Dishonored 2 getting New Game Plus and custom difficulty next month

Dishonored 2 will be updated in December with two new ways to play: custom difficulty settings and a New Game Plus mode, publisher Bethesda Softworks announced today.

Bethesda didn’t provide any further details on the features themselves or the timing of the content update. But a week since the release of Dishonored 2, a New Game Plus mode has been a common request from critics and players. In our review, we called the lack of New Game Plus “a truly bizarre omission for a game so clearly designed for multiple playthroughs on escalating levels of difficulty.”

That’s because Dishonored 2 features two playable protagonists, Corvo Attano and Emily Kaldwin, and you have to choose between them at the beginning of the game. The only way to see things from the other perspective is to start a new game with the character you didn’t pick the first time around.

Another strange oversight is the lack of an option to replay a mission — a feature that was available in the original Dishonored. Harvey Smith, co-creative director at developer Arkane Studios, said on Twitter today that the company is hoping to add the ability to replay missions at some point in the future. Smith also said that an update to the lean function is on the way; currently, you toggle leaning by pressing a button, rather than holding it down.

In addition to new features, Arkane is continuing to work on improving performance in the Windows PC version of Dishonored 2. The studio released the game’s first post-launch patch yesterday, bringing the game to version 1.1 with fixes for issues like mouse sensitivity being dependent on frame rate.

Another patch is currently in development; scheduled for release next week, the v1.2 update will tackle additional performance problems, including separate mouse-related issues. There are other items to work on, too. After a player tweeted at Smith with a screenshot of falling through the game world, Smith said Arkane is aware of that rare issue, but is currently focused on addressing “performance and common requests.”

For more on Dishonored 2, read our review.