Dishonored 2 Misses The Point Of Custom Difficulty

Dishonored 2 was assuredly one of the best games of 2016, so much so that even a sub-par (and that's being friendly) PC launch couldn't stop it from being our No. 2 game of the year and receiving a wildly positive review. So, naturally, when Bethesda announced that Dishonored 2 would be adding two huge updates to include New Game Plus, Mission Select and Custom Difficulty, I was over the moon. The latest update is now available.

It would be unfair of me to not point out how New Game Plus is a fabulous addition and including mission select, while a little late, shows that they are listening to the community and responding reasonably to their needs. I also need to draw attention to Bethesda's continued support for PC players after Dishonored 2's aforementioned tumultuous launch, with each patch continuing to address performance issues that previously affected PC players such that people who are still affected make up only a small minority. The way they've handled this situation is an admirable roadmap for other studios to follow if they should find themselves in a similar situation.

All that being said, Dishonored 2 has missed the point of custom difficulty.

While many headlines are being made about the sheer number of custom difficulty sliders that Dishonored 2 has, almost all of the 22 settings only affect aspects of the game that are already determined by what difficulty you choose. You can try this out for yourself in the custom difficulty settings menu. Simply move the top slider from "custom" to any of the other four options, and watch as the remaining sliders auto-fill to the appropriate option for that difficulty setting.

The options Dishonored 2 presents are things like "enemies do more damage," or "you don't regenerate as much health," all things that would change automatically should you choose a harder difficulty. It seems Bethesda sees the concept of custom difficulty as being able to choose "easy or medium" for some aspects and "hard or very hard" for others, but this is entirely the wrong approach.

In my mind, custom difficulty is best-served as optional restrictions that wouldn't normally be affected by the "easy/medium/hard/very hard" difficulty model. In 2014's fun, but ultimately misguided, Thief, for example, you could make it so you could only perform stealth takedowns or you could only use certain types of arrows, or you couldn't get non-essential upgrades, to name only a few.

Dishonored 2 has almost none of that. The only true custom difficulty option is that of the iron man mode – restricting your saves and adding permanent death – but even games that don't have a fully fleshed-out custom difficulty menu have that. Then you look at other options like "sleep dart toxin speed," which can slow down the effects of your sleep darts, and you may think that's pretty cool, but, not only is just another setting that would change if you played at a higher difficulty, it's completely undone by an upgrade you can get in the game that makes sleep darts take effect instantly – an upgrade, I'll remind you, you have no way of restricting through any other custom difficulty setting.

When custom difficulty was first announced for Dishonored 2, I went over a list of possibilities that Bethesda could have reasonably implemented, but that list was hardly scratching the surface. There was so much potential for additional restrictions in Dishonored 2 that would make the game a truly unique experience – appealing to those who wanted to up the ante in different ways. Instead, this custom difficulty seems to only cater to those who want certain parts of the game to be easier, or maybe who want to try iron man mode.