Dishonored 2

Arkane’s supernatural sequel already runs like clockwork.

- James Nouch

Exploring Kirin Jindosh’s Clockwork Mansion is a bit like playing through some amazing unaired episode of MTV Cribs. Superficially, the Grand Inventor’s home looks like your standard rich-person-house, but throw one of its many switches or levers and suddenly the building shudders and shifts, as walls peel away and rooms reconfigure themselves into entirely new shapes.

We enter this architectural wonder as Corvo Attano, Royal Protector turned supernatural assassin, and the returning hero from the original Dishonored. Our mission is to infiltrate this mechanical marvel, rescue an old ally, and give old Jindosh a bit of a stabbing to boot. But we’ve barely made it past his natty foyer before we’re introduced to another of his creations: the Clockwork Soldier.

And these mechanical jerks are not messing about. Standing at over seven feet tall, a pair of primitive cameras sits within their eerie, avian skulls – one pointing forward, the other always watching for attacks from behind. Whereas a standard sentry might wield a flintlock pistol or sharp edged sword in their fleshy mitts, the Clockwork Soldier possesses four fully-articulated arms, each composed entirely of a huge steel blade.

We crouch in a shady corner and monitor this jumped-up Roomba, noting its patrol pattern before emerging from the shadows. And then we’re spotted. Immediately. Because the Clockwork Soldier’s vision cone is so formidably wide that many of your usual espionage antics just won’t work here. One corridor containing a Clockwork Soldier patrolling alongside five human guards proves particularly troublesome, forcing us to abandon our trusty tactic of teleporting between the light fixtures using Corvo’s Blink ability.

Heads will roll