Delilah claims that Jessamine broke something and blamed her for it, for which Delilah was beaten, and then her mother was fired and they were thrown out into the street. Was Jessamine really so cruel (it's doubtful she would have faced any serious consequences, so if she did do this, it was likely For the Evulz), or is Delilah lying?
Or is she so insane that she's rewritten history in her own mind?
Jessamine was, at the time, a young child who, afraid to get in trouble, panicked and did a cowardly thing, blaming her friend/sister instead. But while Delilah blames Jessamine for her violent beating and the dismissal of her mother, it's made very clear that the guard-captain who interrogated them was the one who did those things. For all Delilah knows, Jessamine was horrified by the consequences and might even have tried to stop it if she'd known. Despite what Delilah thinks, there is actually a possibility other than that Jessamine was a two-faced lying coward. She was a little girl who made a single, selfish mistake.
Another point to consider is that while Jessamine did make a mistake in blaming Delilah, the result - beaten and thrown out - could be laid upon the feet of the Spymaster and of Euhorn Kaldwin himself. It could be that Euhorn had been looking for an excuse to kick Delilah and her mother out of the Tower this entire time and the whole broken priceless heirloom thing was just the excuse they were looking for. Note how Euhorn is uncomfortable at Delilah's insistence on being recognized and brought to court and the fact that he did little to make Delilah and her mother's life comfortable while working at the Tower. Delilah, having a somewhat stunted maturity, is hyper-focused on blaming Jessamine, when in fact, it could have been anything that led to her violent dismissal and abandonment because Euhorn wanted them gone.
Yet another thing to consider: If what Delilah said about Jessamine was true, then was Jessamine even aware of what harsh punishments would happen to Delilah and her mother when Jessamine laid the blame on them? Or did she maybe expect Delilah to get off with a slap on the wrist, since that’s more-or-less what would’ve happened to Jessamine herself if she had taken the blame instead? And after Delilah and her mother got kicked out, did Jessamine realize what she had done, thus leading her to learn from her mistakes and becoming the better person that we saw in the first game?
At the end of a High Chaos playthrough, Emily/Corvo can choose to leave the other petrified in marble and take the throne without them. Are they power-hungry and unwilling to share the throne even with their own family? Paranoid that the other would try to overthrow them for their cruelty? Or too ashamed to let the other see what they've become?
Anti-Climax Boss: The other empowered targets tend to go down quickly in straight combat. The Crown Killer can be killed in one stab like any normal enemy and is only immune to non-lethal takedowns, Breanna Ashworth is a slightly tougher reskin of a standard witch enemy (with a one-shot protection against ranged attacks), and Paolo's abilities are more defensive than offensive. Even Delilah's Final Boss battle wraps up quickly once you've disabled her immortality and destroyed her set of clones.
Awesome Art: The aesthetics of Dishonored 2 are on a level greater than usual in a video game. Its digital art direction, prop design, and wonderful incorporation of that in thematically dense levels, as well as the Scenery Porn of whole houses and locales, makes it one of the most visually rich games of the contemporary era.
Broken Base: Fans are torn over the new voice for the Outsider, as well as the filters applied to it to make it seem more otherworldly. There's also the more mysterious characterization, contrary to the original's bored, indifferent Humans Are the Real Monsters attitude. Either it's a perfectly fitting evolution of the character or the voice makes him too weird, even by the series' standards. A smaller camp doesn't care either way.
Contested Sequel: A mechanically superior sequel, with a greater atmosphere, better combat, and social density in the original, with possibly greater amounts of replay value, or a glorified retread of the original game with no majorly different plot twists tied together with a shoddy PC port at launch? Take your pick. Outside of the PC port, the fans agree that the gameplay is better, but not the story, so your opinion on the subject will probably depend on if you like gameplay or story more.
Creepy Awesome: Kirin Jindosh is young, arrogant, and a little malevolent, but he's certainly earned his arrogance thanks to the awesomeness of his Clockwork Soldier designs, and the jawdropping Clockwork Mansion he designs.
Granted, the game doesn't recognize it as an unique occurence, but you can indirectly eat Paolonote Killing/KO-ing Paolo turns him into albino rats, which are edible when a certain bonecharm is equipped. Not only is the Loophole Abuse already kind of funny on itself, but the fact that the game plays the "crunch" sound effect for every rat you consume turns the whole thing from a simple Good Bad Bug into some fine, absurdist Black Comedy.
