Game Details Developer: Arkane Studios

Publisher: Bethesda

Platform: Windows PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 (PC reviewed)

Release Date: November 11

Price: £49.99/$59.99 (console), £39.99/$54.99 (PC)

ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Links: Arkane Studios: Bethesda: Windows PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 (PC reviewed)November 11: £49.99/$59.99 (console), £39.99/$54.99 (PC): M for Mature Amazon (UK) | Amazon (US) | Official website

As the end credits rolled on Dishonored 2, the kingdom of Dunwall was in ruin. Hundreds of soldiers, servants, and sailors—many innocent bystanders in the age-old power struggle between an empress and her throne—lay dead. Once thriving cities had been razed to the ground in a blaze of steampunk gunfire and meticulously placed spring razors. Not a single soul that crossed me was left standing.

My time in Dishonored 2 may have been little more than a free-for-all blood bath of death, destruction, and chaos—but I don't regret a single bit of it.

That's the thing about Dishonored 2—the sequel to 2012's brilliant first-person stealth shooter Dishonored—it's not so much about the destination (and I've left out the much darker story spoilers) as it is about how you get there. This isn't a game that breaks new ground in interactive storytelling. Nor is it a game that creates bold new mechanics that push the boundaries of design. This is a game that simply relishes being a game, a mix of tried-and-true mechanics as pure as those from an old '80s arcade cabinet that can be picked apart and mastered by players.

Ultimately, it's about choice. From the moment you start and pick whether to play as series stalwart Corvo Attano or his empress daughter Emily Kaldwin, to the moment you decide whether to land a fatal blow in the game's dying moments, Dishonored 2 doesn't hold your hand and tell you how to complete your goals but simply gives you tools to do so, difficulty curve be damned. This isn't an easy game to master for those unversed in the language of video games. Hell, it's not the easiest game to master or complete (even on the "normal" difficulty level) full-stop. But then few games make completing a task as simple as trying to get through the guarded door of a building or eavesdropping on a political parley anywhere near as satisfying.

Tale as old as time

Whoever you play as, Dishonored 2 starts the same way. Fifteen years after the events of Dishonored, Emily Kaldwin (played by Erica Luttrell), now older and in command of the kingdom of Dunwall, with Corvo Attano (Stephen Russell) as her royal protector, are paid a surprise visit by the Duke of Serkonos and the witch Delilah Copperspoon. Delilah, claiming to be the long-lost sister of Emily's mother Jessamine Kaldwin, usurps the throne, freezes either Emily or Corvo (depending on who you play as), and looks the other away. What follows is a beat-for-beat recreation of Dishonored's story of bloody revenge and political plotting, a sort of Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the video game generation (albeit with less George Lucas finger wagging).

Just like The Force Awakens, then, Dishonored 2's story is an entertaining one but not surprising. The script is tight enough, the voice acting commendable enough, and the cast of characters—including rough and tough captain Meagan Foster and narcissistic robotics genius Kirin Jindosh—just convincing enough to push you from one glorious stealth sandbox to the next with little fuss. Each sandbox mission, of which there are nine, typically tasks you with finding your way into a well-fortified building, identifying a target, and deciding whether to deal the cold hand of death or find a more humane way of neutralising the threat.

This is more difficult than it sounds. Dishonored 2's sandboxes are superbly designed, but they rely on the curiosity of players to discover alternative routes that go under, over, or around the direct A-to-B path. This isn't a game where you can waltz into a guarded outpost, all guns blazing, and survive, nor can you mindlessly wander past enemies or neglect to hide bodies in the hopes that a dumb AI won't notice. The AI is smart, heavily armed, and if you're caught in a fight with more than one of them, death is all but guaranteed.

Survival requires you to figure out how to exploit the level design and the weapons and powers that you're given along the way. At first there's just a sword and the ability to crouch and sneak up on enemies to dispatch them. Soon you're given a powerful pistol, which makes up for its strength with a low ammo count and a loud bang that attracts the attention of every heavily armed solider and henchman in the vicinity. And then you meet The Outsider, a mysterious man who gifts you with the powers of the occult. Before long, instead of just stalking an enemy on foot and hoping for the best, you can transform into a shadow and crawl along the floor unnoticed or instantly teleport to a higher vantage point and leap down to deal a deadly blow.

What powers you have, and how best to use them, is entirely up to you. Play as Corvo, and you can use the same powers from the original Dishonored, which include summoning a swarm of rats to eat enemies (and is as gruesome as it sounds), possessing bystanders to sneak past guarded areas, or even possessing animals like rats to gain access to tight tunnels and sewer pipes. Play as Emily and you can pull yourself towards hard-to-reach places with Far Reach (which differs from Corvo's Blink in that enemies can see you do it), link the fates of multiple enemies together so an attack on one is an attack on all, or create a Doppelganger for misdirection.

Each is perfectly balanced. No power feels too weak or too strong, and all are designed to work as part of the greater whole. Figuring that out is the challenge; Dishonored 2 is a game of systems and macro-puzzles to be solved. If your goal is to make it past a heavily guarded checkpoint undetected, do you decide to figure out enemy watch patterns using the Dark Vision ability—which lets you see through walls—and sneak over to a power panel to disable an electrified wall? Or do you teleport your way across the rooftops, sneakily leaning out from behind the cover of a crumbling chimney breast to dispatch guards with your crossbow?

