I'm not a fan of the change in voice actor for The Outsider, but otherwise I'm really liking this so far.

@do_the_manta_ray: 970gtx is still amazing played doom on ultra and titanfall maxed out running smooth and lovely at 1080p.

@anonymgeist: So far I've not liked any of the voices for any of the main characters. Corvo's is especially bad and I'm not one to be bothered by gruff videogamesman voices it's just his delivery is awful.

Been running fine (according to my wife) at 1080p60 ultra. We have a pretty beefy PC though (6700k gtx1080 16G ram). It wasn't consistently above 50fps at 4k, and wanted to be locked to 30 at 1440 (maybe my tv's fault). She did mention some weird clipping and scripting issues here and there but nothing serious.

I've gotten a couple of missions in now, and I'm really digging this game. They definitely took a long, hard look at the first Dishonored and refined the hell out of it, which is great to see after Deus Ex: Mankind Divided felt like a non-improvement over Human Revolution. There are more opportunities for the kind of dynamic, systems-level interaction nonsense that define games from that Looking Glass/Ion Storm pedigree, and I've had a lot of fun messing around with Emily's various powers and the equipment the game gives you. To use a more specific example, I just did the mission in the Clockwork Mansion and managed to knock out Jindosh and kill his robots at the same time by planting stun mines in the doorway to the elevator, throwing grenades at the robots to get them to come over, then hiding in the elevator shaft until they all died. Somehow, I didn't get detected doing this (and robots don't count as kills,) so I think it worked out pretty well.

Does anyone know how many chapters there are?

So I got to Karnaca and the framerate still pretty much holds up, there were one or two dips but other than that it was solid. Only difference between our specs is I have a i7-2500 and I'm pretty sure your 4th gen i5 is better so that can't be it. I did see some stuff about the devs saying that the PC version isn't a port so they were shocked when people started reporting bad performance. Maybe the patch they release will fix some other unforeseen problem and fix everyone's performance issues, fingers crossed!

@sunbrozak: I'm on chapter 5 and have been playing for 15 hours and 30 minutes.

Yeah I just finished chapter 5 and I have over 13 hours and I'm doing a High Chaos playthrough. Feels like there's a lot more to explore this time around. It sucks to hear about the PC problems people are having. I'm on PS4 and haven't had many problems outside of what seems to be a bug in Chapter 5 that crashed the game twice (sound got muffled/some effects weren't making noise and then I'd walk into a specific room and boom ... frozen game ... taking a different route seemed to solve the problem), and some chuggy framerate during the boat travel sequences. Having a ton of fun with this game right now. Looking forward to my no kills/no spotting/no magic Corvo playthrough.

@technician: I'm doing a no kills/no detection playthrough with Emily now, then I'm going to do a high chaos run with Corvo after.

So far at least I think it's superior to the first game and I also really like that it continues what the first one did with the non lethal target neutralisations. They are way more fucked up than death!

@technician: I just had the game crash in chapter 5!

Ye, I like that they don't make Mr/Mrs Concussion Monster into the morally righteous character. You do terrible things rather than murder. It's a view that anything is fine as long as the brain-damaged (once you're had your way with the beating unconcious moves) goons are technically alive by the end. I also like how the devs say they envision the endings: if you generally avoided killing you're just more optimistic at the end.

Was it in the room with the witch chilling on the couch next to a Rune? That's where it got me.

@technician: No, it was I was leaving the building with the blood flies.

How much fun are folks having doing a no-kill run? Didn't feel like the first game had a ton on interesting options for being stealthy/non-lethal.

@stryker1121: I actually enjoyed the first one way more on my non lethal run. This one has more options but still not as many as lethal obviously.

Dammit. Finished the third mission and apparently I killed a civilian at some point. Well, there goes my pacifist run. Hate when that happens.

@stryker1121: Hard to say since that's how I usually play these games and I find combat in Dishonored pretty clunky. They do give you more opportunities to play around without ruining a no kill run though.

Clockwork soldiers don't count as killing anyone, for example, so you can go nuts.

after 8 hours of having the game I can honestly say i'm tired of these updates and I have not played a second yet

