dishonored 2 game review

Dishonored 2 - Our test of the PS4 and Xbox One versions

In 2012, Arkane Studios cracked the excellent Dishonored, an action and infiltration title with gameplay as refined as working on its graphic universe. Four years after the first murderous outings of its hero Corvo Attano, the Lyonnais studio is trying in this month of November 2016 to the perilous exercise of the suite with Dishonored 2. If this second part takes again the bases of its predecessor, it intends far surpass it in terms of popularity with players. More beautiful ? More ambitious? Smarter ? Will this new opus prove to be worthy of our great expectations? Test response without further delay.

HUNTED FROM DUNWALL ...

Just a reminder of the facts: Dishonored, the first of its name, started out after returning from a diplomatic trip abroad, the royal protector Corvo Attano, helplessly witnessed the murder of Jessamine Kaldwin, Empress of the Kingdom of the Islands. Falsely accused of having committed this sordid act, caught in the clutches of a plot to depose power, our unfortunate protagonist narrowly escaped the death penalty helped by a group of Loyalists. Invested in new powers conferred by the mysterious Outsider, the player embodied a Corvo in search of revenge, determined to restore the truth and save his daughter Emily.

The script of Dishonored 2 takes place fifteen years after the events of the first episode, while Emily, the new Empress of her state, faces an unprecedented crisis in the city of Dunwall. An enigmatic murderer eliminates one by one the detractors of his reign in order to sow doubt in the minds of the people. The action of the game begins as father and daughter prepare to commemorate the death of Jessamine in the royal palace. It was then that the procession of the Duke of Serkonos Luca Abele and the dangerous Delilah burst in. Invoking a direct family link with the royal family, this enigmatic woman shows us the extent of her powers and seizes the throne before our helpless eyes.

CORVO OR EMILY, MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Here the player will make his first important choice: that of the character with whom he wishes to end the adventure. If it is possible to embody this good old Corvo and to stack up for a new session of Blink and mental controls, we can now play in Emily's shoes to see that the young woman has been well trained in combat by his father. Many players will choose their new character because of his unique abilities and his ability to refresh the game experience. On this point, we strongly advise you to start the adventure on the side of the “initiation” menu in order to browse a very successful little tutorial to better understand the father / daughter relationship of the two characters.

If Dishonored 2 launches the intricacies of its intrigue in Dunwall, Emily or Corvo quickly take off for the South and more particularly the city of Karnaca on the island of Serkonos, place where Corvo grew up. This is where we will hunt down the conspirators behind the coup before tackling the mysterious Delilah. This suite takes up the structure of its predecessor and articulates its progress around neutralization missions interspersed with phases where the player will return to his “hideout”. It is now on a ship, the Dreadful Wale, that you will launch most of your missions in different districts of Karnaca. And what neighborhoods!

KARNACA WELL HOLD!

The essence of Dishonored gameplay is to give the player the ability to view the game from the angle of their choice. Total stealth without any lethal action, discreet but deadly infiltration, more muscular approach to the situation, Arkane Studios puts in our hands a panel of tools adapted to this philosophy and associates it with a whole level design thought around this sovereign principle of freedom. One thing jumps out at us from the first missions under the Karnaca sun; in addition to the irresistible beauty of the place, each district of the city offers a playground so vast that it would almost make you dizzy in the surroundings of the first part! Backdoors, roofs to climb on, whole buildings to visit, the possibilities of approaching a goal are as numerous as your imagination and your abilities can envisage. Especially since each area is full of secrets to unearth, runes or charms of bones necessary for the evolution of talents, combinations of safes or NPCs capable of providing us with information on alternative ways of approaching missions. .

The path between a point A and a point B is rarely a straight line in Dishonored 2. As the player progresses towards his objective, the exploration opportunities multiply at every moment on his route, transforming the minutes of discovery into hours of exploration without weariness ever coming to the fore. Because if we could fear a certain nostalgia for the mythical streets of Dunwall, it is clear that the work of artists and level-designers on the city of Karnaca has managed to amaze us with its extreme consistency and its constant attention to detail. . The neo-Victorian aesthetic of the first opus is accompanied here by new colonial, Cuban or even art deco architectural influences from the turn of the century. Tables, sketches, newspapers to consult, NPCs to listen to and watch live, all sectors transpire handmade and each interior literally swarms with details contributing to the realism of the whole. Majestic, sunny, exuberant, the city / character of Karnaca also reserves its shade with the proliferation of nests of blood flies, these insects engorged with hemoglobin replacing for the occasion the rats carrying plague of Dishonored 1 whose honeycombed hives give an organic and sordid appearance to many places.

