Dishonored 2 [PC]

swaaye

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Anyone playing Dishonored 2? This is probably the year's highlight for me. It has performance issues but the gameplay is an impressive next step compared to the original. Visuals are often stunning and the audio is smart and helps immersion, as usual for an Arkane title. It feels and plays quite similarly even with a total tech overhaul. Maybe the best effort yet at a game that you can complete with numerous approaches. You can even go entirely without the magic.

The engine is said to be only 20% idTech5. It certainly behaves differently than say Wolf New Order. No pop in. It's using D3D like Evil Within. Game is relatively smaller too at under 40GB. So the engine is a bit mysterious. Unfortunately they seem to need to improve its performance characteristics a bit. Scaling across detail settings is poor.

As of 11/21, they are on a second beta patch which adds some bug fixes and performance tweaks. They've added options for TXAA sharpness, adaptive resolution behavior, and valuable triple buffering. I've been playing on a few different machines, all with GM204 graphics. It runs generally well. I think you need more than 8GB system RAM though or you can run into swapping issues.
 
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I've been hearing that gameplay is mostly just more of the same. How is it different? Liked the first one, so a bit curious on this. I'm waiting until bugs and performance are taken care of before I seriously consider getting the game.

Regards,
SB
 
I think it is mostly about refinement. It plays very similarly but there are little tweaks here and there that make it more entertaining. It's just a well-tuned game they have made, from the gameplay standpoint. I'm not killing anyone so I can't say anything about combat specifically. Stealth works well - it's not overly difficult or too easy. The AI behavior is impressive and about as good as it gets. There are new powers. Some new crossbow bolts and other upgrades.

The missions I've done so far have been some very elaborate locations that take hours each. Lots of ways to approach them. They are believable too, with some fantastical twists of course.

The story and settings are completely different so there is that. If you see that as significant. ;)

As usual the UI is very configurable. You can turn off the HUD stuff and all of the gameplay helpers. I really like that Arkane does this. It tells me these guys know their audience even though they also make the game approachable for everyone else too.

I get sucked into every game this company makes and this is one is no different.
 
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For whatever reason, I'm finding D2 a lot more difficult than the first one, and I LOVED the first one! I always end up having to kill lots of people. Maybe I'm just older and useless now.
 
For whatever reason, I'm finding D2 a lot more difficult than the first one, and I LOVED the first one! I always end up having to kill lots of people. Maybe I'm just older and useless now.

Yeah it's tricky when there are a lot of enemies around, and this world seems more densely populated than the original game. It's easy to get swarmed and then you either need to escape or kill. The stun mines are great, especially upgraded. There are powers that I haven't tried yet that might be useful too, like the one that connects enemies so if you knock out one, the others go down too. The tools are there but it's a lot to think about.
 
I decided to pick up a GTX 1070 today. I know this game can fill up an 8GB card and so I figure the GTX 970 is out of its league. It gets quite the stutter going at times. And the game does indeed run considerably better now. 2560x1440, Ultra, adaptive resolution disabled is fine. GPU-Z reports a max of 7.3GB VRAM in use.
 
I've been playing quite a lot. Already on my second playthrough. Amazing level design (definitely a step up from Dishonored 1 which already was really good) and i think the gameplay is better than the first too :)
For whatever reason, I'm finding D2 a lot more difficult than the first one, and I LOVED the first one! I always end up having to kill lots of people. Maybe I'm just older and useless now.

It is harder (because of better ai) but it gets easier the more powers you get, domino with Emily is OP. I just think you have to play as Emily on the first playthrough, playing as Corvo provides a very similar experience to the first game gameplay wise.
 
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Memory demands are not really that high, it is just another game buffering whatever it can. 1060 3GB beats RX470 4GB and 970 almost matches RX480 8 GB.
 
Memory demands are not really that high, it is just another game buffering whatever it can. 1060 3GB beats RX470 4GB and 970 almost matches RX480 8 GB.
You're probably mostly right, but during the Clockwork mansion mission I saw several occasions of drastic performance loss over time. It would eventually become unplayable at even 1360x768 with my 4gb 970 and 8gb system RAM. Quitting and reloading the game solved it. Maybe a memory leak issue or perhaps the game buffers too much for this configuration over time during this mission. System memory hit a peak of 90% usage. The GPU RAM is always nearly full.

I am going to go to 16GB RAM but it hasn't arrived yet. I have the 1070 though. I should go wander that mansion again...
 
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The GPU RAM is maxed out at 1360x768? :runaway:
Yeah the game will fill any card less than 8gb. It might be dependent on some detail settings. I used medium and high mix with the 970.

I think having a 8gb 1070 reduced my system RAM usage by about 1GB. Maybe the game buffers in system RAM instead of GPU if you have less than 8GB VRAM. If you play the game on a 4GB card, you probably should have > 8GB system RAM.
 
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I've been playing quite a lot. Already on my second playthrough. Amazing level design (definitely a step up from Dishonored 1 which already was really good) and i think the gameplay is better than the first too :)


It is harder (because of better ai) but it gets easier the more powers you get, domino with Emily is OP. I just think you have to play as Emily on the first playthrough, playing as Corvo provides a very similar experience to the first game gameplay wise.
What this guy said. This is the game of the year for me. Mind blowing missions. I've put more than 5 hours into some. The detail and design work is crazy. I'm at about 40 hours on first play through.

I'm looking forward to doing a Corvo play and a different approach than stealth. Or maybe go all out on stealth and never be seen.
 
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They just released a new patch, it helps a lot with memory management and provides more options for lower end systems. Runs pretty solid on my end.
 
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