Dishonored 2 has a lot of ways to kill enemies, but half of them will be locked away until a second playthrough with a different character. Empress Emily Kaldwin can’t do everything Corvo Attano can, and vice versa. Until now. There’s a beta patch available for the PC version of the game that adds a New Game Plus feature. The main addition in the update is the ability to choose Corvo or Emily and create your own suite of powers out of all the available abilities. Give Emily dominion over murderous rats, or let Corvo turn into a living shadow! All you have to do is beat the game once and New Game Plus will be available from the main menu. This new mode will also let you re-assign all the Runes you collected in the previous game.
Although it’s only available in beta on PC now, the New Game Plus update will launch for all platforms on December 19th. This is the first of two planned free content updates for Dishonored 2. The second update should arrive in January and will contain custom difficulty settings and a mission select menu.
For being the first ever event, Bethesda’s pre-E3 briefing was smoothly executed. (You can watch a recording here, if you were busy with the Game of Thrones season finale.) Bethesda showed off some Doom, Dishonored 2, and Fallout 4 as their big announcements. Doom includes monster loot pinatas, the return of the super shotgun, and Snapmap, a map editing system that will come to “all platforms” that Doom releases on. As a console controller editor it appeared to be rather deep, with the ability to cobble together pre-made map sections, place enemies, map details, and scripting links. For Fallout 4, Bethesda revealed that a major feature would be the ability to dynamically build settlements in the wasteland with pre-fab chunks, move in inhabitants, and defend them against enemies with traps and turrets. That dynamic construction will extend to weapon and armor creation as well. In Dishonored 2 the player can take on the role of Emily Kaldwin, or step into Corvo Attano’s spring-heeled shoes once again. This time, the stealthy assassinations take place in Karnaca, a steampunk version of Morocco. Bethesda dropped a surprise in the form of Fallout Shelter, a free-to-play iOS Fallout game available immediately.
Less enthusiastically received by the audience was the news that Bethesda is launching their own game client. Bethesda.net will be the portal for their games beginning shortly. The Doom Snapmap creations, for example, will use Bethesda.net for community sharing. Whether or not Bethesda will break off on their own and leave Steam on the PC remains to be seen.
