The First 15

I boot up the game and have to install the day 1 patch. It’s 9 GB! The game is 37 GB total. I just had to download a quarter of the game, which took hours. Whatever happened to games being ready out of the box?

Once I finally start up the game it asks if I want to go through the tutorial. I decide I do and the game has me playing as Emily as Corvo runs her through an obstacle course. The tutorial is short and rather effective. I think I’m ready for the main game. I choose Medium difficulty.

The story starts out all smiles and rainbows but very suddenly turns into blood and death.

You have to choose whether to play as Corvo Attano, the main character of the first game, or Emily Kaldwin, the ruler of Dunwald. I chose to play as Emily Kaldwin.

Something I remember from playing the first game is that there was a method in which you could play through the game without killing anyone. I check through the trophies (playing on PS4) and sure enough there is one for not killing anyone. There’s also one for never being spotted. I decide to do a stealth, no-killing playthrough.

It actually took me a rather long time to figure out that I could escape the room they locked me in by opening the window and walking along the balcony. This early on it would be nice if the game did a little more to make me aware that windows even can be opened.

Now out I get my first chance to deal with an enemy. I sneak up behind him and choke him unconscious. Easy enough. I sneak downstairs and do the same to the next guy.

Next there are three guys with one of them boasting about what’s happened. I kind of want to kill them, but I’m doing a no-kill playthrough. Eventually the one boasting walks towards me so I hide around the corner. Once his back is turned I sneak up and choke him unconscious. Now I get back my ring so that I can use the secret exit.

At this point the game tells me that I can fulfil the requirement of ‘neutralizing’ the man I just choked out by either killing him, or by locking him inside of the hidden room. I carry him into the room and Emily makes a wicked comment about how she hopes he enjoys being surrounded by wealth but unable to use any of it since he is completely locked inside. This was so much better than killing him.

Now I exit the room and continue on with the game.

Story

The overall story is a little too formulaic. Everything starts out as rainbows and butterflies until the evil relative comes in and starts killing the nobility. She then uses her magic to turn whichever character you’re not playing as into stone. From there the main character is forced to flee and sets out on a quest to retake the throne. This sort of story has been done before many times, and sadly Dishonored 2 doesn’t do anything to help set itself apart. There aren’t that many characters and even the characters that do exist don’t seem to interact very much.

Everything you do is for the “good of Dunwald” or its people. But frankly, I never really saw any people worth retaking the throne for. Where are the people who make me want to save them? Everyone I meet (soldiers and civilians) is either selfish or just plain evil. All of the quests (even the optional ones) are about getting someone something they want in exchange for something I want. Where are the characters who just want a safe place to sleep? Where are the mini-storylines where a frightened child asks me to save her family only for me to arrive too late? Where are the people for whom all I can do is give them one of my healing potions and have to apologize that I don’t have the power to do more for them? Emily keeps going on and on about how she always wished she could be free from the throne. Well now she is. But she insists that she has to retake the throne despite the fact that I never really meet anyone who I feel is worth retaking the throne for.

For the sake of keeping the game going the storyline works. But it stops at being just “good enough” and relies on the gameplay to carry the majority of the game.

Interface and Controls

There is no indicator when you go to pick something up that your actions will be seen as theft. You only get find out it’s theft when all of a sudden a civilian runs away screaming and/or the guards show up and try to kill you.

The game kept giving me tips about ways in which I could use certain abilities. It especially liked to tell me about possession. It took me a bit to realize that possession is unique to Corvo whereas I was playing as Emily. The game should only show tips for abilities that your current character can use.

I disliked that I always had to have the sword equipped. While doing a no-kill playthrough, the sword was only useful for killing bloodflies or breaking boards. But every time I went to cast Dark Vision or do anything else I had to pull out my sword. This is more of a roleplaying feature, but I would like it if equipping an item to my left hand or using magic didn’t automatically pull out my sword.

Spending mana is odd. Some abilities cost mana, but then that mana regenerates provided you don’t try to use another power before it’s done regenerating. Others cost some mana and regenerate some, while others cost mana and don’t regenerate any mana at all. None of the abilities warn you about the cost, so you mostly just have to learn by using them. Though in the end mana starts to feel pointless since you almost never spend it fast enough. I played through most of the game holding 10 mana vials (the most you can hold) and only ever used them if I found another mana vial and wasn’t already at max mana (which wasn’t that often). I would have liked to see the designers be a little more creative with their resource system.

When playing as Emily Kaldwin, she has an ability that allows her to teleport a fair distance. One of the upgrades allows her to instead teleport objects and enemies to her. This can be useful for grabbing hard to reach items or pulling an enemy into a chokehold. But since both versions of the ability are tied together and the ability auto-adjusts based on what you’re targeting, I would occasionally pull something to me (like a corpse) when I meant to jump behind an enemy. The pull is considered non-stealthy and so it would cause nearby enemies to spot me. I would have liked to see these two abilities be actual separate abilities.

