Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2017 i PC Gamer

I probably don’t need to introduce PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Chances are you’re one of over ten million people who already own it. If you’re not, head to page 36 to find out what all the fuss is about. If you are, also head to page 36 to get our exclusive hands-on report on the battle royale shooter’s new map and upcoming features. Also this month, we welcome our new deputy editor, Philippa Warr. Pip’s one of my favourite writers, and I’m excited to have her knowledge, enthusiasm and ideas helping to shape the magazine’s future. phil.savage@futurenet.com @Octaeder TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Tweet us @PCGamer…

GRIFTLANDS USES A JRPG-STYLE BATTLE SYSTEM, BUT ISN’T STRICTLY TURN-BASED NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2018 DEVELOPER Klei Entertainment PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.griftlands.com Griftlands offers your basic RPG standards: loot, crafting and combat. But, as with all of Klei’s games, there’s a twist. It’s a roleplaying game about grifting – about talking your way out of (and sometimes into) sticky situations, and pursuing potentially lucrative opportunities. Also, it’s set in a land. Hence the name. I see an example of this when Smith, one of three characters you can play as, takes the low road after he stumbles upon a dispute between some bandits and merchants. Siding with the bandits, he battles the merchants, taking their coin, but ultimately decides to spare their lives. The merchants don’t like being…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE December 2017 PUBLISHER Bifrost Entertainment DEVELOPER Joakim Sandberg LINK www.bifrostent.com PIXEL PERFECT The game’s vivid, colourful pixel art is stunning, and it is complemented by some impressively lively, intricate animation. But Iconoclasts is more than just a pretty face: the running, gunning and jumping feel beautifully smooth and responsive. GRAND SLAM This shell-protected enemy can’t be killed with the wrench or the pistol, but luckily Robin has a Super Mario-style butt slam ability. Leap your way into the air above the enemy, hold down, and then press jump again to unleash the fury, flipping these little guys on their backs. TOOL’S GOLD Use Robin’s golden wrench on these nuts to open doors, move platforms, and solve some cleverly constructed environmental puzzles. You can also spin it…

This month’s freebie furnishes fan favourite, Fernando, from – drat, Paladins doesn’t start with an ‘F’ does it? Anyway, this code lets you dress Paladins’ flamethrowing frontliner in the fabulous Onslaught skin (body and helm), saving you a mighty 200 Crystals. Paladins is Hi-Rez’s free-to-play first-person shooter built around teamwork, and Fernando’s formidable health pool and ginormous shield make him an ideal candidate for shoving your way onto control points. Oh, and his ultimate ability grants him immortality. Reward his usefulness with this swish outfit! HOW DO I REDEEM MY CODE? Codes are redeemable through Paladins’ in-game account page, accessed via the store. Where to find your code PRINT EDITION There should be a red card opposite this page with your codes on it. If it’s missing or looks like…

In 1991, MicroProse launched Sid Meier’s Civilization , a game that would define turn-based strategy for over two decades, and give birth to a genre that eventually became known as 4X: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. You probably know someone who has been struck down by One More Turn Syndrome, shackled to their PC at 3am. Maybe it’s you. Meier had no idea what he was starting. Meier and Bruce Shelley had finished Railroad Tycoon and were looking for another project. They wanted to expand on some of the ideas behind their last game, and Meier had been intrigued by the exploration system found in Empire, the turn-based wargame. It started by giving players a limited view of the world, but that viewpoint gradually unfurled as the…

Every few years, someone claims that adventure games are dead. But adventure games never died: they just changed. “I think what they really mean is the death of point-and-click adventure games,” says Ron Gilbert, creator of Monkey Island and, more recently, Thimbleweed Park . “Games like Gone Home , Firewatch , and everything Telltale makes are adventure games, and they can sell millions of copies. But if we limit the description to point-and-click games, I don’t know that I fully disagree. These games are a niche market now, but if you make them cheaply and efficiently, they can still do well. Dave Gilbert [no relation] has carved out a nice fanbase.” “What’s interesting is that those articles…

