Dishonored 2‘s creative lead Harvey Smith has revealed some interesting details about the game’s story, specifically how player choice impacts the story, and how because of this players may end up missing out on much of the game’s content.

We already knew Dishonored 2’s story can be effected by player choices, including whether the player chooses to play as Emily or Corvo, what kind of a chaos-ending they stride for, and how much they interact with The Outsider.

The first game had all this, but the sequel has raised the stakes Smith has revealed, suggesting players must play multiple playthroughs to really gather all the story content on offer.

“You probably only see 25% of the game if you play it once,” Smith told Finder.

“Every time you play Dishonored 2 it is different as you find different paths, buy different powers, go high or low chaos and play as Corvo or Emily. Also, when The Outsider offers you his mark, you may say no.”

“So previously some people played once, some people played many times, but in Dishonored 2 there is even more reason to play it again.”

Smith went on to further stress how players won’t fully understand the story until they play it twice, citing all the missable conversations, lore to be read, playstyle decisions to be made, and all the powers you will miss buying because there aren’t enough runes to buy all of them in a single playthrough.

Lastly, Smith cleared up the confusion over how players will be choosing their protagonist.

“At the beginning of the game you play as Emily for a moment; so you see Emily no matter what. Then there is a branching moment and you choose either Corvo or Emily, and you are stuck with that for the rest of the game. So you could be Emily all the way to the end, improving her powers and investing in low or high chaos, or you could be Corvo. And the other character doesn’t walk along with you or anything like that; you leave them behind. So you are committed to one or the other.”

Dishonored 2 is set to release November 11th for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

My Opinion:

Dishonored 2 is easily my most anticipated game for the remainder of 2016. And while I understand developers are always trying to find ways for gamers to not just trade in their game upon completion, I’m not really keen on this whole you have to play twice to fully understand the story idea. In a narrative driven game it’s fine, but it doesn’t feel right here. Alas, I will be playing through at least twice anyway., but only because I absolutely adore this series.

---

Tyler Fischer is a Senior Writer for MONG who plays video games when he’s not busy researching alien conspiracy theories at 2AM. You can find him on Twitter.