Dishonored 2

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Dishonored 2 for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[Jon Cheetham]

This is one of my favourite games of all time. I've played through it five times now, I think, and would happily start another run right this minute.

Visually, Dishonored 2 doesn't have the original's painterly art style, but I think that the more realistic style works well for Karnaca, which is bright and sunny - as well as "swarming and stinking" in the words of Billie Lurk. The fidelity really makes it all pop out of the screen and I've spent hours taking screenshots of everything from vistas to cluttered desks to the fabulous wanted posters and propaganda art. Karnaca is up there with Dunwall among my favourite video game cities, it feels so real, bustling, noisy and sweaty in a really vivid way.

When it comes to the amazing level design I feel The Clockwork Mansion and A Crack in the Slab dominate the hype around Dishonored 2's level design, which is a shame as every one of the environments here seems intricate enough to have supported Hitman-style extra missions and challenges had Arkane been inclined - in fact the final mission returns to the opening level, and Death of the Outsider revisits the Royal Conservatory. While those headline-hogging levels are brilliant, when I think of this game's design I also think of creeping around Cyria Gardens, running through the dust storms of the Batista Mining District and causing mayhem in the Duke's palace.

The Dust District might actually be my favourite, as it's almost two levels in one, where you can infiltrate one area to befriend the faction occupying the other, decide to go up against both, or bypass it all entirely and figure out the puzzle for the Jindosh lock. Because of this, I find it the most replayable, as it's genuinely different every time.

If you want to gain an appreciation for just how well constructed these levels are, consider a no-powers run. When I did this I was impressed to discover that there isn't just one route to your objective available without Blink or Far Reach, but almost the entire map is navigable if you hunt around for a path. Of the five playthroughs I've done it was almost the most fun because it rewarded really thorough exploration and meant I didn't bypass parts of the environment with Blink.

I find the power set here the most fun in the series, as you've got everything from the original plus so much more. Using Domino to link the fates of a group of hapless guards never gets old, particularly when combined with Far Reach to basically vacuum one of them onto your sword.

That said the range of gadgets is excellent too, as is the non-lethal verbiage on offer. Doing a run that was both non-lethal and non-stealthy basically meant I turned into Batman, running in and throwing out gadgets mid-fight, kneecapping guards with the crossbow and then spinning them round to knock them out before tidily piling everyone in a corner to sleep it off.

As for the story, it was only when I began delving into the motivations and back stories of Delilah, and how they developed her following The Brigmore Witches DLC, that I truly fell in love with the narrative. When the Outsider says of her and Breanna's relationship, "It was all highways and graveyards after that, never looking back," that's an incredibly romantic and wistful image that also glances at the fact they're followers of the occult. It's interesting to me that, like Daud, Delilah has shared the Outsider's gifts with those around her rather than use them only for personal ends.

I love the way when you return to Dunwall Tower, unlike when you get back there in the first game and find the conspirators either rowing or having violently turned on one another, the witches are just hanging out. They're dangling their legs over the parapets, drinking tea and chatting about Delilah's plan. For all that they enjoy black magic rituals, summoning abominations and carrying body parts around, the witches come across as more of a community than the angry, ambitious conspirators of the original. After the life of injustice she endured as a child and that hardened her heart into resentment and conspiracy, Delilah's final gasp of "it's not fair" that she sometimes does when you kill her in her painted world haunts me, too. She's a really well written, complicated antagonist for this sequel.

Ultimately I have a hard time deciding if this or the original is the best, particularly if you take the sublime Daud DLCs as part of the package for the original, but I believe this is a must-play.

(I know we should cut to the chase. I'm sorry panel and Jay. I have so much to say about this game.)

Three word review: Karnacan Sunset Infilitrations

[Sage + Onion Knight]

Somehow it hadn't occurred to me, when I started replaying the Dishonored series this year, how hauntingly resonant these games about political upheaval in the wake of a pandemic are in 2021. There are many ways in which I love how Dishonored 2 expands on the first game – we explore more of this beautiful world, we get a more nuanced look at the political machinations informing it (particularly in what Emily learns over the course of her story), and we get these compelling little glimpses into lives that have been twisted and destroyed by the mysterious Void.

I particularly loved how the game design expands on its predecessor though: where the first one did a great job of evoking the feel of 'Thief', Dishonored 2 manages to go further with the scope and experimentation of its levels. A lot of reviewers gushed about the Clockwork Mansion mission, but my personal favourite (especially on my first playthrough) was Aramis Stilton's mansion, with its wholly unexpected actioned-up 'Day of the Tentacle'-esque time travel mechanics.

With this game and Prey, I felt that Arkane truly perfected the modern immersive sim – both giving me nostalgic pangs of the Looking Glass / Ion Storm games I'd loved as a teenager, and going way beyond mere homage with imaginative space design and world building.

[Rhaegyr]

Though I feel I've not played enough of the game yet to give an informed opinion on it (only a couple of levels in) I have to say one thing that's infuriating me is font size/type.

All this supplementary reading material that I'd love to digest to flesh out the world and I can barely see any of it on my 42" 720p Panasonic Plasma; No option to change the typeface, no option to increase the text size.

I don't wear glasses, I've not had this problem with other games and I sit around 2m away from the TV but still struggle - is this just me?

[Toon Scottoon]

In the winter of 2016, before I picked gaming back up as a hobby I went into a Gamestop to buy a Christmas gift for my nephew, and I vividly remember seeing Dishonored 2 discussed on one of those advertisement/review shows American Gamestops run on a loop that must drive the employees insane. I wasn't paying too close attention to what they were saying, but the character designs stood out, as did the host mentioning the game was set in a fictional country with a whaling based economy.

This was how I thought of the game until this last winter when I saw it simultaneously on Volume Ten of Cane and Rinse and on Game Pass and decided to try my hand at whatever Dishonored 2 was. Without really knowing what I was doing, I ended up choosing to play through the game as Emily, and when I realized that this was more than just an aesthetic choice, I took a little time to read up on what the game was all about, and committed to trying for a low chaos playthrough my first time. It turned out to be this great challenge that sometimes I could sort out on my own, and sometimes required the help of a guide, but was immersive and rewarding from start to finish.

Dishonored two seemed so well considered, and for someone who was new to the franchise, so full of surprises. It's teleportation traversal system is one of my favorite forms of locomotion in gaming, and like a lot of people I don't think I'll ever quite forget how menacing those clockwork soldiers are, or how impressive the Crack in the Slab time travel mechanic is. Delila Copperspoon might have a name that's a little too on the nose, and some of the voice acting might be a little stiff, but the inventiveness of the final fight against all the Delila familiars and the great pleasure I took from watching Vincent D'onofrio mash the scenery with his teeth as the Duke's body double are far more memorable for me.

And as for the whaling stuff I remembered from that Gamestop ad? It's in there; right along with the blood flies and the Dunwall barkeep trying to keep her doors open, the mining town dust and the blood splattered asylum tea room which swirl together to create an oil painting texture that makes Dishonored 2, in my opinion, not just a good game, but a great one.


Three Word Review: High grade Whalepunk