Quick Look: Dishonored 2

I wanna give this game a chance. I hope it can reel me in. The last game just lost me somewhere in its mechanics.

On one hand, I really want be the first to post a comment. On the other, I have nothing useful to say, except that this game is rad.

Edit: Darn it!

The world building and level design in this game is so good it may have ruined 90% of other games for me.

I started off really enjoying this game, and now the more I play of it, the less I'm liking it =/

@militantfreudian: The achievements on the site may be gone, but the pride remains.

Possibly the worst co-pilot imaginable for this type of game so I'm excited to see how it turns out!

lmao "are you honking?"

Everything I've seen here indicates to me that controller is a substandard way to play this game.

Edit: FINISH THEM. YOU STEALTHED THE SHIT OUT OF THEM.

Wow, forget New Dan, I want more of Evil Dan like in this video

Dan don't drink saltwater, seriously! It's nothing like freshwater.

Yeah, I'm happy playing most single player games on PC with a controller, but the Dishonored games have both been way better with Mouse + Keyboard.

I never want to hear the term "whalepunk" uttered ever again.

I thought this game was like, famously fucked on PC (mixed reviews on Steam despite it being widely accepted this is a good game). This seems ok. 30 minutes into the QL and not addressing this, so I'm assuming Jason didn't experience issues?

Jason has the patience of a saint.

@danryckert Say you drink 2 liters of water per day. Typical seawater contains something like 35 grams/liter of dissolved salts (mostly NaCl). So that's ~70 grams.

If you were to add an extra 70 grams of salt to your steak or chicken breast each day and eat that, it would cause you some problems just like drinking a lot of seawater does. Those 70 grams would be over 10x the FDA's daily recommend sodium intake.

This QL is fantastic. Some top-notch "Dan antagonizing Jason" material.

As for the game: Hnnnng! Man, I love Dishonored.

@magmamud: Don't worry, I can top that... whaletopian.

@beachthunder: any specific reason or just burnt out? I've been having way more fun effing shit up in this game than playing undetected. I should probably save that perfect run stuff for a later playthrough once the level layouts are more familiar, which is what I did in the first game.

@hewitt:

Just tell him it's full of fish and dolphin poop.

@seraphim84: Yeah... I don't think I've ever been first to post anything on any page on this site, maybe even on any site. I'll be there for tomorrow's Dark Souls QL.

Anyway, this was a pretty good QL. It seems like the difference in difficulty between Hard and Normal is substantial: you get spotted way more easily and can't endure more than three, sometimes two direct hits. Also, the lighting engine in this game is very impressive. I have yet to reach this mission, but the lighting looks incredible at nighttime.

Is it just me, or does the framerate look rough? It's hard to watch.

Patrick also said he hasn't had any problems.

Huh, I saw this post and thought to myself "Uh, this is going to Brad and he's going to Brad it up" so interested to see what Jason and Dan bring to the table.

ps: Love you Brad, but sometimes with games like these you will get OCD about menus and closets to explore.

I suppose it is burnout. Playing non-lethal can be exhausting, especially with glitches...

@rdfed: Just you, this looks like a solid 60 FPS to me at least.

Dan's firing on all cylinders in this one!

I'm really going to miss Dan and Jason together.

HOW DARE YOU NOT APPRECIATE THE HUMBLE AND CARING DELILAH?!

Jason knows what's up, Delilah is a national treasure!

I think the first game really needed a light crystal of some sort as there simply wasn't enough situational awareness tools to let you know if you were in fact hidden or not. It's a bit of a bummer that they still decided to not go with any sort of indicator for when you are and aren't hidden from guards. A weird choice on their part considering the hud is just as big and clunky as it was in the first game, so one more icon wouldn't hurt really. I'm happy they ended up making another one of these at all but wish they had used the opportunity to improve on some of the gameplay mechanics instead of simply making more Dishonored. Pretty much the same criticism I had for Deus Ex Mankind Divided - a fine game but if you told me it's some insanely big DLC instead of a sequel I wouldn't know the difference.

Lots of sequels these days kind of scared to mess with the formula. I feel like games used to have much starker differences between each successive release.

@glots: Thanks. Turns out it was an issue with my browser.

I think this QL had turned me off completely. Still a bad story. Still indifferent to the world and design. Could have looked over all of that if they changed up the gameplay or at least overhauled it, but the same annoyances from the first game are still there, too, it seems.

Spending minutes figuring out what to do and then fucking up immediately upon execution because the thing you thought was going to happen didn't, like what Jason did. It sounds like no fun.

haha, you can really see why Bethesda changed that review policy.

