REVIEW

Dishonored 2 Review

by Luke Walsh, November 29th, 2016

Dishonored was considered a cult classic, something gamers were happy to receive back in 2012. After playing similar game after similar game of the new AAA formula across genres and with Zombie games coming out left right and centre Arkane Studios bought back some nostalgia echoing the age of Thief and roguelike games. It did not need flashy marketing and impressive arm hair texture, it had a unique world and an even more different art style that worked for itself.

15 years has past since we saw the events of the first game play out and in a similar twist of fate, Emily Kaldwin, the young girl has grown up and become Empress of the Isles but not for long. Her evil Aunt appears and has interest in the throne claiming ownership as the rightful heir after her sister, Emily’s mother. Dishonored 2 is still a first person stealth game set in the same Steampunk-esque world as Dunwall but this time around is focused on Karnaca a more colourful coastal city. The world has combined technology and science through the use of Whale Oil, which has led to the almost extinction of the species and those which are left are pretty grotesque. In the shadows on the industrial evolution of the Dishonored universe also sits a dark magical presence which is fuelled by ritualistic magic, the bones of whales and some pretty epic supernatural powers.

Auntie Delilah becomes the centerpiece around the story but more importantly makes you choose between playing as good ol’ Corvo Attano, protagonist of the first game or play as Emily. Each character plays out the same story but along the way there are subtle dialogue differences that make going down both routes worthwhile. Choose wisely, as you will be stuck playing as that character through the entire story unless you decide to start a new save. Although not as unique as I personally would of liked, Arkane obviously spent a lot of time on the differences of Emily and Corvo’s supernatural abilities. Balancing those skills takes a considerable amount of time and effort and pays off with either character being able to play either the high chaos violent playthrough or the more low chaos stealthy approach.

The basic mechanics for each character are the same in terms of combat. For those who wish to go stealthy, Emily has far-reach which features a shadowy arm that extends out to grab areas and pull her in, while Corvo has his short-range Blink ability to teleport him from one location to another. Both also have the Dark Vision skill which can let them see through walls and spot enemies, useful items and security systems with the latter two optional upgrades. For the gung ho approach, pistols, crossbow darts, grenades and mines are available to wreck havoc on your enemies with a lot of bang, noise and gunpowder.

Their abilities begin to differ in the later stages when you start to pick up their more advanced skills. Emily’s Domino ability lets you link enemies together to they share the shame outcome, link a couple bad guys and fire a sleeping dart to watch them all drop together. Take the more gory approach and watch all three heads fly off together while only breaking a sweat once. Corvo on the other hand sees his time ability allow him to dive into a fight in slow motion or a complete standstill at later levels, link up enemies with sleeping darts on arrows in mid air and once time starts moving again, it’s over in the blink of an eye.

The enjoyment really comes in Dishonored 2 with the option to combine abilities together for some quite funny effects. Create a doppelganger and link her with enemies and while they decide to take chunks out of your fake double they all share the end outcome they inflicted. I also encountered a linked duo, which one of them was in a pretty decent chokehold, before I could finish him off, his buddy saw me and attacked killing his ally and unknowingly ending his own life right in front of my eyes.

With each combination there becomes a lot of ways you can traverse through the game and Arkane have designed each level to make them different enough that you can’t always rely on the same tactics or skillsets. In the Clockwork Mansion, lever switches move floors giving you chances to outmaneuver enemies or find hidden passage ways even inside the mechanisms on under the house. Dust District is visited by frequent sandstorms that obstruct your views but also give you ample time to sneak past enemies (or bump into them if your too clumsy). In the Royal Observatory, witches with similar powers to your own can teleport around the map making being spotted a bit tougher than going all out stealth.

It was refreshing to see such distinctive level designs, changing up the formula enough that the game never felt the same from mission to mission. Dishonored 2 just like the original still lets you choose your path as your make your way through to the goal. Climb through an open window, get insider information from a Blackshop dealer or beggar on the street and even payoff a guard to let down the Wall of Light so you can just walk straight through. The world is a busy sun-kissed city which is beautiful and bright while also hiding some deep hidden secrets with narrow alleyways, hidden entrances and bloodfly infested buildings.

The city of Karnaca feels alive, which is a big step up from Dunwall in Dishonored where it felt empty (due to luckily rat plague on the developer’s part), only ever being packed through of guards who only acted as obstacles to your final goal. Exploring the coastal city is fun, there is so much to see from people on the streets chatting to each other and eavesdropping on conversations where if spotted, civilians will quietly stop chatting and move away. NPCs also call you over to give you optional quests and shop keepers give you idle chitchat between purchasing your new set of Stun Mines or Health Elixirs.

