Dishonored 2 - A sequel worthy it's name
An interactive gaming experience
A choke-hold on the right spot is all that's needed for the cleaner to lose his consciousness. After a few seconds he stops twitching, we take our hand of his mouth and prepare to throw his body over our shoulder and dump him in the food cabinet. That same moment a paroling guard sways by around the corner. She screams, flips up her flintlock gun and fires a quick shot that crushes one of the empty bottles on the kitchen counter behind us.
With one quick movement we take up another bottle and throw it right in the guards face. She stumbles backwards by the impact and we take our chance to flee the crime scene. From every corner guards are storming in searching and firing after us, the murderer, and the only way out is trough the kitchen window which we used to infiltrate the building.
With a quick swoop of our hand we teleport meters away from our current location within milliseconds. More shots are fired. We are climbing the kitchen window counter as our view becomes red, thus our main protagonist Emily Kaldwin gives away a grunt and falls helplessly to her death on the hard cliffs 20 meters down. We catch a quick glimpse of the cape town Karnaca on the other side of the bay, resting peacefully in the midday sun. Then the lights go out.
Keeping true to the roots
The situation that was just described is nothing unique for the Dishonored-series, or for the stealth-action genre either for that matter. But in Dishonored 2 there are so many different possible ways to take on the problem filled mission that you can't help yourself to get impressed. Each mini-goal can be completed in a number of ways, and it's totally up to you how much time and finesse you want to use on each.
This time you will also get the choice of either playing as Corvo Attano, the scarred protagonist from the first game, or he's reagent daughter Emily Kaldwin, that has been forced away from the throne in a corrupt plot. Just as in the first game your reputation has been smeared by power-hungry enemies, and it's up to you to clear your name.
At your disposal you will have a buffet of supernatural abilities that you will unlock by finding hidden runes and enchanted items. Tailor your character to a monster able to kill enemies with it's sheer shadow, or a conflict-shy assassin that will make dozens of enemies go to sleep at once. Corvo and Emily have different skills, so to try a play trough with both is highly advised as it offers great replayability to the game. Every skill or ability has a separate skill-tree that let's you modify and power up the skills most suited for your playstyle. None feels misplaced or unnecessary, and some even lets you take different routes or decisions that would have been impossible if you would have had other priorities.
Of course we still have some more conventional options like a crossbow, pistol, blade and a bunch of mines and grenades, just pick your poison! Think trough all the possibilities and conditions for each tool, otherwise you might find yourself in unwanted situations.
Coloring up the party!
This far along in the text this review could almost have been a review of the first Dishonored game, and in the case of Arkande Studios stealth-loving game series this is absolutely nothing negative. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel they are playing it safe, polishing and developing the awesome concept from 2012 to new heights. The gray and plague-ravaged Dunwall has been replaced by a Venice-like city called Karnace. Drowning in sun and crispy colors, this time around we see much better contrasts between colors and the new engine Void Engine gives both environments and characters the visual justice they deserve.
The playable space in Dishonored 2 has expanded greatly height-wise, and from the roof-tops you can inhale the wholes city atmosphere relatively undisturbed. Squeaking trains are charging forward above the streets. The waves splash against the cliffs. In tight alleys the local town guard is beating up some local no-gooders, and after the violent fight the guard leaves the dead bodies in the gutter to be food for the enormous, blood-sucking flies that also inhabit the town. Sound, light and the games unique esthetic boils together to a wonderful experience that few competitors can match.
Great environments and varying missions
The devs are not aspiring to call the game "open world". The zones you navigate trough are limited and worked trough in a linear fashion. Every zone has a magnitude of challenges, details and interesting places to explore so the feeling of a bigger world than it actually is becomes present. Take the mad inventors mansion for example, a place you visit relatively early in the game. The decor is Victorian style, and we get to jump across chandeliers, sneak on mirrored floors and take cover behind rustic furniture as we navigate toward our target.
Most of the missions goals follows the storyline by you disrupting the evil plotters that works together to draw your name in the dirt. Every quest introduces us to some sort of new concept or unique opponent which gives variation to the different missions.
It is fully possible (just really hard) to get trough the entire game without killing anyone or even get discovered. Of course it demands more of you as a gamer, but the reward shows itself quickly in everything you would have missed if you would have just slaughtered the opposition. The main point is that you won't get punished for playing a certain way, even though the choices you make forms the games storyline progression and ending climax.
It's hard to play nice
The enemy AI is alert and challenging to conquer, and you are very easily discovered. If this should happen all you can do is lay in a fetal-position as a swarm of enemies start ripping trough you.
On the other hand they are not very synchronized or emphatic to each others fates. To use a enemy soldier as a body shield won't work long as the other soldiers will quickly slash trough their colleague, and irritating enough, making it hard for you to play nice. The same goes if someone falls to their death as you are being hunted on the roof-tops, and all these indirect deaths will guaranteed make the most picky gamer annoyed.
In the world of Dishonored, a "murder" is a quite wide term with unclear contrasts, which should have been handled a bit better. All the attention you gather transforms into chaos (your chaos level) that gets listed after every accomplished mission, but the unpredictability of the body-count makes it hard to know exactly where you are in the spectrum.
Weak story but strong gameplay
The fantastic atmosphere and almost unlimited amount of choices in how you take on Dishonored 2 succeeds with great success to mask the fact that either story or characters impress to much. A big part of the games story is pretty predictable, and even if the enemy and their minions can be colorful and sometimes quite original they are mostly quick encounters that quickly dissipate into memory. The lack of commitment to the games story showed itself even in the first game, so if you played the first Dishonored it's on about the same level this time.
A saving grace comes in the voice-acting which compels us again and again. I got especially delighted when one of the games biggest villains where acted by Vincent D'Onofrio, that plays the Wilson Fisk character in the Daredevil series. Corvo Attano, who have gotten his voice back, took the voice of Stephen Russel, the same actor that voice-acted for the main protagonist Garret in the Thief-series. Neat huh?
Impressive title, offering a polished and detailed experience
If you played the first Dishonored you can think the second one as more of what worked originally. No world-shattering news has changed the experience, but rather it's been a detailed polished of something that was already very, very good, A first playtrough took me about 15 hours, and the fact that you can play two characters, adapt the chaos level and a large possibility that you will miss many Easter eggs and secrets, this game deserves at least two playtroughs.
Instead of saying that Arkane Studios is not doing something new enough and calling them lazy, i choose to celebrate the title as one of the best of 2016. And if you are one of those that have not played dishonored yet - what the heck are you waiting for? Get to it!
Check out my other reviews if you like my writing:Bloodborne - Hunt Your Nightmares
Horizon: Zero Dawn - A lush post-apocalyptic world
Conan Exiles - Survive, Build & Dominate The Hyborian Age
Agony - A Hellish Trip Into Madness
Skull & Bones - Become The Ultimate Pirate
Overwatch - Fight For The Future