Isn't it weird that this game didn't get a Quick Look (I know there's an unfinished, but still)?

woot.. SLI is working with the new drivers (i'm playing @ 4k, ultra, txaa fov 90)

EDIT: before was not using the beta patch. Now with the beta patch and the new nvidia drivers (and SLI) i'm mostly over 100fps.

sweet. hopefully more people play the game now. It is my fav game of the year (this and Blood and Wine DLC from the witcher 3)

After nearly 30 hours, I'm done with my first playthrough. I'm looking forward to murdering everyone as Corvo. It's the best game I have played so far this year.

I HATED Dishonored. In a year of incredible games, this might be my favorite game all year. I know it's new, but man, I am LOVING it.

Playing as Emily, leveling her like I want, exploring every nook and cranny of the fantastic level design, reading all the lore. It has just sucked me in completely, I feel like I did the first time I played Bioshock, and baby, that is a good feeling.

Beat the game as Emily, No Kill/No Detection, in about 18 hours. I think someone less obsessive-compulsive about staying hidden could probably do it in half that, and I'm sure there will be some really impressive speedruns coming out of the next few months that do it in less than an hour, or something. It's definitely fixes a lot of the major problems of the first game and expands upon the parts that were already good. The powers all seem built around crazy sandboxy systems-level madness in a way that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (probably the closest and easiest comparison) doesn't really attempt, and I found a lot of success messing around with Emily's various abilities. Like casting Domino on a bunch of guards, then luring one of them into a stun mine over and over again.

That said... I think this game's plot somehow manages to be even more forgettable than the first game's, which was hardly a sterling example of video game storytelling on its own merits. It feels very utilitarian, as if they didn't know how to justify another sequel without throwing in another revenge plot against a group of varied conspirators, all of whom you will eliminate in a one-by-one fashion with non-lethal options sometimes being worse than death. The worldbuilding and environmental storytelling has always been the focus, obviously, but the story is nakedly functional in a way that rivals Titanfall 2's storyline for "The designers clearly wanted to put this kind of setpiece here, now write around it." Also, Emily's voice actress just sounds super bored whenever she has something to say, which probably doesn't help when most of what she has to say is super obvious exposition or running commentary. What I heard of Corvo doesn't sound so great either... and that's arguably worse, since Stephen Russell also did the voice for Garrett in the old Thief games and did a much better job at commenting on things.

@zefpunk: This is the most bizarre stance because the games are nearly identical in how they play and design philosphy.

@arbitrarywater: I think the voice acting sounds strangely disjointed more than anything. A lot of sentences run into each other without real pauses after the periods, which ends up sounding really awkward. It's almost like the actors recorded each sentence separately and then they were jammed together into paragraphs as an afterthought.

I'm pretty impressed with this game I must say. Must be one of the best looking titles I've ever played, not only in terms of very realistic lighting, but especially in design of the world and the details. Every room is just believable while still clearly taking place in a fantasy world.
The sound design complements it perfectly, you hear the blade of fans ticking against the metal casing, the bugs flying around buzzing lights, etc.

Level design is again very well done, there's always multiple objectives to solve a level and even multiple ways to get to the objective. You always find your 'own' way through the levels, which makes you feel kind of smart.

AI can be pretty good too. They notice if one of their patrolling buddies is missing a while and I even hear them saying things like "who left this door open?". Ofcourse they are also pretty easy to fool, since it's still game AI in 2016 we're talking about. But they can certainly be a challenge.

The biggest gripe I would have with the game right now is that it shows a lot of graphical glitches (on PS4 at least): shadows popping in and out, white artifacty lines showing where meshes meet and sometimes very obvious LOD popping (and sometimes not at all). All seems like bugs that can be fixed to me, but they can be quite distracting.

Sigh, I still can't get non-lethal on Mission 5 :( In fact, it might be even worse now, I'm getting three dead instead of two. This is making me hate the game, and I don't want to hate it. I might have to just keep on playing and just not get the Clean Hands achievement.

That is a bug. Any witches you knock out will die when you flip the switch. OH i spent hours on that mission to try to fix it.

BUT! there is a way around it (also, maybe they fixed it in the beta patch). Any of the witches you knocked out, shoot them with 2 sleeping blots. (or do mission again without knocking any witches out). When you can flip the switch and break the magic thingy and they won't die.