The gore system is very over-the-top thanks to the guards being Made of Plasticine; sure, seeing someone get mauled in combat can be nightmarish, but when a guard is torn in half upon touching a waist-high wall after being hit by upgraded Windblast or when an entire group of guards is turned into giblet rain after you use Blink Assault to Sparta-kick a guard into a pile of whale-oil barrels next to them, it's so absurd it's hard to feel squicked by it.
Demonic Spiders: Clockwork Soldiers. Very difficult to sneak up on, as they have vision in both the front and the back (but not the side, interestingly enough). They avert Cranial Processing Unit, so cutting off their head doesn't kill them, it just makes them rely on sound and attack anything that makes a noise. Rewire tools do much of the same. They can't be knocked out because they're not organic, and the prompt to execute them is very finicky. They also do heavy damage, can close the distance to melee range very quickly with a huge long leap, and can take out Corvo or Emily in about three hits without any upgrades. They even have a ranged electrical shock attack they can use if they can see you but not reach you. Thankfully, there are only between eight to ten in the whole game on a low chaos playthrough.
Fanfic Fuel: While grossly out of character for them, Corvo and/or Emily become tyrants after a High Chaos run leaves an interesting plotline regarding a new protagonist going up against them.
While it is hard to justify putting one of the powers here (as they are meant to be extremely overpowered), both characters get abilities that are powerful enough that you'll barely need to use anything else once you get them.
Emily's Domino power is probably the best ability she has. It allows you to "bind the fates" of two people (what she does to one is inflicted on the other) which is often enough to make the difference between an alarm and a stealth run. The power has a large amount of flexibility, and notably only consumes mana upon proccing the effect, meaning Emily can take her time choosing how best to dispose of her targets without wasting resources. Better yet, Domino can be upgraded to a maximum linking of four targets at once; Emily will rarely see more than four guards patrolling at any given time, and she can take them all out in one stroke. The best part is that it can be used lethally or non-lethally, making it useful even on a non-lethal run.
For Corvo, it's Bend Time. This power was broken in the first Dishonored, and it's just as broken here. When fully upgraded, this outright stops time for ten seconds, allowing you to move freely through the world without fear of detection or interruption. Got a Wall of Light in the way? Have a bunch of enemies that you'll never sneak past without one spotting you? Need to kill or knock out a few targets all at once? Bend Time is your answer. There's nothing that can counter this power, nothing that can reduce its effectiveness, and no way to interrupt it once it's on. Bend Time costs a grand total of fourteen runes to fully upgrade, but once you've got it, you'll break the game's difficulty over your knee.
Bonecharm Crafting, to a degree. Whilst you can't learn special traits from Black or Corrupted Bonecharms, you can still stack many other traits up to four times; a custom-made Strong Arms charm, for instance, will allow you to choke out enemies in half the usual time, giving you that much less time to be detected in stealth or to nonlethally dispatch enemies when in combat.
Stun Mines can be upgraded to instantly knock out three enemies, and also to chain from target to target allowing them to effortlessly deal with entire groups of enemies.
You get the "Eureka" achievement for opening the Jindosh Lock without learning the solution first. The puzzle is a randomized variation of the Zebra Puzzle, where the setup is that there are five women, each with a unique heirloom, and you have to figure out who owns them. Despite its intimidating setup, the puzzle has only has 120 solutions (five-factorial, or 5*4*3*2*1 = 120). So if even you don't read the hints, it takes sixty attempts (on average) to brute-force it. If you read the hints, you'll know who owns at least one of the heirlooms, meaning that there are only 24 (four-factorial) possible options remaining, which should be easy to brute-force.
So [character] showed off a prized [heirloom], at which the lady from [city] scoffed, saying it was no match for her [heirloom].
At one point you can find a letter from Delilah to Jindosh, containing a phrase that readers of Shakespeare's Hamlet will surely recognize:
Delilah: There are more things in the endless black Void, Kirin Jindosh, then are dreamt of in your natural philosophy.note There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Ho Yay: Aramis Stilton and the former Duke are implied to have had a relationship before the Duke's death - there are many references to how close they were, a note you can find has Stilton indicate he's gay (or at least has no interest in women as he refers to one trying to hit on him as "missing the obvious"), the heart can later confirm that he was in love with Theodanis (leaving it only a matter of whether this was one sided or not), and Stilton's bed in his destroyed mansion has clothes laid out with the Duke's portrait on the pillow. Word of God confirms they were indeed in a relationship.
