of Delilah Copperspoon, the ostensibly estranged sister to the late empress and supposed true successor to the throne, springs forward a violent coup that sends our protagonists on the run. While in exile it is up to the player to eliminate Delilahs supporters one by one, weakening her treacherous cabal, all the while trying to determine the source of her powerful void magic and a way to break it.

Multiple Protagonists

From the outset of the opening cinematic the player has the ability to choose who they wish to play as for the remainder of the game: Emily or Corvo. Once locked in there is no swapping back and forth and the story plays out from the perspective of the chosen protagonist. The primary difference between the two are the supernatural powers each character has at their disposal. Corvo retains an almost identical set of abilities from the first game with a few tweaks and additions, while Emily the newcomer to the franchise receives entirely different powers than those of her father. Apart from that the story plays out in the exact same order for both, with the exact same targets from beginning to end, with only minor dialog differences in certain situations.

While Emily may be the new protagonist and poster child for the sequel, it seems like the game was very much designed with Corvo in mind. The player encounters several characters from the past game that the royal protector had interacted with and has something to say about, but Emily can only mumble hearing about them from her father. Likewise the powers of Corvo seem more at home with the vertical level design - Blink being a satisfying line of sight teleport compared to the awkward Far Reach traversal ability that Emily uses which is clumsily aimed like an arched grenade toss and can be finicky to line up with higher ledges.

Gameplay

Dishonored 2 is primarily a stealth game with the option to engage foes in direct combat. Broken up into nearly a dozen chapters, the goal in each one is to seek out the target and eliminate them in a lethal or non-lethal way. As these are usually key players in the organized coup against the throne, they're in well defended or otherwise fortified positions that require careful sneaking to reach to avoid a bloodbath in the streets. Although one of the selling points of Dishonored has always been the ability to fight and escape a detected state instead of simply quick loading a save (Quick Saves and Loads have also been integrated into the console versions of the game), stealth is usually the preferred option. Thankfully both Emily and Corvo have numerous abilities to help them along their way. Levels in Dishonored 2 offer multiple paths to the target with plenty of diversions along the way in the form of hidden upgrade runes, bonecharms, money used to purchase upgrades or simply pieces of lore about the world and it's inhabitants. There is a sense of verticality to each location, as it allow players to scale rooftops and bypass patrols overhead, or possess a fish and enter fortified buildings through the basement's pipework completely unnoticed.

Choice has always been paramount in the Dishonored franchise and the sequel is no different. It is possible to finish the entire game without being detected by guards and without having killed a single person, included the key targets in each level. For every key target the player can either kill them in a variety of different ways, or choose a more involved but simultaneously much more satisfying alternate option. During one of the early missions the player has the ability to turn a cruel machine against a genius inventor and ruin his mind instead of simply putting a blade through his back. They can even choose to deny the gifts of the outsider at the outset of the game and play through it entirely with no supernatural abilities apart from agility and gadgets.

Special Abilities

Certain characters in the Dishonored universe can get marked by The Outsider, bestowing upon them supernatural abilities - as is the case in both the original game and Dishonored 2. While in the first game players were able to actively ignore their powers in a challenge to beat the game using only the sword, wits and the default Blink skill, Dishonored 2 actually gives the player a choice to completely reject the Outsiders mark, completely barring them from investing ability points in the supernatural abilities for the remainder of the game. Both Corvo and Emily share a common pool of "Enhancement" abilities that increase their jump height or lifebar, but each protagonist has their own unique set of supernatural abilities that drastically changes their approach to the already vastly replayable levels.

Corvo

Emily

All of these abilities have several upgrade paths not fully listed above that expand their ranger or completely change how they function. Even if the player were to find and collect every single Rune throughout the entire game, they would not be able to fully max out a single characters skill tree.

Chaos System

Making a return to Dishonored is the chaos morality system which affects the ultimate outcome of the game. The player can either play through the game as a ghost, never seen, never heard, avoiding combat and knocking guards out instead of killing them to get the "good" Low Chaos ending, or they can slaughter their way back to the throne earning themselves the rather dark High Chaos ending. Differences in terms of story are minor throughout the game, although they can see their character becoming more bloodthirsty throughout the story with their quirks and comments. There are multiple and varying endings dictated by player choices and the chaos rating which the player has accrued from start to finish, which are depicted in the form of short vignettes during the credits.

Karnaca

Along with a new character comes an entirely new location for the series. While the story begins in Dunwall, the story soon moves players to Karnaca, the "jewel of the south" and birthplace of Corvo Attano. Karnaca is a prosperous region that has a warmer climate and thanks to it's geographical attributes (mainly Shindaerey Peak) is able to harness wind as an energy source instead of solely relying on whale oil, which is said to be dwindling throughout the empire. As Dunwall was plagued by the "Weeper" plague, spread throughout the city by rats, the jewel of the south has it's own problems in the form of bloodflies. Quarantined apartments will have crimson colored nests sprouting from floors and ceilings, with swarms of these deadly insects that aggressively attack all who approach. These areas usually offer shortcuts that circumvent guards at the risk of getting stung to death. Similarly to the previous game, the amount of nests one encounters throughout a playthrough is dynamically determined by the amount of dead bodies they leave behind as narratively corpses serve as breeding hosts for the bloodflies.

Crafting

Another new addition is a crafting system which is unlocked through the skill tree. In the Dishonored universe it is common practice for sailors to carve charms into whalebones that imbue them with special abilities. These charms can be found hidden throughout the game and help augment abilities by improving sneaking speed or regenerating mana from water fountains, for example. In Dishonored 2 the protagonist can craft their own whalebone charms by breaking down the ones they already own, memorizing their properties, and assigning them as they see fit. There are plenty of charms to find throughout the entire game, and while the locations are the same for both characters, the properties of of each differ. These special perks can be stacked up to four per charm, but unless they invest rune points into the crafting tree, the more properties they assign the bigger the chance of corruption which manifests itself in the form of negative side effects.

New Game Plus

A month after release Dishonored 2 received a patch that enabled the possibility of a New Game Plus mode. After completing the story the player can start a brand new game by choosing a game-complete save, and retain all their ability points which can be redistributed anew, as well as all memorized whale-charms. New Game Plus mode also allows them to use both Corvo's and Emily's powers in tandem regardless of which character they choose to play. This allows the player to potentially play through the game multiple times until they've learned all available skills and abilities from both character pools. It is important to note that the player can only carry over spent ability points, so before finishing the game they should assign all ability points and sacrifice all charms.

PC System Requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit versions)
• Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB or better
• Storage: 60 GB available space

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions)
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4770/AMD FX-8350 or better
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB/AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB or better
• Storage: 60 GB available space