I dislike that you can’t sell things to merchants. I spent most of the game with a full supply of various grenades and other traps that I’m never going to use because they are lethal and I was doing a non-lethal playthrough. I also spent most of the game with ten health and mana potions since ten is the max you can hold and I never really needed them. This is probably more of a comment about the uselessness of some items during certain types of gameplay (in my case non-lethal stealth), but I explored a lot and ended just leaving behind a lot of what I found since I was already maxed out.

Gameplay

I chose to do a no-kill, no-alert playthrough and to play as Emily Kaldwin. This means that I can’t kill anyone (included bosses) and I can’t be spotted (so I have to use stealth). This meant a lot of saving and loading when things didn’t go quite the way I wanted.

I want to commend the level designers on creating some absolutely superb levels to move around in. Very quickly you learn that there is always another way to get to where you want to go. Most of the time that means going up or down and jumping from balconies or crawling through alleyways. With the use of powers players can access even more areas. Also, not only are the levels beautifully laid out, but the attention to detail is superb. They clearly spent a lot of time placing odd bits and ends such as trash, benches, and other objects the exist solely to dress up the scene. Each level

One nice addition to the typical stealth formula is that guards will notice if other guards go missing. If a guard walks away and comes back to find a fellow missing, that guard will start investigating the area. Ironically this actually tends to make taking down the second guard easier since you don’t have to do anything to get him away from his normal patrol which allows you to sneak up and take him down too.

If you’re going for no-deaths or no-alerts playthrough you have to babysit it. Every time you go to save you have to check the stats page to make sure no one died or spotted you. Several times I’ve gone to check my stats only to find out that someone, somewhere, somehow died even though I never killed anyone. One time I managed to subdue all of the enemies between me and the end of the level. I checked the stats after subduing the last enemy, no alerts. I walked to the end of the level probably 100 feet away and somehow when the end of level stats page came up I had one alert. So I had to reload the save and walk that same 100 feet again, this time without any alerts. They really need to do a better job on this because it started to get really annoying when I had to check my stats every single time before I saved.

The AI cheats. What I mean by this is that the enemies will always walk in your general direction whenever they’re searching for you. It’s easy enough to test. Just bang on something to alert the enemies in the area, then go hide somewhere. No matter where you hide, the enemies will always path towards you without fail. I suspect the designers did this intentionally to try and create extra tension, but instead all it does is cause a break in the immersion of the game because you can literally see the game feeding the AI scripts controlling the enemies information about where you are that they shouldn’t have. They designed a good stealth system, but this kind of heavy handedness creates a negative play experience that cheapens their efforts and ultimately undermines the player’s sense of immersion.

Something I found very odd is that civilians are amazingly good at noticing the player. Guards gradually notice the player. The longer they see you or the more flashy your actions the sooner they realize what’s happening. But a civilian will go from uninterested to screaming in terror in a flash. Not only does this feel extremely odd that the guards are worse at spotting the player in stealth than the civilians, but it’s also annoying that there is no state between being hidden and being spotted for civilians. I would like to see civilians be given the same sort of gradual detection system that guards have.

There is a very noticeable lack of stealth oriented bone charms in the game. There are plenty of ones that help in combat, but I found a grand total of one bone charm that did anything for me while in stealth for the first half of the game. Even when I did find a few more they didn’t really do much besides make health and mana potions even more useless than they already were. I would have liked to see a bit more creativity and diversity with the bone charms.

One of the best parts about the original Dishonored game that makes a grand reappearance in Dishonored 2 is the ability to beat the game without killing anyone. This includes major story characters (aka bosses). Every major enemy has a way in which they can be defeated without killing them. Sometimes this causes the character to become friendly, other times one could argue the end result might actually be worse than killing them. But either way, it’s neat to really explore the level and discover alternate pathways to victory beside a straight up fight.

There is a “no-powers” mode which I did toy around with for a bit, but frankly I found it to be rather boring. When you chose to forgo the mark you don’t just give up your powers, you actually give up everything in the upgrade tree. Runes you collect now just give you a chunk of money instead. Powers are one of the best parts about the Dishonored series and without them the game feels like so much less. I’m not against them offering this as an option, but I feel like the designers did themselves a disservice by adding a trophy/achievement to beat the game using this mode. Doing so exposes how shallow their game becomes without them. I would like to see the “no-powers” option still lock the player out of using magic, but allows the player to earn passive abilities at a cost. For instance, maybe for every rune spent upgrading your character it lowered your maximum health, or caused you to take extra damage. Or maybe the runes cause you to glow which makes it easier for enemies to spot you. Either way, I feel like locking the player out of the entire upgrade tree was a mistake and they should have tried to find something of a middle ground.

Conclusion

You will like this game if you’re a fan of dark fantasy games which offer a fun arsenal of weapons and abilities. This game excels with its level design and also offers strong replayability though it’s different gameplay types.

You will not like this game is you are looking for a strong story or do not have much patience. There will be a lot of saving and reloading especially if you decide to try and complete the game without being spotted.

Dishonored 2 is a fun game. The level design is top notch and the arsenal of weapons and powers truly allows you to become the master of your environment. Unfortunately a weak story and a few design flaws prevent this game from truly becoming the masterpiece it’s trying to be. That said, I had a lot of fun with it and I think most people will too.