Dishonored 2

Lore & Background

Ideas for Dishonored 2 began while developing the downloadable content of its predecessor, which spawned the decision to create a voice for Corvo Attano after he was a silent character in the first installment. The advancement of the timeline was brought about once Emily Kaldwin, a child in Dishonored, was proposed as a playable character. The game's aesthetic was influenced by paintings, sculptures, architecture, fashion, and technologies around the year 1851; set in the fictional city of Karnaca, based on the Cypriot city of Larnaca, it also drew inspiration from other Mediterranean countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain.

Voice actors include Rosario Dawson, Sam Rockwell, Robin Lord Taylor, Jamie Hector, Pedro Pascal, and Vincent D'Onofrio. The game introduces non-lethal combat moves and features a chaos system where killing characters destabilizes the world. Each level is intended to have a unique theme, such as a level with time distortion where the player can shift between the present and three years into the past. Both characters wield a pistol, crossbow, retractable blade, grenades, and mines, all upgradable via blueprints and black market shops.

Reader's Guide

Dishonored 2 received positive reviews, with praise directed at the improvements made since the first game, including more challenging stealth, the adaptability of Emily and Corvo's abilities to both play styles, the creative design of individual missions, the realization of the game's world, and the artificial intelligence. Criticism was directed at the storyline's lack of focus, while the PC version became subject to technical issues at launch. The game won Best Action/Adventure Game at the 2016 Game Awards and Costume Design at the 2017 NAVGTR Awards. It has since become regarded as one of the greatest games ever made. A standalone sequel, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, was released in 2017.

Did You Know?

• Players may choose to play as either Emily Kaldwin or Corvo Attano, each with their own array of supernatural abilities.
• The game's setting, Karnaca, was inspired by the Cypriot city of Larnaca and other Mediterranean countries.
• The chaos system procedurally assigns non-player characters as sympathetic, guilty, or murderous, affecting the amount of chaos gained from killing them.

Position in the Franchise

Dishonored 2 arrived in 2016 as the second narrative entry in a series that began with the 2012 original, a title crafted by Arkane Studios and brought to market by Bethesda Softworks. The first game had already cemented its reputation by sweeping major industry honors, collecting the 2012 Spike Video Game award for Best Action-Adventure Game and the 2013 BAFTA for Best Game, while also being repeatedly named the best action-adventure title of its year. Critics and players alike went on to cite it among the greatest video games ever produced. Entering as a direct narrative continuation, the sequel inherited a world and a cast of characters that had already captured a dedicated audience. The original's two-and-a-half-year production cycle, during which the setting evolved from medieval Japan and seventeenth-century London into the plague-stricken industrial city of Dunwall, demonstrated the studio's willingness to iterate and refine. That same creative ambition, combined with the franchise's established critical standing, positioned the 2016 release as a high-stakes follow-up expected to honor the narrative and mechanical foundations laid by its predecessor.

The Dishonored Universe

Dishonored 2 does not exist in isolation; it is one thread in an expanding fictional tapestry that has grown across multiple titles and decades of in-universe time. Alongside the 2016 sequel, the franchise includes Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, released in 2017, and the 2021 game Deathloop, which is set in the far future of the same shared world. This interconnected structure means that the narrative choices, characters, and cosmological elements introduced in the original 2012 game—such as the powerful being known as the Outsider, the resistance group called the Loyalists, and the bodyguard-turned-assassin Corvo Attano—carry weight across every subsequent entry. The universe's setting, Dunwall, a plague-ridden industrial metropolis drawing visual and atmospheric inspiration from late nineteenth-century London and Edinburgh, provides a consistent backdrop. The fact that the franchise spans from a 2012 launch on PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360, through 2015 next-generation ports, to 2016, 2017, and 2021 releases, underscores how the world has been treated as a living, evolving space rather than a single self-contained story.

Creative Heritage and Design Philosophy

The design DNA of Dishonored 2 is rooted in the development philosophy that shaped its predecessor. Arkane Studios spent two and a half years crafting the original, during which test players discovered ways to exploit available powers to produce unexpected outcomes. Rather than patching these discoveries out of existence, the design team chose to redesign levels to accommodate such emergent behavior, a principle that prioritized player creativity over rigid scripting. The original game's emphasis on multiple avenues of completion—stealth, direct combat, or non-lethal alternatives—along with a chaos system that tracked violence and modified the world without explicitly punishing any single playstyle, established a design language of freedom and consequence. Magical abilities were deliberately engineered to be combined in novel ways, and the game's four difficulty levels, checkpoint saves, and the Hound Pits pub as a narrative hub all contributed to a player-driven experience. The 2016 sequel, as a narrative continuation from the same studio and publisher, carries forward this commitment to letting the player's choices shape the story's direction and the world's response.

Thematic World and Narrative Foundation

The narrative foundation upon which Dishonored 2 builds is rich with thematic weight inherited from the 2012 original. Dunwall, the fictional industrial city at the heart of the story, is defined by plague and social stratification, its architecture and atmosphere evoking the soot-heavy streets of late nineteenth-century London and Edinburgh. The central conflict of the first game—Corvo Attano, a loyal bodyguard framed for the murder of the Empress of the Isles, forced into a life of vengeance—established a tone of political intrigue, personal betrayal, and moral ambiguity. The Outsider, a powerful supernatural being who grants magical abilities, and the Loyalists, a resistance movement fighting to reclaim the city, provided narrative anchors that extend beyond a single playthrough. The original's voice cast, featuring actors such as Susan Sarandon, Brad Dourif, Carrie Fisher, Michael Madsen, John Slattery, Lena Headey, and Chloë Grace Moretz, lent a level of dramatic gravitas to these characters. As a 2016 narrative sequel, Dishonored 2 extends this web of relationships, political tension, and supernatural conflict into new territory within the same established world.