Delilah and Breanna, though it is more from Breanna's side; Delilah's feelings are more ambiguous.
Emily and Alexi. They are noted to be childhood friends and one of the first scenes of the game is Emily confiding in Alexi about being Empress. Alexi is also more relieved and relatively calmer if she sees Emily escape, telling her to get out of Dunwall before bleeding out, Emily clearly distraught by her death. If Alexi sees Corvo instead, she tells him the same and begs him to save Emily before dying.
Emily's love interest Wyman is left without a stated gender, meaning the player can decide for themselves whether Wyman is a man or a woman.
I Knew It!: Lots of fans of the first game suspected that Corvo was Emily's father, which promotion for the second game confirmed.
The reveal that Meagan Foster is Billie Lurk surprised no-one who played Knife of Dunwall.
It's Short, So It Sucks!: This was a complaint with the first Dishonored as well. The length of the actual time to complete a playthrough does not take into account for its sheer density, its side missions, collectibles, and the back-and-forth traversal needed to find the bonecharms and runes. In addition, the games are intentionally short to allow for considerable Replay Value (especially with two protagonists with entirely different skillsets, let alone a second playthrough that allows all powers for both protagonists).
The finale is a virtual replay of the Daud DLC where a battle takes place in a Void/Painting realm and the low-chaos ending has Delilah once again trapped in a painting. The fact that she worked her way out of that prison the first time around makes this resolution especially unsatisfying to some.
The overall plot, as pointed out by the Outsider, is virtually identical to the plot of the first game: the rightful empress is deposed and usurped by a conspiracy, whose members are dealt with one by one over the course of the game.
Last Lousy Point: On a no powers run every single collectable is still obtainable with enough ingenuity apart from one, a bone charm on top of Addermire's tower.
Lost in Medias Res: A lot happens in the first cutscene. After an Intro Dump explaining the events of the last game and the Crown Killer murders, we get a short conversation about Jessamine before the Duke and Delilah rock up, usurp the throne and have Ramsey lock you in a prison. Even if you played Dishonored 1's DLC and know who Delilah is there's a lot to take in.
Memetic Mutation: “WELCOME TO THE FINAL MYSTERY, JINDOSH.”Explanation Corvo’s Bond One-Liner after killing Kirin Jindosh. Made popular by this fan video which demonstrates various ways to kill Jindosh; the creator left Corvo’s one-liner in for almost every clip, leading to it being repeated endlessly. Not helped by Stephen Russell’s performance of the line.
Moral Event Horizon: In a High Chaos playthrough, Corvo and Emily will cross this if they decide not to save the other from their petrified state, proving that the only thing they care about now is power.
Narm: Some reviews have stated Stephen Russell's performance as Corvo as jarringly cartoonish compared to how restrained the rest of the game's voice acting has been.
The player eventually gets to witness the experience that left Aramis Stilton a broken wreck, namely watching Delilah get summoned out of thin air and placing her essence in a statue. The experience is not very dramatic when viewed from the outside and considering the other people present are unphased it comes across as if Aramis is just massively overreacting.
Nausea Fuel: The trailer shows off a human corpse with very large holes in it being inhabited by swarms of insects called "Bloodflies." Yep, corpses that have been turned into insect hives with very large holes. That has to be enough to sicken some people.
Even worse, they don't always wait til you're dead. According to the developer, some people are walking around with those things inside them! And as if that wasn't enough, they can have said host attack those who come near their nests.
Play the Game, Skip the Story: The game's plot is straightforward and the game really works in terms of level design, gameplay and presentation. This was also present in the first game as well, and more or less a general characteristic of games with multiple choices and pathways (which demand a simple plot and situation to accommodate multiple variations). Some fans may also think like this because while they see this game’s gameplay and combat as much better than in the first game, they believe that the first game has a better story and see this game’s story as just being a re-thread of the first one.
Dishonored 2 is up there with No Man's Sky, Hitman (2016) and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for one of the poorest AAA PC launches of 2016. Along with a veritable host of other strange issues like rapidly fluctuating framerates regardless of your rig or settings, weird mousesmoothing that's turned on by default and not looking good enough to justify its technical issues. Various patches have been released to fix these issues, though there are still more than a few having problems.
