Playing A Game Dishonored 2 PC

The first Dishonored impressed me with its ambitious variety of gameplay options, in spite of an awkwardly-linear world and unsatisfying narrative "choice." Arkane Austin followed this up with Prey (2017), which felt like a great (if still-imperfect) evolution of gameplay freedom and narrative integration. So it's funny that, in parallel, Arkane Lyon's attempt to iterate in Dishonored 2 ignored those evolutionary opportunities and instead made the existing formula a little more bland.

Dishonored 2 is structured just like its predecessor: a linear series of semi-open levels, each of which has optional missions, collectibles, and hidden secrets to uncover. And as before, missions are designed to provide you with several options of varying "chaos:" brutal combat, stealth assassination, non-lethal takedowns, even environmental sabotage. That's the theory, anyway.

In practice, the sequel's new abilities and difficulty curve feel much more welcoming of the high-chaos, outright violence route. Stealth mechanics like monitoring enemy positions, or managing your visibility and noise, haven't improved; being sneaky is impossible without some upgrades, and trying to run from danger almost never works. Meanwhile, charging head-first into danger and spamming the sword attack tends to work just fine.

I actually enjoyed playing the game as an unstoppable angel of death: combining swordplay and gunplay mid-melee is pretty fun, and the kill animations are very visually satisfying. But I'm a little bummed that Dishonored 2 didn't incentivize or encourage its stealth options as much. (Actually, according to this abstract guide, stealth players are discouraged from trying new things as the game punishes killing with more enemies that make hiding more difficult.)

One caveat to my recounting of this imbalance is the - surprising - impact that character choice had on it. I chose to play as Emily because I figured her story would be more interesting (more on this in a bit), and didn't discover until mid-game that there are a couple of crucial differences between her and Corvo:

  • Corvo's Blink ability keeps you hidden; Emily's Far Reach doesn't.
  • Corvo's Possession allows you to sneak around un-seen; Emily's Shadow Walk is "less" visible than normal, but can still be seen.

If character choice was supposed to have an impact on playstyle, then the game wasn't up-front about this when I made that choice. And that, combined with the aforementioned "more kills more enemies" mechanic (also undocumented as far as I recall) and the linear level structure which prevents you from revisiting missed areas, feels like a disappointingly antiquated approach to player freedom: if you want to try something different, you're going to have to play the whole game over again.

Emily's story, by the way, did not turn out to be as interesting as I expected. Both the first and second games are essentially revenge plots with some political and supernatural dressing, but Dishonored at least had an unexpected twist or two up its sleeves. The sequel's storytelling is more by-the-numbers, each mission merely filling in some details of an overall picture that you already know.

Its premise is also shockingly ... lazy. Delilah, the game's main villain, is the same villain from Dishonored's Brigmore Witches DLC. (And to hammer home how un-memorable her story was, I didn't even recognize her until several missions into Dishonored 2. "Oh, it's that lady again!")

That said, while its big picture may be a let-down, the small details of Dishonored 2's world-building are impressively engrossing and evocative. It's always fun to find a written note planning a heist of some hidden treasure cache, or to see a cursed bonecharm surrounded by the corpses of those who tried to use it. This intricate environmental storytelling rivals the audio logs of a BioShock -- if not the rich email-hacking of a Deus Ex.

Ultimately, Dishonored 2 comes across as more of the same Dishonored, but with some smaller risks that didn't pay off. I still had a blast assassinating traitorous goons, but the protagonist-selector was more of an obstacle than a feature, and even the game's few attempts at impressively unique levels - Kirin Jindosh's mechanically-shifting laboratory, and Aramis Stilton's Link to the Past-style mansion - were more gimmicky than they were fun to play.

Prey (2017), with its liberating openness and thrilling plot, was a step forward for Dishonored's supernatural combat mechanics. But Dishonored 2 is more of a step to the side, and a slight stumble backwards.

Better than: BioShock 2 Remastered, Thief
Not as good as: BioShock Remastered, Dishonored (as I remember it), Prey (2017)
I really hope that there's some new story to uncover in: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

Progress: Finished as Emily with high chaos.

Rating: Good