Dishonored 2

[Lordnine]

Performance aside I have to say I am really enjoying this one. I’ve just made it to mission six and continue to be enthralled. They have really upped their game when it comes to multiple routes to victory; I often find alternate paths I never knew existed as I’m leaving a level. Although they may have got a little carried away with this in the Clock Work mansion.

If this had launched in a fully patched state it could easily have been game of the year material. As it is, I am hard-pressed to think of a game I have enjoyed more this year.

[Giles Habibula]

No performance problems here yet. Although while I did pre-order it, I didn't get a chance to install it until a week ago, so I don't know if the normal Steam install includes any patches. Everything on Ultra, and Steam reports a solid 60 fps.

But yeah, I'm only in Mission 3, but loving it. Playing as Emily.
And just like the first game, I'm smitten with the art direction. Looks even better this time out.

[Lordnine]

I finished the campaign yesterday. My final thoughts have a little less praise than my initial impressions. On the one hand, the gameplay is great and the level design might be even better than the original. Items and powers are also an improvement with quite a few new nonlethal options. Sticking all the cool abilities to lethal takedowns was probably my biggest complaint with the original game.

On the other hand, I feel like they dropped the ball on the story and character development. The original Dishonored presented an interesting world with mysterious yet memorable characters. Dishonored 2 has a more direct approach to its story development and I think the game world suffers for it.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Outsider, who gets a full backstory this time around, and in my opinion, ruins the character. The new voice actor they chose doesn’t help in this department either as he sounds younger and much less confident.

The ending itself is also a bit of a disappointment. I will keep it vague but Dishonored 1 was clearly never intended to have a sequel story wise. The ending wrapped up everything in a nice bow, or an ugly bow, if that is how you chose to play the game. That said, even the “bad” ending was fitting to the world and offered a satisfying conclusion. Dishonored 2 still gives you unique endings based on your actions but they feel inconsequential. It’s as if the developers were told that Dishonored 3 is happening so make sure you leave things open-ended!

Ultimately, I still recommend Dishonored 2 but I would say it is a weaker overall experience than the original game.

[JCC]

I have now done two playthroughs and spent 97 hours on Dishonored 2. (A few hours were spent with the game paused.) I played Corvo low chaos and Emily high chaos.

While I played through Dishonored twice, I never had the heart to ever kill anyone. Having now done it in the sequel - WOW, is the game easier when you don't mind killing people!

I think Emily is a bit overpowered. The shadow walk makes many encounters trivial. That says nothing about Domino and Doppleganger (or combining the two). Those powers make a lot of situations comically easy.

I loved the game, and think it's as good as the first overall. I must say what a pleasure it is to play a game with actual levels - as opposed to the current overdone trend of open world games. It certainly helps that both Dishonored games have the best overall level design I've seen since Batman Arkham Asylum, Thief 2, Metroid Prime, etc. I enjoy open world games to a point, but I feel like these carefully crafted level/mission oriented games have been too lost in the shuffle. I hope more developers will embrace this kind of design.

While playing Dishonored as a stealthy killing machine was a lot of fun, the stealthy no-kill approach was just tons of fun. The 2 Dishonored games scratch my Thief-longing itch much MUCH better than Thief 4 did. While I can be accused of holding any game called Thief to an impossible standard, the 2014 game pales in comparison to either Dishonored when it comes to level design. And, unlike Thief 3 and 4, I don't have to keep wandering over the same boring city sections time and time again between missions. (just a small boat!)

I will say, I was a bit bummed that of the 9 missions in Dishonored 2, three of them were just "get to the next mission" levels - well the first had a target, but he's dealt with so early it didn't really feel like he was the focus of the mission at all. While they were super fun and well designed, it seemed like there were just fewer targets than in the first game. I wish they could have added a few more assassination/elimination goals to make those missions seem "fuller".

I am sure I will be all over any single player DLC for this (presumably featuring Meagan). And, I will be hoping for a third game. Certainly my favorite 2016 game, though I haven't played a lot of them.

[KDH]

.


... Dishonored 2 Free Trial

We’re pleased to announce that we’re releasing a free trial for Dishonored 2 on April 6 ... Available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, the free trial will allow players to dive into the first three missions of the campaign as either Empress Emily Kaldwin or the Royal Protector, Corvo Attano.

The free trial can be downloaded from Dishonored 2’s store page on the PSN Store, Xbox Marketplace and Steam. What’s more, players that decide to upgrade to the full game during or after the free trial will keep all of the saves made during the trial, and can continue enjoying Dishonored 2’s campaign from where they left off.

[KDH]

...
... News from E3 ..

.. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider .. Stand-Alone title (avail Sept 15, 2017)

[Lordnine]

Awesome. Dishonored 2 was a very good game marred by performance issues and in my opinion, some weird story choices. Hopefully this elevates it to the next level. I’m curious, if this really is a sendoff for the Outsider, will they get the original voice actor back or stick with the guy from D2?

[Jaymann]

I loved the first game, but for some reason never picked up #2. I saw it on sale at Steam so grabbed it for $13.99. I also love the stealth aspect, and will go for that.

[Skinypupy]

I've tried going back to this three times, and could just never get it to click. I found the squishy stealth mechanics to be utterly infuriating. Spent the majority of my time simply trying to figure out just how the hell I was being seen.

[Smoove_B]

I feel the same. I muscled through the first one, but I always felt like this was a FPS pretending to be stealth-driven.

[JCC]

Disagree with you guys. Both Dishonored games are closest thing (in quality) to the first 2 Thief games I have played since (in the stealth genre). I have played through both games completely doing non-lethal stealth.

The added bonus is that it is completely fun to play as a non-stealth FPS/FPA as well!