NEIGHBORHOOD LIFE

Arkane’s desire to give each mission a special atmosphere capable of capturing the mind of the player sweating in every corner. This is why each district benefits from an ultra-neat artistic direction combined with one or more strong gimmicks. Without revealing too much, we will think here of the engineering prowess of the mansion of the inventor Kirin Jindosh where the layout of the premises is transformed before our eyes in a graceful ballet of mechanical cogs. And how can we not cite the dust-saturated gusts of wind from the mining sector which contribute as much to the atmosphere of the sector as to the gameplay of the sequence. We also think of this vast and memorable home in which time bends to our will to offer us a visual and technical gem, a true masterpiece of level construction.

The only downside, the technical side of this suite reveals many gaps at the time of writing. Developed using a revamped version of the id Tech 5 engine (dubbed Void Engine for the occasion), Dishonored 2 is paying the price for the youth of its technology. Unstable performance, capricious framerate, delay in displaying the full resolution of certain textures, pronounced aliasing or slightly blurred background; despite a Day One patch larger than 9 GB, the current state of the game will leave some players on the shelf pending the upcoming arrival of a patch promised by Bethesda and Arkane. Despite these launching concerns, the new baby from the Lyonnais studio displays a technical rendering that matches the ambition of its artistic teams with successful character modeling accompanied by striking lighting effects. If the game is not a technical jewel, it more than largely compensates for its weaknesses by an impression of evolving in an artwork, a work of creator rich in details where a good part of the narration is transmitted by a coherent environment endowed with 'a real character.

SEE EMILY PLAY

In the midst of this maze of branches and hidden passages, the player has a grasped grip like a Swiss watch from the first part of the game. This is the strength of Dishonored and Arkane, achieving on an equal footing artistic ambitions and almost flawless gameplay. We have gone through the adventure in both Emily and Corvo's skin in order to give you our feelings about these two characters. In fact, playing one or the other will allow the player to experience two slightly different story-telling adventures. Dialogues, readings and other environmental interactions change depending on your initial choice. However, the most marked difference lies in the abilities of the two characters. If Corvo keeps his iconic Blink (or Blink in English) to teleport as he pleases, his daughter has a power called Long range acting like a grappling hook capable of towing it to a given point. The rest of his abilities differ completely from those of his father to the delight of replayers.

A key element of his kit, the Domino talent makes it possible to link several targets together to make them suffer the same fate. Target, link, kill or fall asleep, and watch your opponents fall in clusters! The murderous empress can also change into a creeping shadow in order to sneak more discreetly under the noses of her opponents, or even grab them by the feet to eliminate them dramatically. Once again, the Arkane studio proves to us that first-person undercover action is a genre it has mastered. The engine offers convincing attack animations, very good feelings of hand-to-hand duel and bloody finish moves. Whether you choose a discreet approach or a more refined style, your actions will be constantly evaluated by the game in order to present you with a table of statistics at the end of the mission. Perfectionist amateurs (and there are many!) Will often prefer total infiltration in order to obtain the very gratifying success "no detection, no murder".

Either way, Dishonored 2 has a toolbox and possibilities of approach wide enough to meet all your gameplay desires. Whether you decide to eliminate everyone or make no victims during the entire game, you will find a style of play that suits your desires. In this regard, we welcome the arrival of a powerless mode that the player can select very early in the game when he first meets the Outsider. This constrained approach, combined with the specific powers of the two characters gives Dishonored 2 a special mention in terms of replayability. Allow a little over 15 hours to complete it without really exploring everything and much more if you want to discover everything.

