Dishonored 1 is a fun game and far more than the sum of its parts. It has ok gameplay that while fun, can't fully hold up a game all on its own, but it supplements it with amazing worldbuilding, fantastic art direction, excellent writing and unbelievable level design allowing said gameplay to shine far more than it otherwise would be able to in another game, and the knife of dunwall expands on those aspects.
Dishonored as a franchise had set itself up in a way that allowed to go only up for that point, they had created an intresting, a solid gameplay foundation, a superb art direction, and the lore of the game and its powers allowed them to expand on basically every single aspect.
So its all the more shocking when dishonored 2 ended up being the wet fart that it was. For some god forsaken reason they hired anita sarkeesian as a councilor, a literal con artist that knows nothing about videogames to advice them.
As a result the story was downgraded to absolute dogshit. They pulled a fucking palpatine, brought back a villain that had a satisfying and beyond fucking conclusive end ruining (spoiler)'s redemption in the process. At that point the game was already iredeemable in my eyes.
They turned emily into a lesbian, showing that she cares more about getting her pussy wet than not causing a succession crisis, and for some god forsaken reason decided to make 2 seperate campaigns as "alternative timelines" only 1 of which is canon which is beyond fucking retarded.
Corvo and Emily have 2 seperate power sets, but because you can play the campaign with both, that means the puzzles and levels have to be solvable by both, ergo you can't actually have any puzzles that require use of specific powers*** meaning the levels are really fucking shit.
Here's how a competent developer would do it. Some levels are for corvo, some for emily, and the levels are designed to take advantage of one another's powerset, instead of wasting twice the effort for half the results.
Level design/writing and general creativity has also been vastly downgraded. The clockwork mansion is a wet fart at best and the levels are bland and forgetable.
Ontop of that the dishonored world, canonically composed of 4 islands based on greece, ireland, england and russia, have been "culturally enriched" with something like 40% of the population now speaking ebonics and half the police force now being women.
The powers system is still overly simplistic and hasn't significantly changed from the first game either, most powers are alt versions of the old ones and you can still only use 1 power at a time and the dogshit fucking chaos system that discourages you from using all the fun powers is STILL in.
The overal plot in general is shit. Palpatine is back, he walks in the senate and declares himself emperor, everyone agrees for some reason, he tries to repeat his plan from the first game (despite already being emperor so what is even the point????) you knock him out, he wakes up confused and he runs headfirst into a Wile E. Coyote wall and dies. (im not joking look up the ending if you dont mind spoilers from the first game)
The only praise I can give dishonored 2 is that the time traveling mansion level is mindblowingly fucking good and it SHOCKS me that a gem this high quality exists in that ocean of this much shit.
***Then came death of the outsider which was a double edged sword. You start with all the powers and unlimited mana meaning that puzzles now can and DO incorporate powers making them far more intresting and complex, the chaos system is gone meaning you can use your toys, and level design is fun and intresting again giving you multiple legitimate and creative solutions and approaches to problems.
Which makes it even sadder that writing craters even harder. The protagonist is now the shaniqua traitor from the first game who uses black grillboss power to kill the fucking outsider that was just some boy a bunch of cultists stabbed with a magic dagger??? Honestly just let it fucking die already, they mangled the writing so bad it hurts.
Doesn't help that death of the outsider also retcons the time travel level, undoing the best level in the game.
Fun fact.
First game, white male protagonist: Fully masked.
Second game, white female protagonist: Only half of the face is masked.
Third game, Blxck female protagonist: Face fully visible.
Mhm. Right. Coincidence, of course.
When I heard that dishonored 3 was in development my reaction wasn't hype, it was dread, because I'm just afraid of how much more they'll mangle the characters, the world and the story. They already brought palpatine back, made emily a lesbian and Blxcked half the population.
Just let it fucking die, please.
EDIT: Oh and the outsider, I forgot about the outsider. They butchered what made him intresting.
In the first game the outsider was bordering a lovecraft entity. Some sort of... being... obviously not human but wearing human skin to interact with you, completely apathetic, so old he's bored out of his mind and only gives you powers to fuck shit up because he's looking for entertainment.
In the second game they made him a tryhard desperate for you to like him. In the first game he was standing still, hovering above the ground with arms crossed speaking in monotone to give you his thoughts, talking to you in a matter of fact way.
In the second game he teleports all around while doing jojo poses as if he's trying to impress you. "Am I cool yet? Look how quirky I am lol, I teleport and sit at random places, yeah I'm like that. I'm too real for you buddy", while suddently being an agent of justice that helps the downtroden, and the apathy in this voice is gone, and he spends half the dialogue whinning.
He went from an arcane patron/uncaring malevolence to someone's shitty hot topic goth OC character.
Wtf is this, who wrote this?
The original outsider inspired people to try and connect the dots in the lore. They were suspecting that he was one of the ancient leviathans in the ocean projecting its conciousness through the void, an entity older than humanity itself, but nah, he's just a boy stabbed with a ritual dagger LOL
