In the jagged emptiness of the Void, there's only power and the will to use it.

In Dishonored 2, out now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, both of your choices of protagonist—Empress Emily Kaldwin and her father Corvo Attano—have been touched by the Void, given gifts by the demonic Outsider who lives inside of it. Corvo can teleport, stop time, and summon a bloodthirsty swarm of rats to overwhelm his enemies. Emily can move on tendrils of pure Void energy, summon dark spirits to distract her enemies, even become a living shadow. No matter which character you choose to play as, you're tasked with solving the same dilemma: Emily has been dethroned, with a false empress installed through witchcraft and treachery, leaving the responsibility of setting things right squarely on her shoulders. With such dire problems, and such incredible power, Dishonored 2, like the Outsider, mostly approaches you with curiosity. It wants to see what you’ll do, and it's content to wait and watch.

The original Dishonored, released in 2012, had a similar set-up and the same earnest interest, but it tripped itself up. In the interest of giving the player a responsive world, it instituted a system called Chaos, whereby the city of Dunwall got worse the more recklessly and violently you behaved. It measured the player’s wrongdoing on fairly narrow axes, though, straightforwardly tabulating how many people you’d killed regardless of context and without considering if the alternatives were actually better, creating a system that gave you all kinds of wonderful toys and then punished you for using them.

Dishonored 2 features a similarly responsive world in the form of the tropical Karnaca, a windswept set of slums and mansions set against the sea, home to deep silver mines and equally cavernous suffering. But the responses are deeper and more varied now. Dishonored 2 tracks the player on a more varied set of axes. Not all villains are of the same moral weight. Killing the usurping empress isn’t perceived by the game as being nearly as chaotic as massacring civilians. What this adds up to is a sense that the game is getting out of your way. Here are the consequences, it says, and here are all your options. Do what you like. You can play as a silent assassin, a noble warrior, or something else entirely.

Arkane Studios

Dishonored 2 wants to place the psychodrama of power in the player's head.

In place of more substantial exterior constraints, Dishonored 2 wants to place the psychodrama of power in the player’s head. They want the player to look at Karnaca and its suffering, and to struggle with how best to use their supernatural gifts on the way back to the throne.

Karnaca is built out into a series of dense, realistic spaces. You explore the corners of Karnaca’s Dust District, regularly brutalized by the cast-off dust from the nearby silver mines. You dive deep into the intricate clockwork mansion of Kirin Jindosh, Karnaca’s resident mad scientist. You clamor over back alleys and through the seats of privilege. Each space you encounter is complex and realistic to an impressive degree.

Any videogame level is, ultimately, a videogame level: a set of spaces and encounters designed to facilitate certain types of play. But Dishonored 2, joining a small set of games that includes, most notably, the first Deus Ex, builds these spaces in such a way that they feel like convincing versions of reality. I played most of the game with objective markers turned off, navigating the spaces using purely environmental cues.

Karnaca is an incredible place to lose time in, and each block of the city is built in such a way that it teaches you about itself. Once, I stumbled upon an abandoned apartment, empty save for a shrine to the Outsider. It was ransacked. A few buildings away, I found that apartment’s tenant dead at the hands of the religious authorities, tortured for information on his black magic dealings. I spent an hour just combing through those two spaces, learning what had happened there, doling out the punishments I saw fit. It had nothing to do with my mission. It was just captivating. This depth contributes to the play that Dishonored 2 wants to encourage. Karnaca is a space to experiment but also a responsibility. You come to care for the place. You want to shape it. In hopes of doing right by Karnaca, I played thoughtfully, deliberately. I took vengeance upon those who deserved it. I helped where I could. Few games have so effectively sold the illusion that their world was real enough to care about.

Arkane Studios

Dishonored 2 manages to improve on the first game in nearly every way, the lone exception being its writing. While Karnaca is a fascinating place, the moment-to-moment details of your chosen hero’s journey are much less compelling. In broad strokes, both Dishonored games tell excellent stories, Shakespearean meditations on power, vengeance, and corruption. Power destroys, but it can also protect. As Corvo and Emily, you must protect your legacy while learning about the nature of power and the ruined world around you.

But in the specifics, the storytelling often falls apart. Important vocal performances are wooden, siphoning drama out of key scenes. Character writing is only passable when it needs to be excellent. The Outsider in particular, who needs to come across as mysterious and threatening for the story to work, is instead petulant and goofy, a sneering boy given the power of a god. It’s frustrating, really: Dishonored 2 gives you every reason to care, up until the moment some of its most important characters open their mouths.

That’s not enough to break the experience, though it does sully what is otherwise an outstanding accomplishment. I hope to write more about Dishonored 2, because I still feel there's so much more to discover after my first playthrough. Its best moments crackle with creativity and skill. It feels like a successor to some of the best games of its type, a game in the mold of Thief and Deus Ex in an era where even the people who make new Deus Ex games don’t make them like this anymore. This is a game that should be played, and all I want to do now is go back in. I know it’s waiting for me, to see what I try next.