I played my copy of Dishonored 2 on PC via Steam and although it had somewhat of rocky start in terms off stability, I only had a couple of major framerate drops while in combat. It was annoying and made the encounters more difficult but out of the whole 16 odd hour playthrough I could count on one hand how many times it happened. The recent patches as well to come out on PC seemed to have solved the issues, as playing through again as Corvo I experienced no problems apart from one random bug where I somehow Blinked straight out of the world and fell to my death.

Speaking of encounters, enemy AI is extremely fine tuned to their senses unlike the first game where you could quite easily avoid detection. Not only do they start to see something when you are just in the cusp of their peripheral vision, attack too loudly or knocking something over can alert the guards you think might be too far away. This makes the game so much more challenging in a good way and makes careful planning your key to a successful sneak past or full out attack. On-top of their receptiveness, enemy numbers seem to be on the up and up with guards patrolling much more in groups of twos or more which means divide and conquer if a very good strategy but takes patience. Skills like Domino and Time Freeze are also group skills that allow you to take down groups together if you feel you are unable to pick them off one by one, trying to get Ghostly or Merciful for each mission as well will take a lot of saves and reloads.

The new enemy though is the Clockwork Soldier, a tall mechanic monster that has blades for hands and can see both in the front and back of his head. Although they can be tough to deal with, they are fun to fight with the ability to rewire them to fight on your side or take of their head and put them in attack anything mode.

You are encourage to explore the world around you as you go towards your final goal and this usually includes taking out a target. As an assassin though you will normally always have more than one way to dispose of a foe or end the final objective and this only appears after careful examination of the evidence and conversation you have through the level. Of course you can rush through a map, kill the target and be done with it and this option is completely viable but you’ll miss out on a lot of what Dishonored 2 has to offer, the minor details. Even after two playthroughs I still don’t feel as if I have managed to find everything in each mission, sometimes missing out of the odd blueprint or coin. So make sure you go back and find out what else is hidden within the Clockwork Mansion or the Royal Observatory etc.

Dishonored 2 as a story is somewhat predictable as the standard I must save my father or take back what is mine storyline but the voice acting is superb. Erica Luttrell who play Emily really portrays her emotions as she ventures through Karnaca, realising that although she saw reign over the island she was far removed from the problems. A once sheltered little girl grown up still releases how sheltered she is and grows as a person. Stephen Russell plays another great role of the blunt Corvo but the secondary main characters are quite understated. Meagan Foster played by Rosario Dawson does a great job of being the tough driven women who is in charge of the Dreadful Whale and your taxi between missions. As the game progresses her character unfolds more and you gleam a little about who she really is.

The only downside really are the enemies, the main bosses just don’t really feel like they are more than 2D AI concoctions. Each one you meet is just a puppet of the bigger bad guy and seems to be evil just because they are not because they have a backstory to backup how or why they aligned themselves with Delilah. Take Jindou who creates the mansion and the Clockwork soldiers, he feels like a mad scientist but other than just being that, there is no real development of his character under the surface of “I need to kill you because Delilah said so” you don’t really find out his motivations or his history.

Although you can play Dishonored 2 quite easily without touching the first game, you’d be missing out on a lot of backstory more so if you have not played the Brigmore Witches DLC which delves deeper into Deliliah and some other characters relationships. Being a familiar player in the universe will only make the storyline much more involving.

Arkane Studios has made a decent world but there are some strange omissions in terms of design and one of them has to be New Game+, it simply does not exist. After playing through the first time I’d hope to jump back in game and be able to start again but with the previous accomplishments follow me so I could fully spec out my character in bone charms and powers. When you start a new game, you literally are reset, now this is fine when moving from Emily to Corvo as they have different skillsets anyways but if you want to play again as the same character your achievements get ignored. It is something I hope they can bring in with a patch so the games replayable does not stop at the two characters. There are also minor irks as well such as not being able to replay a mission easily or the fact that sometimes the game would say I was spotted when I clearly was not in the vanity of any enemies. The last bug is the saving, in a game which requires a lot of manual saving, it was hard to grasp when the game was saving automatically and when I should of been opening up the menu. A time I did forget to save and hoped the game would have done so for me I found meant restarting the whole mission which was not an enjoyable backtrack. The quick save feature is a great add-on but seems to have taken the weight from ever auto saving, which meant I think I spent just as much time in the save menu as I did in-game which although is only 3-5 seconds really adds up over 27 hours of gameplay.

Dishonored 2 knows what it is and has become an evolved version of its predecessor, taking on what worked and improving on areas but not without its problems in the stability department to begin with. Having a whole 10 chapters to play through with two different characters gives you access to plenty of bang for your buck and the world really is beautiful but the central storyline is pretty much exactly the same as the first game making it feel not very progressive. Dishonored 2 much like the first game is great as you build your own experiences within the game, seeing funny scenarios playout or accidents happen which you just could not plan.