Dishonored 2

Dishonored 2 pushes immersive-sim design a generation forward and adds one of the most cleverly built sets of levels in the genre's history. After a coup in Dunwall, the player chooses to play as Empress Emily Kaldwin or her father Corvo Attano, and travels to the southern city of Karnaca, where the threads of the conspiracy converge. Each character has their own set of supernatural powers: Corvo relies on the tried-and-tested Blink and time-stopping, while Emily has a reach that pulls enemies toward her or a power that links several victims to a single fate. The game can also be completed entirely without powers, a recognised challenge for veterans.

Freedom of approach remains the core of the game. Every mission can be played out quietly and without a single casualty, or as an all-out massacre, and the game responds with a chaos system that changes the city's mood, guard behaviour and the ending. The most frequently mentioned level is the Clockwork Mansion, a residence whose rooms mechanically rearrange at the flip of a lever, and the mission A Crack in the Slab, where the player switches between past and present and a single change in time transforms the whole house. Ideas like these raise the bar for mission design well above average and are still referenced today as textbook examples.

Karnaca is visually distinctive: Mediterranean light, dust, windmills and Art Nouveau metal details give the world a shape all its own, different from the gloom of Dunwall. The sound design works with creaking mechanisms and low tones that instantly reveal when the player has been spotted. On Xbox One the game runs decently, though the most open parts of the city occasionally strain the frame rate. Reception was very good, though sales fell short of expectations, often cited as the genre's sad fate as a whole. Today Dishonored 2 is a mandatory stop for anyone who loves games that reward patience, observation and their own ideas over a prescribed path.