As much as I am liking the game, I will say this: I think there are some weird AI bugs in this game that will probably need addressing at some point, or at least *should* be addressed. The overall behavior of the people in this game doesn't seem anywhere near as well implemented as it was in the first game. Stealth games are never perfect...developers always have to create a structure to the AI in order to create the "puzzle" of the game, I get that. Guards have routes, alert modes, etc....that's all fine. But on more than a few occasions I have had guards and/or NPCs go into alert mode for apparently no reason whatsoever and I'm pretty sure it's counting against me, because when the alerts start, I get combat method tutorials popping up (which only happens when guards are specifically after *you*). They are not finding bodies, they are not seeing me. It's just this weird random thing where suddenly every character in a 50 yard radius will immediately go into alert and flip out. This *has* to be a bug, because it is definitely not something that is any fault of mine. Then, to add to that, often times NPCs and guards will stay in the positions they were at if you re-load a quicksave, which is really weird. They go back to their normal routes, but the fact that a quicksave reloads with people in that "state" for some reason is really odd. On the flip side is the fact the game doesn't have very good options for distracting people. Going back even into the Thief games, you could pretty reliably get a guard off of their route for awhile with the right distraction. In Dishonored 2, the guards and NPCs almost immediately ignore the distraction. It will alert them for a few seconds, maybe get them to walk a bit in the direction of the noise, but they then almost instantly just go back to where they were. If, however, an NPC creates a noise or whatever, it basically alerts virtually the entire level.
It's really odd given how tight and spot-on the first game was with it's overall stealth mechanics.

@stanleypain: Yeah I posted a bit further back with some of the same issues, It's almost like the AI doesn't trigger fully until you are close to them. I had another instance today where I had opened a door near some guards, They didn't care about it until I walked through it and then they suddenly freaked out (They didn't see me but noticed the door was open) and ran straight to it spotting me in the process.

@mordukai: thanks! I'll try that out.

Did the first game have the quick load/save triggers in the pause menu?

Played that on PC and was worried I'd lose F5/F8 ease going to consoles for D2. Can't say these games would be nearly as fun to play pure stealth/no-kill ghost without the ability to retry areas as soon at stealth is broken.

Just now finished it on PS4.......rented it from red box for multiple days. I like it slightly more than Dishonored 1. This game deserves 8.5 out of 10 review scores in my opinion.

Pros: Gorgeous art style (you will either love it or hate it), amazing level design (clockwork mansion is my favorite), mostly glitch-free experience (only encountered 3 very minor glitches)

Cons: Story and ending are both crap, Enemy AI is terrible, some areas are too large for their own good (it is an absolute nightmare trying to find all of the bone charms & runes).

I'll definitely purchase it once it drops to $20 in the future.

I made a video to show some people who were interested in it the stutter issues I was getting and even Youtube noticed the stutter. The patch can't come soon enough, I want to play this damn game.

I know youtube does this all the time but I still found it funny.

Is this game a little harder than the first to anyone else? Granted I'm playing on hard, but I played on hard in the first game and wasn't caught or killed in combat this nearly this much by this point (mission 4).

I'm on PC with a GTX 980 and having a pretty crappy time due to framerate drops. The worst is coming out of that bloodfly infested apartment in Karnaca. Drops to 17-20 fps when looking at the city, it's rough!

UPDATE: Found a slight fix where you set max prerenderd frames in the Nvidia control panel to 1 for this game. Those 17 fps moments now jump to 40 fps. Source

Game just doesn't feel polished enough to be released right now. Worst thing was I was getting pretty decent performance right up until the game opened up on the new city and then KAPOW. Slideshow time despite having a 980 Ti. Gave me just enough time to really get excited for the world and characters too.

Am I crazy or is there a really REALLY bad built-in latency lag? I literally cannot play it. Every time I look left or right, there is a slight delay, but enough to make it unplayable. I thought it was my controller but no other game I have is affected. I messed wit sensitivity and it did not help. I vaguely remember it in D1, but I got used to it I suppose.

Has anyone else has this problem( regular PS4)? If so, anyway to fix this?

@atastyslurpee: Try turning the Friction level down to 0. I don't think it gets rid of all input lag, but the looking/aiming felt way more responsive for me after.

@shivoa: The first game on console did not have quick load/save. It's definitely a much-needed feature in a game like this. The load times are still a bit annoying for me to the point where I might just give up on this no detection playthrough.

I always feel sloppy if don't play a stealth game like a perfectionist, but I don't seem to be having fun doing so in Dishonored 2. Perhaps the years of sneaking and studying AI patrol routes have finally worn me down.

@dharmabum: Yeah I had it turned down to about 50 at one point and I thought it made it worse. I was just looking from a quick Google search and apparently its a fairly common problem/complaint. One person suggested turning the tv mode to 'game' and that should help some. I'll try a combo of yours and that to see if it works, but man its so bad.

Got around 16 hours played by now and I've started chapter 6. Definitely the longest single-player game I've played in quite some time and it has remained enjoyable for all those hours. Admittedly a lot of that has to do with the stealthy gameplay and level design. While the story is ok, it's nothing to write home about, which is also the case with the voiceacting. It could be a lot worse, but way often it just feels like the actors are lacking the emotion in their line delivery.

Only technical problems I've encountered so far have been with the AI, which definitely seems pretty wonky at times.

