Outsider? I hardly know 'er
I was pretty disinterested in the story throughout this short 7 hour playthru. I have never been very captivated by the Outsider or any of the lore related to him. I always thought the basic setting and world building of the Karnaca society to be the highlight of Dishonored. This game didn't change that.
This time thru I finally played a lethal path. It changes the game completely, and honestly I think it's for the worse, despite my previous complaints. I beat Dishonored 2 without killing anyone, which made for a challenging and engrossing stealth puzzle. At the time I felt I was missing out by not engaging in any combat but as it turns out the combat is flashy and cool to see but not very good. It's quite clunky. I think the best way to play these games is to try your best to get thru in a stealthy manner but don't quickload if you're spotted, dive right into combat as needed. Definitely don't set out to kill pretty much everyone the way I did in this game. It speeds the game up too much and keeps you from enjoying the level design as much.
The game takes a different tack than the first two, with a new lead character who was a key supporting character in D2. She's never been very interesting and I've never liked Rosario Dawson's flat performance. None of the levels stand out for me this time around. Just a bit of a slog. One level is a repeat of a level in D2 with some minor changes. Stupid thing is you still end up heading to the exact same location in that level in order to complete your objective, so it feels similar.
The first game is clearly the best. Honestly I'm not sure they ever needed to make this one... but for diehards it certainly offers some conclusion to the characters.
I have since upgraded to a 3070 laptop GPU so the game ran like butter on ultra. I had previously played Dishonored 2 on a 970 and had a lot of performance issues.
Make Prey 2 damn it!
2.5/5 Short game that doesn't add anything that you didn't already see in the superior Dishonored 1&2. If you're dying for more time in this universe, give it shot. Just play it "naturally" and don't load saves if your stealth run is spoiled. I played the US release on PC.