@zurv: The sleep dart thing doesn't work. I have spent 4 hours trying to unfuck this mess. I have tried sleeping darts, multiple sleeping darts, sleeping darts in their shoulders, using the scope to shoot sleeping darts, moving bodies close to the machine, moving bodies away from the machine, even insane things like flipping the switch while throwing the affected witch in the air, all sorts of things. And I don't think I have it in me to go through the mission again. Sigh.

Honestly, I think it would be good for me to just let it go and not be excessively pedantic about these sorts of things.

that sucks. :( for me it was the first two witches in the alley that i knocked out. two darts in each fixed it for me :(

If you are like me (because i spent about 3 hours on the mission) - you could do that full mission now in like 15min without anyone seeing you or taking anyone down :)

did you try the beta patch? maybe that fixed it.

I was in love with this game (PC technical issues aside) until I got to the wacky time-travel chapter "A Crack In the Slab." I'm not sure if the level overstayed it's welcome, or if the gimmick just didn't grab me, but my opinion has soured a bit.

Environment wise, the game tells a wonderful story while also being gorgeous, even on lower settings than I normally have to use. Karnaca is incredibly detailed, the art direction is gorgeous, and I'm always down for some weird religious zealots like the Overseers or the Hammerites. Unfortunately, I could not give less of a shit about the plot (The entire Crown Killer thing and the re-use of Delilah in general was especially disappointing), which might be what drove me to rush through the final levels of the game, I just had no drive to explore anymore than I already had.

Also, I'm only a couple of chapters in the Corvo campaign so far, but Emily already seems underwhelming in comparison, as far as movement goes. While she does have Domino, which is damned amazing, her Far Reach was often more frustrating than fun to use. I've definitely found that Corvo's Blink still gets the job done, and with the ability to upgrade it into Daud's "time stop" Blink, it really shines.

So yeah, not really sure where to come down on this game. I definitely didn't hate my time with it, but I don't really know if I'll be playing it nearly as much as I played the original Dishonored. Overall, I didn't like Emily's moveset all that much, and as a character she (and pretty much everyone else, aside from Jindosh) was about as interesting as a pile of dirt. Apologies if this is a little disorganized, just wanted to get my thoughts about this game down somewhere.

Oh, and a special fuck you to the Strong Arms bonecharm for showing up on the last level for my non-lethal playthrough, and then not even working on the one dude I tried it on.

So apparently a guard died while I was laying him down because he clipped some breakable geometry (like one of those wooden folding things). I didn't notice until the end of the mission. This is really bumming me out because I play stealth games like these super meticulously and go for no kills. I tried using Cheat Engine to fix my stats, but nope; the table I downloaded isn't working for some reason. I hate these fucking no kill achievements because I feel obligated to do them. This is not that dissimilar from when I was playing Mankind Divided and a story choice locked me in to not getting the no alarms achievement. And now I'm thinking about how most of the powers in Dishonored 2 are lethal and the game discourages playing lethally if you want the good ending. I like being non lethal and stealthy, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't just a bunch of save scumming. All this wrapped together it's like I'm playing the game wrong. I don't know. Fuck video games.

Exactly how I feel about my glitch. Fuck video games and fuck the way I feel compelled to play video games.

Anyone else feel like Emily's tentacle grappling hook is really clunky and inconsistent? It's hard to move around with her sometimes. It's not nearly as slick as Corvo's blink in the first game

@mems1224: I had trouble with it at first, then I started thinking of it more as a web sling and it began to click. If you're moving as you release the reach she'll usually gain some momentum which can potentially mess you up or work in your favor.

@dharmabum: yea, I really love it but I've had a few moments when I aim at a ledge not moving and at the last second the arrows disappear and instead of climbing I just run into the ledge and fall down.

@mems1224: I know what you mean, that happens to me too. You really have to be still and carefully line it up. There's an upgrade that slows time as you fall, but it's nowhere near as effective as Corvo/Daud's freeze time blink.

Not the good ending, just a different ending. The game clearly wants you to play it however you want, hence the large range of skills. If you're going for ghosting then go for it, but if you're not enjoying it then don't do it just for the ending - YouTube it if you want to know what might have been.