I wish the story were a little better in this one...bit of the Fallout syndrome where the side details are fascinating and the world is fleshed out but the main narrative is a mix of lazy and all over the place. Terrible expository cartoon cutscenes.

Still fun though.

Haven't played this yet, but I would say the same thing about the first game.

For those that have tried, who is it better in terms of their Stealth/nokill options, Corvo or Emily?

So unlike a lot of people here, I found trying to 'non-lethal' my way through the first game ruined it for me. I stopped playing about half way through. I'm not sure what it was. I'm a huge fan of stealth games but in this series - the stealthier/ghost approach doesn't work for me here. Instead I've been playing Emily as someone who is trying her best not to hurt anyone but has a short enough temper that if she's discovered or if she's forced to can murder people at the drop of the hat. It's been extremely fun being free of the non-lethal constraints and just going crazy when i need to like a cornered animal. So i imagine i am hurtling towards the 'bad end' but so far i'm really enjoying my time with it.

@artisanbreads: For sure. I'd say the first one does a SLIGHTLY better job of getting you to care about the characters, but it was still rushed. One of my main hopes was that the sequel would improve on that a bit. Oh well.

Really liking playing as Emily and can't wait to unlock more of her stuff. This seems a lot harder than the first game so far. I really don't like Corvo's voice actor though. His VO is pretty awful

From the first couple of missions it feels like the placement of objects and routines are built around Emily's ability set. Moving around as Corvo feels really... blunt or stilted to me; not sure what the right description is. So from a no-kill perspective, getting around more fluently feels more comfortable to me giving me a better sense of security. Additionally, Emily has more abilities that revolve around distraction (for example Doppelganger) and stealth (Shadow Walk) so that might be up your ally. Interestingly, her Domino ability (which ties the fates of targeted NPCs together) allows you to put all of them to sleep by just choking out one of them. Invest heavily into Far Reach; it becomes exponentially useful when you do.

@rvone: Thanks that helps a bunch!

@tennmuerti said:

I've found them about equal. I'd say Corvo early game, Emily late game. Early game, Corvo's Blink is silent and invisible whereas Shadow Reach can be seen and makes a little bit of noise. Plus, Corvo's base Possession allows you to get into rat vents early whereas you need to upgrade Emily's Shadow Walk to get into those areas.

Late game though, upgraded Shadow Walk lets you take out guys while being basically invisible and Mesmerize can lock down groups of enemies so you can just walk past, so Emily gets progressively better later in the game when the enemy groups get bigger.

The non-lethal "assassinations" are pretty neat in this game. They seem to have put more thought into giving each target a just comeuppance. I remember feeling a little queasy in the first game, being asked to hand Lady Boyle to her high-society stalker...

I'm in the middle of Chapter 7 right now (Corvo playthrough, no save scumming so what happens happens) and my thoughts reflect what I think will be the general consensus: The additions to their core gameplay are fantastic and they built another intriguing/beautiful area but the main story is not what I'll keep coming back for. As much as that is a bummer, my love for Dishonored was in the abilities and world they crafted so I'm enjoying 2 a whole bunch. I'll need to do an Emily playthrough as well before I can finalize a lot of my thoughts on this game.

Also, if you haven't tried this yet, shoot a person with a sleeping dart while they are closing a door. I've only done it when I've had the instant sleep upgrade so I don't know if the same thing happens without the upgrade but its a wonderful "bug"

Having finished the game as Emily. The one thing that I can give this game without question is that there are a lot of strong female characters. Nice to see that they took a lot of the influence from the previous game's dlc from a character stand point. That said, the story is way to similar to the first one. I wonder if they had kept the working title "Black Sparrow" instead of making it Dishonored 2 if they could've changed story set up to be a little less like the first game. Minor story quibbles aside, this game is still the most fun you can have with stealth and the art direction continues to be breathtaking.

Oh yay, I got the "Clean Hands" trophy! I could've sworn I got a civilian kill on the results screen of an early mission. Now time to restart as Corvo and go fucking nuts on everybody.

You know, fuck Mission 5 and the non-lethal route which ends up killing people as soon as you trigger it. Sigh. I tried all the things to fix it, but I still have 2 "kills".

Finished the game as Emily this morning. The story and the voice acting continued to be pretty weak, but the gameplay and level design were great pretty much the whole way through and made me ignore those weaker parts. That's nice achievement for a game that took me around 23 hours to finish and didn't make me feel bored. Though with a way better story I'd probably be likely to tackle a second playthrough as Corvo way sooner, but as it is now, I'll wait 'till sometime 2017.

Also a spoiler about Titanfall 2! I found it kinda amusing that this was another game within a month, that had a timetravelling mechanic to it only limited to a single level. This one was visually way more dope than TF2's, but I still liked both...and was yet another game that made me think about playing Singularity again.