À LA CARTE EVOLUTIONS

The two characters always have different accessories to accompany them on the ground. Blade in left hand to attack, counter and retaliate, the duo of assassins is now given the ability to neutralize an opponent without killing him after a successful parade, practical in the context of an offensive and non-lethal run. Pistol, grenades, mines, crossbow equipped with different tiles (blinding, anesthetics, incapacitating, etc.), if the range of tools has changed little since the first part, it completes a gameplay that is as solid as it is fluid. The specific talent tree of Emily and Corvo acquires new developments capable of modifying the effects or the power of certain powers. The charms of bone, more numerous and varied than in the past, open the way to further personalization of the gaming experience. Especially since we can now invest part of his skill points in a talent allowing you to make your own charms. With powerful bonuses, they can nevertheless inherit penalties with which you will have to deal with if you want to equip them.

However, don't believe that these new talent evolutions transform the player into a super assassin capable of eliminating all the opponents of an area in a snap of his fingers. To counterbalance a faster rise in power than in the first shutter, Arkane equips our adversaries with a refined artificial intelligence capable of detecting us at a good distance as soon as the difficulty of the game is set to difficult. If the simple guard does not generally pose any major concern, the regrouping of militias, the ambushes of bandits and the capacity of certain NPCs to give the alert in the event of detection oblige to consider each situation from different angles before rushing headlong lowered. We will also compose with new casting heads like these deadly mechanical units equipped with presence detector or with the rapid appearance of witches and other esoteric creatures capable of detecting you at the slightest crooked step. Only downside here, the last levels of the game are struggling to align a panel of enemies able to compensate for our advance in the tree of powers.

The fixed store of this good old Piero Joplin from Dishonored 1 gives way here to a series of clandestine counters that you will have to find in the different districts of the city. One improves his weapons there thanks to the plans recovered during the explorations. Generally speaking, this suite will put your research skills to the test with its artifacts and damn bonuses well hidden in the background.

TOTAL IMMERSION

Free to act, create and impose the gameplay rules of his choice, the player evolves within a city full of life. If the grayish alleys of Dunwall were deserted because of the plague epidemic, Karnaca is full of NPCs as capable of revealing some precious information to us as of betraying us. Going through the levels in a straight line is therefore clearly not an advisable approach. It is necessary to take the time to search, not to be afraid of failing and to reload your backup regularly to see the tremendous coherence of the world painted by the Lyonnais studio.

To reinforce this immersion, Corvo and Emily endowed themselves with full vocal dubbing, a change in size compared to the first opus where the masked assassin was silent. Arkane takes advantage of this loosened language to give more body to a scenario which, without spoiler, reserves us a good number of tasty moments staged by different cutscenes or returns in the great Void with the Outsider. The French version of the title, however, fails to match the convincing interpretation of English-speaking comedians. Dubbed by Stephen Russell (Fallout 3, System Shock 2, Thief, etc.), Corvo is much more successful in the language of Shakespeare. On the other hand, count on a soundtrack with onions with the sounds worthy of an episode of Sherlock and on high-quality sound effects to finish wrapping the very good presentation of the game.

The notes
+ Positive points
A masterful artistic direction!
Karnaca, a lively city full of personality
An example in terms of level design
The choice to give the places visited their own personality
Still solid gameplay
The variety of approaches gives the whole a very good replayability
Secrets that drive the player to explore the vast areas of the game
Emily and Corvo, two assassins, two variations of gameplay
English dubbing, soundtrack
Successful narration
-Negative points
Technical gaps at launch (framerate, aliasing)
A little blurry from a distance
French dubbing perfectible
Slight lack of challenge at the end of the game

Dishonored 2 represents in our eyes the very archetype of the successful sequel. If it takes over most of the proven mechanics of the first part, the game is in every way more successful and more mastered than its predecessor. Among its most dazzling successes, its level design more sprawling than ever offers the player a choice field to give free rein to his creativity. Whether you choose the stealthy approach or the strong way, Corvo and Emily both offer an immediate and devilishly enjoyable grip. Beautiful as a masterpiece, not stingy in detail, the new environments of Karnaca exceed all our expectations and make this Dishonored 2 one of the new references in the field of undercover action. Too bad that the framerate does not hold up enough at the moment on consoles.