I’ve re-read what I wrote 6 years ago about the original Dishonored (and 2 years ago about the DLCs) just to refresh my memory, and find myself a bit surprised about how similar what I’m going to write about Dishonored 2 & Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is going to be. In both all the right ways, and all the wrong ways. It is blindingly obvious how much improvement work was done, how pretty much every single most voiced issue from the original game was completely eliminated in the best possible way and how everything that worked was improved. Yet, it’s also a shame to see how the weakest, the most disappointing, but not bad, things got even worse.
Dishonored 2 & Death of the Outsider both work the same – it’s still an attempt to make a modern Thief 2 with elements from Hitman, like the original game was, except this time they go full on with this idea. Where Dishonored had very different mood and feel to it, there was the revenge plot, a more pronounced emphasis on the action elements and the magic powers were never completely avoidable, the sequel and, to an extent, it’s standalone DLC just allow you to play the game like you would play Thief 2. You can outright refuse the powers from the start (in Dishonored 2) and pure stealth, without ever touching anyone, through the levels. Just occasionally needing to at least knock out the target to defeat them in some non-lethal way – the only Hitman thing you’d ever do. Hell, this time they even went out of the way and got Stephen Russell, the voice of the original Garrett the master/sneaksie thief, to voice Corvo and he did his job really well, confirming how important it is to have a voiced main character to have any kind of attachment to them and their story. Emily, who is the canonical playable character of the game, is also given a personality and voice, addressing one of the main criticisms of the original.
But it seems that Arkane forgot about the rest of the story issues and got completely lost in their desire to return to the amazing gameplay of Thief 2, because Dishonored 2 story just kinda… happens. Dishonored was all about its mood and setting – the rat plague, the decaying high society, the death skull mask of Corvo, the high/low chaos to fit the plague setting, the long talks with the NPCs and their character development. Sure, a lot of it felt wasted due to various reasons or just didn’t work as you’d expect, but it all fit together in a memorable distinct image that is evoked in your head when you hear the game name. Dishonored 2 doesn’t have anything like that. To be fair, Thief 2 had a similar issue in terms of the storytelling – levels were built to be exciting environments for stealth, not vessels for storytelling unlike The Dark Project/Gold. But what Thief 2 had, was a genuinely interesting cast of characters and the central story that was interesting to follow.
Dishonored 2 just expands on the characters and the story bits from the DLCs to the first game, at times being outright remakes of the DLC moments, except those characters and story bits got tired even in those short DLCs and didn’t deserve a full length game. There is no strong central theme to the events, characters get introduced and leave the story in the same level with almost none of them really going through more than a few story chapters in a meaningful way and those who do go through the whole story don’t really add much. And the fact that high/low chaos idea is still there is so ridiculously pointless that by Death of the Outsider even developers realized that and removed it completely, since in the main game it barely changes anything to the story or the environments, and what it does feels silly and forced.
Which is a real shame, because it feels how pretty much everything in the game was improved. From little things like having a proper profile for the entire game instead of separate savefiles and the ability to customize the difficulty in any way you want (with no achievements tied to any of those as well, so people can indeed play as they’d enjoy most), to more notable gameplay changes with new animations, abilities and ways to platform and stealth in the most natural instinctive way possible without even thinking about it. Levels have barely any loading screens between them and tend to be big and full of paths you can take and optional, but not pointless, things you can do. AI seems more interesting to play with. All infuriating and pointless enemy types are gone. Your stealth and action abilities, regardless of if you use powers or not, are fun. And Death of the Outsider even simplifies all the powers, most of which are kind of useless anyway, and just focuses on several new exciting ones, including one that goes even closer to Hitman ideas of stealing other NPC identities.
Each level tries to do some special thing as well with not a single one of them feeling throwaway or bad, like several chapters from the original game and DLCs felt. Although, while all of them are varied, clever and interesting to play, none of them really do anything truly memorable. Even the one that clearly tries to redo the amazing idea from the masquerade chapter of the original game just feels isn’t even close to being as exciting. Death of the Outsider, in fact, feels a bit better in this regard, actually trying to mix social and pure stealth with adventure elements in a similar way to how the original game did it at times.
Speaking of which, Death of the Outsider also feels more like a proper sequel in terms of the storytelling as well. No matter how big and important, events of Dishonored 2 just kind of happen with even less personal attachment to them you would have, than there were in the original game. But Death of the Outsider actually tries to tell a meaningful story, and one that tackles the world lore and sets the stage for any future games in this universe. Which is something that I felt was needed much more than seeing Corvo and Emily once again so they could do some rather unexciting stuff.
I should also mention that the games can be quite a bit problematic in terms of bugs and issues. While I didn’t experience any huge performance issues like the ones that were often reported when Dishonored 2 just launched, so I can assume those were fixed by now, there still were some strange happenings and issues from time to time. It needs mentioning, though, that Death of the Outsider does run a bit better. But most common frustration was the weird bug with crouch walking, where the character would just refuse to go into a narrow opening at times, just because some animation wasn’t triggering – this happened way too often and in both the main game and the standalone DLC. But apart from that, AI could occasionally weird out, loading saves could reset some NPC positions, I had some NPCs somehow get stuck in terrain and die, and the game did crash a few times for me. I do see a lot of complaints from other people still popping up, so there might be very hardware-specific issues you should just be aware of.
But that’s what we ended up with. Just like Dishonored, just like the DLCs to Dishonored, Dishonored 2 & Dishonored: Death of the Outsider are one of the very best examples of the stealth and stealth/action titles of recent years, if not ever, which are extremely fun to play. Yet leave you somewhat disappointed. It’s just weird when you spend dozens of hours in the game, enjoy most of that time, wouldn’t really mind playing more, yet… Something feels off. I loved playing Dishonored 2 and it’s standalone DLC Death of the Outsider, I really did. And if you can get past the barely existent story and mood and just enjoy a great stealth or stealth/action, you will have a lot of great moments with these games. If you, however, wanted a good story to go along with it… Well, try getting Death of the Outsider at least, I suppose. I just… I wish I could’ve been able to recommend these games without any “buts” and “ifs”, they really could’ve achieved that…