Dishonored 2 was shown off at this week's QuakeCon, along with Doom: Unto the Evil, Prey and Quake Champions, but unlike those games, publisher Bethesda hasn't released the video footage onto the internet. It has, however, offered a detailed write-up of what was in the Dishonored 2 demo, which I guess will do in a pinch? A few GIFs of new combat moves sweeten the deal, including the above Blink-to-swift-kick combo. Nice.
The demo focused on Corvo, revealing how his powers have been updated for this second game. According to Bethesda's blog post, "Blink isn’t just for movement anymore. Twice we saw Corvo use his signature power in newly aggressive ways: blinking into a foe and immediately stabbing him in the neck, and later using it to slam into an enemy, shoving him back with deadly force. Corvo’s Blink also includes the 'stop time and redirect' improvement from the Dishonored DLC The Knife of Dunwall (often called 'Daud’s Blink' by the community and YouTubers), giving him more flexibility in traversal and stealth".
You can see that Blinky shoving above, but what you can't see is Corvo slowing down time to shoot both arms off a baddie, before exploding a nest of nearby bloodflies, and then possessing one of the insects to escape. That's totally a thing that happened in the demo, apparently.
"Early in the demo, we see Corvo using [Bend Time] like he did in the original Dishonored, slowing time to face off against a Nest Keeper (a creepy new bad guy who fusses over Bloodfly nests). While time is at a near-standstill, Corvo literally shoots both arms off the Nest Keeper with his pistol, then pulls out his crossbow to fire an Incendiary Bolt at a nearby nest. When time returns to normal, the disarmed Nest Keeper briefly writhes in agony, the nest bursts into flames… then the Keeper’s body rips in half at the torso, releasing a fresh swarm of Bloodflies. Corvo then escapes the dangerous infestation, transferring himself into a Bloodfly with Possession. (While we didn’t see it in action, we also know that Corvo can now upgrade Possession so he can transfer from one host to another.)"
Blimey. Anyway, here's Corvo using Bend Time to punt an unconscious target temporarily into the air.
There's more about Corvo's killing moves in the blog post, but what about people like me, who plan to play the game as stealthily as possible? While they don't appear to have been detailed in this demo, rest assured that he "has an arsenal of new nonlethal attacks, including combat choke, nonlethal drop attack and more".