It bums me out that Thief is probably dead forever, and Dishonored is at least taking a long rest. I wish Arkane could get the rights to Thief, but after the abysmal last entry, I assume it's gone forever.

[Smoove_B]

That's impressive. I've really, really tried going to the stealth route but at some point it just feels like the game (both) is cheating and/or it wants me to just go on a rampage. I don't remember ever feeling that way in Thief and if you ever tried, you were mercilessly cut down.

[JCC]

If you try to play it purely like Garret (ie. eschew powers) I think it would be quite tough. But with the powers I thought it was quite manageable.

[Jolor]

I'm playing this now (ok, slight hiatus while I play Disco Elysium) and am thoroughly enjoying High Chaos, no mercy as Corvo. I may go back and play as Emily stealthily as possible but I may be kidding myself. It would certainly be easier to play stealth the second time around once I'm more familiar with the maps.

[Jaymann]

I finished the first 3 levels with Emily on full stealth (no kills but I got detected a lot). I am using a guide since some things are very convoluted, and I have FOMO. Have not upgraded any powers yet, but have a lot of Runes and Bonecharms. I definitely want to go back with Corvo on full chaos.

My favorite thing so far is:

Spoiler:

Getting the key to the black market back door and cleaning it out. No need to purchase anything there.

[Jolor]

I'm going to remap 'Block/Choke' as I'm pretty uncoordinated and keep missing the default key

[Jaymann]

Finished the game on low chaos with only a few unintentional kills and one intentional:

Spoiler:

I found the Duke in his palace and subdued him. But I could not find his double for the nonlethal route, so I snuffed him out.

Now for full on chaos!

[Jaymann]

Man, high chaos IMO is a lot more fun. You get all the loot, and can still use stealth for certain occasions.

[Lordnine]

Man, high chaos IMO is a lot more fun. You get all the loot, and can still use stealth for certain occasions.

You can get all the loot and play low chaos.

It's actually a lot easier in Dishonored 2 since there are now multiple ways of knocking people out.

[Jolor]

Wrapped it up last night. I started using knock-out and stealth more as I didn't feel the need to clean out the entire map to then double-back and find every rune and bonecharm.

I bought Death of the Outsider during the same sale so am starting that now.

[Jaymann]

Finished on medium/high chaos. Now I am doing a chaos run on hard - collecting all runes, all paintings, all blueprints, and so far all but 2 bone charms.

[Daehawk]

I dont know whats up with this game. I installed it and click its shortcut to start and up pops a pic of Corvo and his daughter half and half face and nothing ever happens. The Nvidia logo disappears and I just sit there at that screen forever. If I hit ctrl-alt-del I can see that Dishonored 2 is slowly eating my memory. More and more and more very slowly. All I can do is end task.

EDIT: Never mind. Its a known issue. Got past that then encountered the squiggly graphics problem that is also spoken of in the discussions and couldn't even read the menu. Game seems complete trash so deleted it.

[Skinypupy]

This game just isn't clicking with me at all. I think I'm just "stealthed out" right now after playing a couple other similar games, so I'll come back to it later.

ARISE!!!

Well, it only took me 8+ years and four restarts for this game to finally "click". Gave it another shot on a whim this weekend, and absolutely loved it. Don't really have any idea why it worked for me this time when it didn't before, but I just wrapped up the game with Corvo and had a blast. I went High Chaos (because I really suck at stealth) but got much better over the course of the game at sneaking up to take guards out without being seen. Even then, there were several times when things devolved into a flat out brawl...which was kinda fun too. The funniest one was when I somehow caught the attention of 5 Clockwork Guards then ducked into an elevator where they couldn't reach me. I took potshots at a couple of their heads (which makes them not be able to distinguish friend from foe, and they ended up taking each other out in a giant robot brawl. It was hilarious.

The only thing I didn't like were the numerous bugs I ran into. A couple that were kinda gamebreaking were:

Spoiler:

1. During the final scene on the home base ship, I started a conversation with Meagan where she (apparently) made some sort of big confession. My game glitched and it just ended the conversation right away. Had to look it up on YouTube after to find out what the big reveal was.

2. I tracked down the Duke's body double and confronted him. However, during the conversation, instead of standing in front of me (like every other time I hit "talk" to an NPC), he somehow ended up behind me. He then wandered out of frame so far that it caused the conversation to end prematurely. When it ended, he was then immediately alerted (because I was standing right there) and I had to knock him out. So my only option was to kill the Duke to complete the mission.

3. On the second to last mission, a random NPC somehow killed the Black Market owner. I was hiding while they were having a discussion about how she wasn't going to get in without a password. It ended and she started walking away, walked into the window of the shop, which somehow broke and killed the vendor inside. She started screaming about "A dead body!!" and ran away alerted. So I couldn't access the Black Market for that mission, which was annoying.

I wasn't nearly as enamored at the "gimmicky" levels as everyone else. While others hold it up as a pinnacle of stealth game design, the Clockwork Mansion was probably my least favorite mission in the entire game. The time travel one annoyed me too and I just ended up running through to finish them both as quickly as possible to just get back to regular 'ol sneaking around guards.

I think the ability that summoned a swarm of rats to take down guards might be one of my favorite abilities in any game ever. Especially once it's upgraded and you have a small army of death that follows you around to any guard. It's fantastic. I also loved the ability that turned bodies to ash, but it was annoying that even though the body was gone, other guards would see their sword or pistol on the ground and be alerted.

All in all, I had so much fun with this and would give it a solid A- (taking off half a point for the bugs).

[JCC]

So sad that Dishonored seems to be dead. Both games are tremendous.

[Holman]

So sad that Dishonored seems to be dead. Both games are tremendous.

I mean, computer games have a fairly short life cycle. That the Dishonored games are still incredibly fun (and even still impressive) a decade+ after release is a huge achievement.