It’s a game that fizzes with colour, passion, and personality NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A fast-paced side-scrolling platformer. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER PagodaWest/ Headcannon PUBLISHER Sega REVIEWED ON GTX 1080, Intel i5-6600K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Local two-player LINK www.sega.com After countless attempts by Sega to refresh Sonic , it’s a straightforward side-scrolling platformer that ends up being the best one in decades. But while Sonic Mania is a love letter to the Blue Blur’s ’90s heyday, it manages to feel fresh thanks to clever remixes of classic levels and imaginative boss battles. Sonic has always thrived in two dimensions, and this is the purest expression of his fast-paced rollercoaster platforming prowess. There are 13 zones in Sonic Mania: five brand-new…

Slide tackles are difficult to pull off, and usually result in a card NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? One of the two big-name yearly football franchises EXPECT TO PAY £55 DEVELOPER PES Productions PUBLISHER Konami REVIEWED ON Intel i5, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER One-on-one LINK www.konami.com/wepes/2018/ Moving from PES to FIFA is like switching from PC to Mac, or from an Xbox controller to a PlayStation DualShock. The experience isn’t better or worse, but it is different in a hundred tiny ways. Long passes are more accurate, slide tackles are riskier, crosses are deadlier and keepers parry the ball just a little more often. It’s been a couple of years since I last tried Konami’s…

Heat Signature is quite forgiving and that keeps it fun NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A 2D stealth game about sneaking around ships using fun gadgets. EXPECT TO PAY £11 DEVELOPER Suspicious Developments PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON i5 3570K, 16GB RAM, GTX 970, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.heatsig.com I smashed an unsuspecting guard so hard with a Concussion Hammer that his body went sliding down the corridor, comically coming to a stop at the feet of four of his friends. Oops. As the guards began shouting and attacking, the spaceship’s captain changed course for an enemy station just 30 seconds away. I hadn’t gone more than four rooms without bungling the mission, and now I had just half a minute to salvage it before my character was captured.…

It is stingy with resources, and death lurks around every corner NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Open world, online survival game – with dinosaurs! EXPECT TO PAY £50 RELEASE DATE Out now DEVELOPER Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios, Virtual Basement PUBLISHER Studio Wildcard REVIEWED ON i5 4690k, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 970, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER 70 players LINK www.playark.com Lost and naked, players open their eyes on the shore of an island teeming with dinosaurs. Ark is an open world in the truest sense: there’s nowhere I need to go, nowhere I’m supposed to be. But I can’t just starve to death on that beach, so I set off. I tear a branch off a tree, tie it to a rock, and then I…

He floats about levels like a bald tank, tie flapping in an unseen breeze NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Io’s first stab at open-plan murder adventure. EXPECT TO PAY £5 DEVELOPER IO Interactive PUBLISHER Square Enix REVIEWED ON Intel Core i7-6700K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER Nope LINK www.hitman.com It’s been years now – decades, even – since developers learned how to make a videogame person move about in a way that approximately maps to the intent of the person controlling them. Revisiting the era before modern conventions set in is worthwhile if only to appreciate how far things have come – to understand that games became better when somebody took a look at a keyboard and decided that their game didn’t need to use every…

PHIL SAVAGE THIS MONTH Performed amazing magic tricks badly. ALSO PLAYED Dishonored: Death of the Outsider I’m playing Heat Signature , a game made by former PC Gamer section editor Tom Francis. As Tom’s friend, I’m not going to offer a critical evaluation of the game. But I am going to tell you the story of Magnificent Vietzen. Each of Heat Signature’s procedurally generated characters has a personal mission. Magnificent’s is to rescue his friend, Hamal Smilla, from a ship deep in Glitcher territory. Hamal was my previous character, and, if I rescue her, I can play as her again. This is desirable: her arsenal of non-lethal toys offers options for almost any situation. Magnificent doesn’t offer options. He offers teleporters. A lot of them. He’s basically…

1 THE DEVIL’S PIT MOD Carving out a new home for our gruff hero I hope Phil isn’t looking, because I’m going to use this space to recommend two Witcher 3 mods: one far bigger, and one much more bodacious than the other. The headline download is The Devil’s Pit , which bungs in a new area in the form of the, er, Devil’s Pit, a previously unused part of the identically named quarry. Interestingly, you won’t find any new quests here, but you will find a bunch of additional NPCs, one of whom can be recruited as a follower/mule to hold your stuff. The dank, dingy crevice is a new base of sorts for Geralt, so you’ll find an extra stash, along…

