Dishonored was a mad game. It burst onto the pointy end of a very stale console cycle in an electrical shower of creativity, born from minds which had seemingly been straining a little too long at the leash. To this day, its bizzaro-Dickensian world and freewheeling mechanics still feel like anomalies in a mire of safe-bets.

“We [at Arkane Studios] have always been dedicated to a level design concept that allows you to approach the game from many different ways,” says Dishonored’s co-creative director Harvey Smith. “Stealth, combat, lethal, non-lethal. Playing at your own pace.”

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The Set-Up

Dishonored Screens 10 IMAGES

The World

Dishonored concepts 16 IMAGES

“But let’s move on,” he says, as he begins his demonstration of Dishonored 2 Dishonored 2 looks every part as eccentric as its predecessor, but with vital differences. Some are obvious - a brand new character, city and game engine - some are subtle - Corvo’s new power tree - but all feel fresh and exciting.“When we started Dishonored 2, we had a bunch of ideas about how we wanted to make a better game, but at the same time make something very familiar and true to what our hardcore fans love,” says Smith. Following a pause, he says: “if I had to absolutely boil it down, I would say we really wanted to introduce Emily Kaldwin as a character.”After completing work on the first Dishonored, the team couldn't shake the idea of introducing a grown-up version of the character who was essentially a reflection of the player’s play-style.“What would she be like when she grew up? We couldn’t stop thinking about Emily as a character, so as we started to wrap our heads round that, we started thinking about her as an action character.”Check out new Dishonored 2 screens in the gallery below.Set 15 years after the first game, the bulk of Dishonored 2 eschews the dank, Victorian squalor of Dunwall (though you play there in its first and final missions), for the Southern-European-kissed city of Karnaca. As she zooms across flat rooftops (“Dishonored 2 is much more vertical,” says Smith) and silently cuts a guard’s throat in the confusion of a dust storm, Emily is dethroned and wild, an empress on the run.“Her keywords are ‘Dunwall, empress, and assassin’,” says Smith. “Her themes are about what happens when you lose everything and you have to see how the rest of the world live.”Unfortunately for Emily, the rest of the world isn’t having a great time of it. Though Karnaca is a bright, lush place - colloquially known as the “jewel of the South” - and the rat plague is firmly in the annals of history, its citizens are suffering under the heel of the brutish “Duke of Sarconos” and his guard. Some people in Karnaca live like Kings, says Smith, while most live in the mud.The gameplay we’re shown highlights the various quality-of-life disparities in the new city and Arkane’s approach to missions in Dishonored 2. Emily is given two targets, one from the Howler gang and one from the militant faction The Overseers, involved in a turf war with each other. Smith explains that she can choose to kill one, kill both, or find a way not to kill them but “eliminate them” with quintessential Dishonored poetic justice.Being tasked to eliminate two targets will only happen once in Dishonored 2. It’s an example, explains Smith, of a new theming approach to make every mission feel distinct. “We wanted to stay very true to our level design values,” he says. “But we wanted to add some sort of ambitious theming to each mission. So each one stands as a classic Dishonored mission with multiple approaches, but each one has some theming. Either through the game’s fiction or from a mechanical perspective.”Check out new Dishonored 2 concept art in the gallery below.

This particular mission takes place in The Dust District, a colloquial name for an area where storms blow up thick dust from nearby mines. It’s more than a narrative wrapper, of course: the procedurally generated storms obscure enemy vision and hearing, allowing for stealthier kills.

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But for now, things are quiet, and Karnaca’s intricacies reveal themselves as Emily wanders through its broad, sun-lit streets, bracketed by tall thin houses and peppered with vegetation. Unlike Dunwall, where danger lurked in every corner, there are pockets of neutrality in Karnaca: children shooting marbles on a street corner, for example, and black market shops where you can upgrade your arsenal.

There’s a lot going on here, yet Dishonored’s gorgeous painterly aesthetic remains as cohesive as ever. Characters with deeply-lined faces leer from doorways, desks are splattered with ink, and curios designed by mad modern industrialists fill retro posters. The breadth of detail is so impressive, explains Smith, thanks to Arkane’s brand new custom-built engine, “The Void.” “It supports better lighting, shaders, materials, and fluidity in jumping between animation and AI control.

The New Powers

“On a technological level, we just feel it’s a better game.”As Emily ventures into Overseer territory, things become a lot more familiar. Guards patrol in clusters, cracking wise with one another, while light walls - this time powered by wind turbines - block the path. It’s a common Dishonored scenario, and as per usual, there are many ways to skin the cat. During this playthrough, Emily decides to use what appears to be her most versatile power, Far Reach. Though it initially seems like an analog for Blink - it seems to teleport her in short bursts - it’s actually a grab and pull power. We see Emily reach for a guard, pull him toward her, then stab him. Later, we see her pull an explosive barrel toward her and whiplash it backwards into her enemies in a flurry of motion.

Emily’s powers are useful for non-lethal play, too. She can choke people into submission after being spotted, blend into her environments in an ethereal state using “Shadow Walk,” and put enemies into a deep trance using the slightly unnerving ‘‘Mesmerise.” “It feels like unspeakable horror is being done to them,” says Smith of the latter ability, “but they’re kind of okay with it. And then at the end of the power they lose their short term memory so they don’t bust you in stealth.”

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Emily’s most striking new power comes near the end of this part of the demonstration. As she infiltrates the office of Vice Overseer Burn, Emily links four guards together using “Domino,” which now means they’ll share the same fate. She plants a stun mine, draws a guard’s attention to it, and kaboom, all four drop.It’s hilarious, and like Dishonored's best powers, it’s versatile. Emily has another ability called Doppelganger (we didn’t see it during this demo), which summons a temporary clone of herself to distract or fight guards. If she summons her doppleganger, links it with some guards and then kills it, she can clear out a room with relative ease.It’s exploration of crazy “exploits” like this that really excites Smith. “We never anticipated anyone to do that,” he says.