If it all goes wrong or you prefer the more straightforward approach, why not sprint and slide through the legs of a soldier, pull out a pistol to slow down time, pick off a few bad guys with some well-placed headshots, and then instantly pull yourself towards a lone guard for an instant kill with a knife to the neck? Dishonored 2 might lean towards stealthier options—head-on combat is challenging, to say the least—but if you're skilled enough and patient enough, you can turn Emily or Corvo into a killing machine.

Charmed, I'm sure

A basic skill tree stops you from becoming too powerful, with Runes that you find during missions acting as currency. That the skill tree is so basic might disappoint some, but it's deep enough to make you feel empowered, without overwhelming you with choice. And there are other customisations to make, too. Weapons can be upgraded at black market shops located at the start of each mission, allowing for greater accuracy, quicker reload times, or special ammo (my personal favourite being the explosive crossbow darts that cause temporary blindness—perfect for taking out a large group of enemies at once).

Then there are Bonecharms, hidden away during missions, which provide different buffs. One makes you move a little quicker. Another lets you regain health by eating the rats that swarm the streets. Another lets you take more damage in exchange for slower movement speed. They can be crafted, too, allowing you to combine several Bonecharms into one in order to save precious slots, although—given that crafting doesn't create new buffs but simply combines existing ones—it isn't all that useful.

Neither is the checkpoint system. There are many words I could use to describe Dishonored 2's checkpoint system, most of which contain four letters and, due to editorial restrictions, can't be printed here. For a game that relies so heavily on trial and error, actively encouraging players to take a different path, that it so often wipes away as much as 30 minutes of effort after a poorly timed stealth kill or a misjudged teleport is infuriating. There's a manual save option, and I suggest you use it often.

A note about the PC version It's no secret that the PC version of Dishonored 2 has issues, with users bombarding the game's Steam page with negative reviews. Numerous performance issues affect the game, which means that even those with high-end graphics cards like the GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 are experiencing problems when trying to run the game at higher settings or at higher resolutions. Bethesda has a promised that a fix is on the way for those affected. That said, I didn't encounter any performance issues while playing, even at ultra settings. But I only played at 1080p and on a PC equipped with an Intel Core i7 6700K, 16GB of RAM, and an original 12GB Titan X.

But these are small blemishes on what is otherwise a superb piece of game design. Few games offer the freedom that Dishonored 2 does; fewer still do it with as much style.

Instead of photorealism, Dishonored 2 paints a moving watercolour with pixels. The claustrophobic streets of Dunwall, while briefly on show, have been replaced with more exotic, expansive locales bathed in sunlight and surrounded by sea. One moment you're exploring the halls of an abandoned medical facility that houses many horrors, the next you're sailing into the Dust District, overlooking the tall Mediterranean houses that surround the ramshackle city centre and its warring factions.

Most impressive is the mansion of Kirin Jindosh, a madcap inventor with an army of mechanical steampunk soldiers built of brass cogs that fizz and whirr as they patrol the hallways. While these are some of the toughest, most remarkable enemies you encounter—they have eyes in the back of their heads as well as heavy armour—the mansion itself is a triumph. Each room is mechanised, and with the pull of a lever entire walls move, staircases flatten, and tables and chairs disappear, all with the flash and grandeur of an old steam train.

There aren't puzzles to solve in Jindosh's mansion, so much as the entire mansion is the puzzle.

I could go on about how later levels split into different hostile areas with different factions, forcing you to either pledge allegiance to one or take your chances on the streets fighting both. Or another level that messes with time travel, allowing you to jump back and forth between time periods to avoid detection as well as solve puzzles. Or the vicious blood flies and their shambling keepers that add a horrifying edge to otherwise more welcoming levels.

Dishonored 2 is, to use an ugly phrase, "a gamer's game." There's no pandering to accessibility, no shortcut to success. It is as rewarding as figuring out the perfect path to the princess in a level of Donkey Kong or slotting a long brick into a four-block gap in Tetris. That you won't remember the story (and while they work, I wonder if there's a world beyond the usual array of audio logs, notes, and other standard storytelling paraphernalia) doesn't really matter.

Having completed Dishonored 2 once with little regard for the lives of those in it, I'm going to go back and do it all again and attempt to save them. Maybe I'll try and do it without getting detected. Or maybe I'll try to do it without breaking a single security wall. Maybe I'll even turn down the offer of the occult from The Outsider and do it without any special powers at all. Not because there's some grand reward at the end of it all or because I want to see the "happy" ending, but simply for the sheer joy of it.

The good

Absolutely nails stealth mechanics

Wide range of powers and weapons that play off one another

Smart level design

Gorgeous visuals

Loads of replay value

The bad

Tired story

PC version suffers performance problems

The ugly

Having to go back to the beginning of a level because you forgot to save

Verdict: Dishonored 2 is one of the smartest, most well-designed games released this year. If you fancy a challenge, this one is a no-brainer.