The pause menu having the kills stat here makes such a huge difference. No more unconscious bodies falling out of the world, death-clipping geometry, or being eaten which you have no idea about until the very end of the mission. D2 is EZ mode! (definitely a good design decision)

@shivoa: Well the game describes it as a cynical ending and right now I don't really see a difference between bad and cynical. Emily also doesn't seem like a killer to me. That being said, I don't actually know if I like playing the game this way or if it's a construct of the way the game is presented to me. I haven't really been interested in many of the powers; the only ones I have right now are Far Reach, Shadow Walk, and Dark Vision (which I haven't found useful at all). None of the other powers really interest me (at least while playing non-lethally).

I don't really think YouTubing an ending helps because it's not my canonical ending. I've certainly done it with some games as a curiosity, but it never changes how I felt playing the game.

Yeah, I had a suspicion bloodflies could kill an unconscious person, but I didn't know rat swarms could as well. If that counts as a kill, that's pretty stupid.

It's not really meant as the main way of playing the game. It's the hardcore mode of stealth games (no kills and ghosting both being something with a long history of optional difficulty). And yes, that means no leaving unconscious bodies to fall to their death, drown, or get eaten by packs of small mobs. It's really not meant to be the main play-style of the game (3.9% of Steam users have the no kills playthrough achievement, 2.6% ghosted it so never seen but possibly killing key targets as they desired).

It's not meant to be for the average player. The only difference in endings is for low vs high chaos and low chaos is fine with some deaths happening, just don't depopulate the entire region with killing blows. Choosing to play with an extreme constraint on the game is a choice and if you're not enjoying it then it's really a much better idea to play how you want. It sounds like you'll be ending up with the low chaos ending anyway. At least in D1 (not read up every detail of D2) then literally the only difference for a pure Ghosting or no-kill run is the achievement at the end. It assures low chaos but many people who didn't play towards those hardcore mode options also got the low chaos ending (20.2% completed in low chaos vs 21.9% completed high chaos on Steam).

Just started playing and maaaaaaaaaaan the game is a blurry mess on PC (thi is with everything on Ultra, blur off, aa off and adaptive sampling disabled too).

Thankfully someone on the forums suggested using SweetFX 2 and that really helped clean up and sharpen the game a whole lot.

I got ghost and clean hands because I'm a crazy person, but I don't think you need to be super meticulous about not killing anyone to get the low-chaos ending. Also there's more non-lethal options. Being able to parry and then go straight into a choke-out means that if you're one-on-one with a guard you can pretty much always knock him out, and being able to do a drop attack KO is great.

Turns out I was confusing Playthrough stats with Global stats, so Cheat Engine did end up working to erase that one mistaken kill. Global stats are editable, but they don't stick after loading a save, so I was getting confused there. Global stats shouldn't matter for achievements sake.

Anyway, I'm back to playing the game again and I'm enjoying myself despite some bugs (I had to re-sleep dart some witches in the Royal Conservatory before activating the thing, otherwise they would die) and Far Reach just being a pain to aim sometimes (I still don't know why it will go a certain distance in some cases but not others). Still mainly using Far Reach and sleep darts, but I recently got Domino, fully upgraded it, and it is just too good.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/11/18/13678500/dishonored-2-patch-new-game-custom-difficulty

Some new additions coming in next month, main ones being New Game+ and custom difficulty settings.

@razzuel: I nearly had the same thing happen to me, but luckily had a reasonable manual save an hour before that rescued me. I was going for Clean Hands and Ghost, in the final mission no kills and never spotted. Then I noticed right before entering Dunwall Tower that I had a kill on my stats. I almost had a heart attack, going back through my auto and quick saves to see where it was.

I realised it was when I put a witch to sleep in that collapsing building on the main street, she slid off the third floor and died. Luckily it is a very short section so I could just do it again. Phew. From then on I checked my stats after pretty much every incapacitation, just in case.

Overall I really enjoyed the game, but going for a completely peaceful, stealthy run made it a little bit less fun probably. Trial and error reloading and quicksaving breaks things up a bit too much, I wouldn't suggest anybody seriously try for the Ghost run on their first try. It's just too annoying reloading every single time you get spotted.

The challenge made Emily's powers shine, though, since you can combine them to clear out entire rooms with a bit of invention. Domino is one of the best and most fun powers I've used in a game in a long time - I felt the same way about Blink when I played Dishonored, just so refreshing and original. Combining Domino with Doppelganger and Mesmerize and stun mines and drop attacks and fully upgraded Far Reach, it was like nothing I've ever played before. Here's a video I found to give an idea of the sort of stuff you can do with a bit of imagination, although this is with High Chaos.