The performance issues mainly plagued users with an AMD GPU, whereas user with an up-to-date, even mid-tier, NVIDIA GPU and drivers were mostly unaffected. This tended to be a common issue with games using id Tech 5, which Dishonored 2's Void Engine was based on.
Self-Imposed Challenge: In a new gameplay style called "Flesh and Steel", you can reject the Outsider's gifts at the beginning of the game, playing the entire game on a No Magic run.
While not requiring any particular skill to acquire, the Songs of Serkonos achievement is a huge pain to unlock. It requires the player to simply hear songs from three musical duos in Serkonos in Missions 2, 6, and 8. However, the duo will not appear in mission 8 if the player has been robbing black market stores, as the area that would normally include the duo will host a Howler ambush instead. There's no indication at all these are connected in any way; a player robbing the stores for coins/supplies would never realize that the final duo is supposed to be there. In addition, the trigger for actually "hearing" the song is still unclear, some say you have to listen to the whole song, while others insist that merely listening for a few seconds will do the trick.
The "Royal Spymaster" achievement requires you to keep track of and collect every bit of lore on the Dreadful Wale as it updates over the course of the game. This includes every in-game lore book, every note, and so on. It's easy to miss and at times a little like finding a needle-in-a-haystack.
While "Well Funded" is not too difficult if you know the levels, the easiest way to do it consists of searching every nook and cranny for loot with upgraded Dark Vision until you start hating the concept of sepia. Fortunately, you're allowed to spend money, the total cash you've collected on a playthrough is listed in the stats ("60% of the game's loot" equals 18 000 coin, no matter what way it's obtained), and an observant player can gain the amount before leaving Dust District.
Mindy Blanchard has a surprisingly deep story for a character that appears for maybe five minutes total in the game. She's the second-in-command of the Howlers, and a transgender tattoo artist who is implied to be attempting to hand-craft an Outsider's Mark for herself for unknown reasons. When you meet her, she has you rob a corpse at least in part so she can copy the tattoo designs. If you side with the Howlers in the Dust District, she offers to ink you up some time, but this is essentially all of her interactions.
The Crown Killer, a Jack the Ripper-esque serial killer built up as an Evil Counterpart to the player, is dispatched in the game's third level and is the second target overall. While she's immune to nonlethal techniques, this is only a hindrance during a Low Chaos playthrough, and a player using lethal force can dispatch her in seconds with any execution move; a far cry from the duel with Daud near the end of Dishonored.
Even for the Low Chaos route, the Crown Killer is contained to a single, isolated area in the back halls of Addermire, aimlessly pacing back and forth along a single balcony, despite supposedly "hunting" the player. The trip to create the cure for the Crown Killer's Psycho Serum would've made for an interesting game of cat-and-mouse, had this superhuman lunatic made any effort to stalk the player through the rest of the building. But they don't; the Crown Killer just sits in one room until you're ready to confront them.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A huge part of the early narrative hinges on the Crown Killer, a brutal Serial Killer whose assassinations of Emily's political rivals and critics build the suspicion against her needed for Delilah and the Duke to pull their Frame-Up and dethrone her. The idea of a Psycho for Hire stealthily assassinating important figures for the villains' ends is a tantalizing one with a lot of narrative potential and could have been the sequel's Daud figure. Many players expected a chained series of encounters in multiple missions. Instead, the Crown Killer is barely a Disc-One Final Boss, being the first target in Karnaca. She is revealed to be an Ax-CrazySplit Personality of an otherwise kind doctor forced to commit the killings by the Duke, with limited special powers, and she can either be killed in one hit like any other human target or spared by retrieving a cure for her madness from another doctor's office. Also qualifies as They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character.
The Woobie: Aramis Stilton, mining magnate with blue-collar origins and rare Benevolent Boss in the setting, watches his paramour Duke Theo Abele's life work undone by Abele's vicious idiot son, and is a broken shell after seeing the Void during the fateful séance. Poor guy just wanted to fit in with the elite crowd. Lucky him that you can Set Right What Once Went Wrong by using time travel to knock him out, making it so he doesn't Go Mad from the Revelation. This not only improves Stilton's life, but it makes the Dust District and the silver mines thereof a better place for everyone.
note . Not only is the Loophole Abuse already kind of funny on itself, but the fact that the game plays the "crunch" sound effect for every rat you consume turns the whole thing from a simple Good Bad Bug into some fine, absurdist Black Comedy.