"kill him in a funny way and then make him in the water"

-Dan Ryckert

@wjb: Yup. It's what frustrates me with these type of games that are seemingly open-ended in terms of play style, is that more often than not there is one approach that is going to work really flawlessly and most of the others are going to result in you having to press quick load because something happened to fuck up in between.

And I know there are people that love the randomness of that sort of gameplay, but personally I find it tedious.

the best part of this is when jason has to stop the quick look at 18:45 to tell dan about some radio show.

i really want to play this although im not a huge fan of the art style i think the character models are the weakest part of this game. i really liked some commbat scenarios you could get into though. im burning out on legion and am wanting a really good single player game and am not even interested in park management games but am hoping for planet coaster or this get cheaper during the holidays. this looked lots of fun from the quick look. thanks for showing it off and im going to miss jason & dan together.

The faces on characters kind of remind me of the designs from Strife

It's amazing. Truly.

I wonder why so many people were 'meh' on Dishonored. It's easily one of my favorite games of the last 10 years, and the closest successor to Thief you could hope for. I never got tired of replaying it and finding all kinds of different ways to carry out a mission. Too bad I had to refund Dishonored 2 because it won't even start for me on PC.

Agreed. I feel like I may have murdered Dan partway through this quick look if I were in Jason's shoes.

I want Giant Bomb to just hire a science expert to hangout silently on all quick looks and only chime in when Dan asks a question about science. I can't explain this feeling of not anger, but I guess frustration at Dan just not knowing things that I feel like regular human beings should know. I just want Dan to learn these things.

Dan: "The resident expert here at Gamespot.com"

Unless you opted for a no-powers playthrough or have upgraded your powers in a way that doesn't complement your play style at all, I don't see how the would be the case. Granted I'm only halfway through the game, but my experience has been that even in the more constrictive scenarios, there are several different approaches that stand the same chance of success. And there's always a margin for error, which naturally, varies broadly based on the difficulty you're playing on. I'm generally decent at spotting the way in which the developers have intended a scenario to play out, especially with games of this ilk, but I haven't been able to do so as frequently with this game.

@militantfreudian: Fair enough. I haven't played Dishonored 2, but I had a really though time with the first Dishonored trying different approaches and being creative. I think I may just be bad at understanding how to use all of the different abilities together in a way that works.

Just beat it in around 8 hours 100% non lethal. Totally underwhelming. If you do play it ignore the chaos system because it just affects post game vignettes that total about 30 seconds.

Loved Dishonored and while its more of the same this one did nothing for me. It just felt empty.

@whatshisface::Its amazing how he can tolerate Dan's ridiculousness and I always notice their relationship was a bit off, and on the verge. Always felt Jason could explode any moment.

So..this game still comes with the "Punished with a worse ending if you kill people?" mechanic? As if so, that's an immediate "Nope, no way" for me. Like, 3/4ths of the way through the first game trying for the good ending and running out of stuff to upgrade was the turning point for me.

I am all for a game letting my choices and game-play having meaning. But when you essentially shut off access to the 'better' (IMO) story ending by not letting a player access half or more of the game-play mechanics? That was a major no-no for me. Like Yes, make my choices have meaning, no don't punish me for playing the game and having fun.

Like the first game had a whole bunch of powers that were likely a lot of fun to mess around with. Re:How Dan plays..which I never got to use a single time. Like maybe there was some limited "you can kill 3, just not 4 guys per map" but whatever. If this game has a similar bent. "Look at all these cool powers! No you can't use them unless you want the environments and story you get to make you feel like your a horrible psychopathic monster, Sorry!"

By all means, when story-points come up and I have choices to make, when I am engaged in the narrative and deciding how I want to effect it, make my choices count. But the moment to moment gameplay that comes between such things? Why on earth do you design a system that punishes the player for having fun. If I wanna throw a guy off the pier I do it cause its funny and I as a player enjoy it, not because I am making a conscious choice that the character I am playing would do so. If this game follows the first..no distinction between the two is allowed.

I think I will enjoy this game. Thanks for playing it Jason. Maybe you can stream it from home sometime?

Wow. I still have to beat Titanfall 2, Doom, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Witcher 3 and about 20 other games and if this is only 8 hours long I don'/t know if I can justify it as a purchase compared to say watch dogs 2 on PC. Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy the game that much :(

How does Jason put up with Dan's bullshit?

I remember be so excited about the first game. But when I got it I couldn't get into it. Something about the controls just didn't click with me.