The level design on most of the levels was great, just a couple of dull sections. I wasn't too enamoured with a Crack in the Slab, just because I felt the enemy placement was annoying and I got spotted and had to reload waaaay too many times. The way the level works, with the puzzles and changes you can make between timelines was cool, but not necessarily utilised to its full extent.

So the performance patch for the PC version just came out. Some people are seeing massive improvements, but it's barely helped me at all. It increased my frame rate in the Royal Conservatory from 20 FPS to 25 FPS on low settings. I don't think I'll be able to finish the game at this point, which is super disappointing because Dishonored is one of my favorite games. This is the first AAA game that's been too much for my modest PC since I built it a year ago.

Out of curiosity, what specs are you running?

As to the patch: it made things a lot more stable for me and am able to run a mostly consistent 60 fps with most settings on very high (running 1080p on a GTX1070). I also like the new TXAA sharpness options.

@rvone: Like I said, it's modest for the most part: GTX 960 2 GB, FX 8350 4.0 GHz, 8 GB RAM. And I play on a 1680 x 1050 monitor which gives me a bit of extra wiggle room.

I never expect to be able to hit 60 FPS on this PC when I buy games, but I have been able to for the most part, even at mid-high settings. And even when I can't I can at least get my games running smoother than their console counterparts.

I guess the much higher than usual recommended requirements for Dishonored 2 should have been the giveaway for me, but for some reason I figured they were exaggerating.

I'm definitely going to be much more cautious in the future when buying games.

Yes, while I'm not sure what the game is doing that makes it so demanding (poor optimization, probably) but it can be rough. Most of the different setting don't impact performance that much (HBAO+ seems to impact it the most along with water and shadows). I've seen several people mention that after the second beta patch they're able to gain some additional frames by switching either to borderless or full screen, so perhaps you could fiddle with that some more?

For what it's worth, the game is really good if you get it to run acceptably.

Really glad Will Smith was on the Bombcast to talk about the level design here.

What a game.

@shivoa: I don't really understand the enamor with the Clockwork Mansion. It just felt like another level to me. Patrick Klepek spoke of it in the same regard as Will Smith. Maybe I'm the outlier here.

@beachthunder said:

That mission sucks. Not only is it buggy as shit (I've had like 4 or 5 hard crashes on that level on the PS4), but the level design and villain are really boring compared to some of the other levels. I haven't encountered the already unconscious-->dead thing personally, but I did encounter another issue. When you pull the switch, all the other witches fall unconscious. Unfortunately, the ones hanging out on top of the chandeliers have a tendency to fall off and splat on the floor when that happens, which the game counts against you.

Have you really explored that level, or are you just flipping switches? Cause there are some really epic opportunities to fuck with the AI if you manipulate the environment correctly. It's also possible to complete that level super-fast if you know the correct route to take through all the moving floors.

I managed to push through the Royal Conservatory level, and the level after it seems to run quite a bit better. Getting a fairly steady 45 FPS with a few dips here and there, so it's totally playable now. I'm hoping the conservatory level is the worst of it and I can enjoy the rest of the game mostly problem free.

There are some people reporting that their frame rate tanks when they look at glass objects, and the conservatory has a lot of glass display cases and stuff like that. And the Clockwork Mansion, which is another level I had issues with, has a lot of glass. I dunno, pure speculation. I'll have to look into that further.

The levels of this game really are something else. Plot is a bit weak, but everything around the plot with regards to world building is some really good stuff. I actually enjoy reading the books detailing Sokolov's expedition in his younger years, along with his diaries now that he is getting old and knows it.

I just got to the seventh level and it actually tops the clockwork mansion. The amount of time it took to get both these levels working must have been insane. They're the best levels I've played in a game in years.

I beat it a few days ago. If I were to rate it on GB's rating scale, it would be a weak 3/5. It isn't a bad game, it's just so boring compared to the first one. The one level where you get the time piece is genuinely fantastic, but sadly it's a one off thing that happens 3/4 of the way through.

I would recommend going back to the first game, because it's superior in almost every way. Example: in 2 you go to this crappy boat in between levels. 1 you go to this crazy city hideout that has a large building, streets, sewers, and other stuff Im probably forgetting. Also, tallboys are 1000 times cooler than the clockwork soldiers.

