The Outsider is in the details

Dishonored 2 is one of the most beautifully designed games I’ve ever played. Not just in terms of how it looks, but in the balance of the controls, the design of the levels, and in the curve in the difficulty that bends down into rests where you need them before swooping up into monstrous clockwork soldiers with four arms. It’s a game wrapped up in layers of itself, a particularly delicious onion of murder and betrayal.

The cherry on the artfully built sundae (taken with the understanding that I played the PS4 version, which functioned perfectly) is that care has gone into small details, so there is always something to look at no matter what odd corner of Karnaca you’ve stumbled into. There are beautiful posters advertising pear soda and rosewater jelly that are more carefully designed than some entire games are. Alongside them, and underneath the wanted posters for your player character, or the local gang leaders, is a dance card with a schedule for upcoming meetings. Possibly if you were able to find the location in game at the right time there would be scores of people practising the waltz. This does not seem outside the realms of possibility.

The character design has been pulled back from the old caricatured style with big hands and big heads, but every character still feels distinct, right down to the NPCs. When you look at them you can see almost every line on their faces. Mindy Blanchard, a tattoo artist and member of the Howlers street gang, is covered, arms and neck, with tattoos detailed enough to copy and have inked on yourself. You can pick out every stud on her waistcoat. On one mission you must distinguish between a target and his double. They look exactly the same, but if you loiter in the right place you can listen in to a conversation and find out the body double is a smoker. The NPCs that revealed this then talk about running away together, and embrace. They would do this whether you were still watching or not.

The NPCs all have little snippets of backstory attached like this, some hidden in notes, some spoken out loud when they think nobody is watching. The inventor Kirin Jindosh leaves passive aggressive notes for his staff, witches talk to themselves about what kind of gift they could make to earn favour. Other secrets you can glimpse through the insight of the Heart, a magical anchor for the spirit of the old Empress. The Heart will tell you secrets: a gang member collects gold teeth, a smuggler is thinking of cheating his business partners, a guard is always looking for the next act of brutality he can commit. The Heart might warn you. “He won’t hesitate to reach for his blade,” it whispers, mournfully. “Be careful.” When you’re sneaking around a building sometimes a servant will see you and say that it’s not their problem; others will scream and run for the guards.

The high chaos vs. low chaos mechanic (which changes the state of the world depending on how ruthless you are in your slaughter) has also returned in Dishonored 2. You might end up encountering more of the waspish Bloodflies and their enslaved nest keepers, or more rats down at street level, but your actions seem to cause some subtler ripples too. On a non-lethal playthrough I encountered some arguing traders down at the docks, who managed to calm down and settle up. On a lethal play through it escalated into a fight, with a length of lead pipe being swung around.

I hid from some guards in an abandoned apartment. There was no other way in or out, and in the bedroom there were two bodies, one stretched on the bed, the other on the floor. On a table was a note from a man to his brother. He’d given all his savings to a witch, in return for an incantation that he hoped would bring his lover back to life. It was an enterprise that had apparently failed, and there he lay. A self contained story within a self contained story, and one of many you can stumble upon. All layers of the onion that you might never reach.