I really love this game, but here is my experience that I posted on another thread, more appropriate here;

'However,........... I am modifying what I said earlier, I am about ready to play another game for a while till they fix Dishonored 2. The loading times on PC are now consistently 5 minutes or so. And I am constantly retrying even if I am not killed because I myself am trying to keep at at low chaos. And I finally did it.

Somehow they have taken an excellent game in my view, and fouled it up.'

There was a 30 minute download yesterday when I started Dishonored 2, and in load times seems consistently worse, again in it's load-times.

Damn, you might be right on the money here as far as why I haven't been eager to finish 2. I spent so much time wandering the Hound Pits Pub area in the first one.

Ever since the patch the performance has gotten worse on my PC, I played through the game once as Emily with the settings dropped to medium and it was mostly OK. Then yesterday I started a playthrough with Corvo with all the settings the same and the framerate is just all over the place and is particularly bad when whenever I use Blink. I tried dropping the settings even further to no avail and even when I lock the fps to 30 it's still stuttery.

My PC: GTX 970, Intel i5 4690k processor, 8gb RAM, Z97-A Motherboard

Like I said the game was totally serviceable on my first playthrough but after the latest beta patch everything just took a nosedive.

Beat the game a couple days ago and I like it just as much as the first one. Some of the coolest levels I've played ever but my favorite would still be the clockwork mansion. My first play through was with Emily and it was a no kill run which was tedious at times but I did that to myself. Now I started a run that will be high chaos/no detection and it's been such a relief to murder fools. I prefer Corvos powers way more than Emily's. Anyways, great game. Hope there will be DLC like there was for the first one.

@lawgamer said:

I actually didn't pull any of the switches except for the very first one because I wanted to see if the game acknowledged the enemy never knowing I was there. To my surprise it does acknowledge it, but it doesn't do anything satisfying with that, unfortunately. There was just some dialog at the beginning of the level and then it's listed as one of those "things of importance" on the mission clear screen.

Crack in the Slab is an incredible level. They take the concept as far as they can possibly take it.

A bit of a spoiler thing here, but here's what to do in that stage, you won't regret it: knock out Stilton when you finally get to him.

I consider myself a bit jaded at times but what happened afterwards just made me have a smile on my face while playing the level.

Looks like I accidently deleted my earlier post, but it doesn’t matter I guess. Anyway, perhaps it’s because I didn’t and still don’t know definitively what to expect from this game, but I continue to be impressed by a lot of what it has to offer. I only just managed to finish the fourth chapter today, but I already started with the next. I like the change in atmosphere from the Clockwork Mansion to the Royal Conservatory.

Speaking of the Clockwork Mansion, I would be very interested to read a post-mortem on how that level was perceived and designed. It must’ve been difficult to design levels that support widely different play styles, let alone have one with two discrete approaches that should also support a no-powers play style among others.

I think Arkane has done an excellent job overall making each mission feel distinct, and more importantly, memorable throughout. It seems like each level has its own gameplay gimmicks and slightly different tone. The missions are well-paced: objectives change several times over the course of a level, and secondary quests arise rather organically. Enemies also are surprisingly diverse, and different types or factions have differing abilities and quirks. All of this goes a long way toward making each chapter feel novel and exciting in its own right.

I just finished the game and I'm glad it's over. Overall I enjoyed my time with it, but it suffers from the same problem as the new Deus Ex — it's just more of the previous game. I'd probably be more okay with Dishonored 2 just being more of the same, but the story and characterizations are just unsatisfying, unempathetic, and lacking in depth. For about half the game, I was reading all the notes I found, but gave up because the prose was so dry and boring.

Now, my favorite part of the game was A Crack in the Slab. At first I was disappointed with the absence of my powers, but after some time it didn't matter anymore: I didn't need them. I don't see the mechanic in this level as just a substitute though. It was really interesting, yet like Titanfall 2, it didn't go far enough; I feel like if they built a game with this mechanic as the foundation of Dishonored 2, they could have created something so much more creative and distinct. I don't think they even scratched the surface for what they could do with that mechanic.

Just got inside the Clockwork Mansion and the framrate's shit itself (playing on PC). It's annoying because I've really been enjoying the game so far and now I'm getting wild frame rate fluctuations in what is meant to be one of the standout levels, which is very distracting. I guess I'll wait for be next patch.