DESPITE THE ANCIENT INFLUENCES, RÖKI EXPLORES MODERN THEMES NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2018 DEVELOPER Polygon Treehouse PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.polygon-treehouse.com Striking out on your own can be scary. But for Tom Jones and Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, it meant having the freedom to tell their own stories. Two art directors from Guerrilla Cambridge, they were forced to reassess their careers after the studio closed down in January. Undeterred, they founded Polygon Treehouse to make games on a more intimate level. Their first game is Röki, a point-and-click adventure inspired by the wintry landscapes and strange creatures of Scandinavian folklore. It follows a young girl called Tove (which in Norse mythology means female Thor), who leaves her family’s cabin on the edge of town to venture into the wilderness and face the dark…

EVERY SINGLE SECOND IN ASIA, A NEW SOLO MATCH OF PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS BEGINS. AT PEAK TIMES, THAT NUMBER RISES TO TEN NEW GAMES PER SECOND. WITH A CONCURRENT PLAYER COUNT THAT HAS RECENTLY SWOLLEN TO OVER 1.5 MILLION , AN UNANTICIPATED PROBLEM HAS ARISEN FOR THE UNANTICIPATED SMASH HIT. PUBG’S CLOUD SERVER SERVICE SIMPLY DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH SERVERS TO ACCOMMODATE THE EARLY ACCESS BATTLE ROYALE SHOOTER’S MASSIVE AND STILL-GROWING PLAYERBASE. I’m given this information during a visit to the offices of Bluehole, PUBG’s developer, in South Korea. Over the two days I’ve been here, I’ve twice tried to interview platform team lead Seungwoo Shin, who is in charge of PUBG’s servers. Whenever we’ve attempted to talk, he’s been simply (and understandably) too busy. We finally get to speak for…

Brian Reynolds remembers when Sid Meier gave him a copy of Civilization . “I played until 2am,” he admits. “It combined the city, units and ‘one more turn’ of Empire with the experience of Civilization the board game. Avalon Hill games were the gold standard, and I didn’t realise computer games could do that.” He was hooked. He’d been working on adventure games, trying to compete with Sierra, but it wasn’t working out and everyone was worried about their jobs. So he started developing a prototype – a game about discovery and exploration. He showed it to Meier, and a week later he’d been moved to a new department to commence work on what would become known as Colonization. Then SimCity 2000 came…

A storm was brewing at Firaxis, and it was undeniably hex-shaped. Since 1991, the series had used square grids, while more and more 4X and wargames gravitated towards the sexy angles of the hexagon. As a fan of games like Panzer General , new lead designer Jon Shafer decided to introduce Civilization and its many adherents to the joy of hex. Development started in early 2007. Shafer was 21, and he wanted to do something different. “Civilization IV was such a good game, so we wanted to put a different spin on things. We acknowledged that it was going to be controversial, not everyone was going to like what we did, but we made a conscious effort to push things in a different…

Companions can be customised the moment you meet them NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A huge, liberating RPG to play with friends or on your lonesome. EXPECT TO PAY £30 DEVELOPER Larian Studios PUBLISHER In-house RELEASE DATE Out now REVIEWED ON Intel i5-3570K, 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 970, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER Co-op, up to four players BUY IT Steam, GOG LINK www.divinity.game Playing Divinity: Original Sin II is uncannily like playing a tabletop RPG. The way that Larian’s sequel embraces player creativity immediately conjures up memories of days spent sitting around a table, asking the Dungeon Master if I can attempt the last stupid idea that floated into my head. And, like a good DM, Original Sin II usually answers…

The wave of relief and satisfaction is overwhelming NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A nails-hard 2D shooter where you fight outlandish bosses, interspersed with palate-cleansing run-and-gun sections. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Studio MDHR PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Intel Core i5-4440, 8GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Two-player local co-op LINK www.cuphead game.com The results screen may say C-, but the feeling when you beat a stage in Cuphead is A+. Studio MDHR’s debut pits you against some of the toughest enemies you’ll face in a videogame, and the process of beating them can be painful. But when you do, the euphoria is undeniable. Its difficulty hasn’t been understated, then, but crucially, it’s hardly ever the game’s fault if you get hit. You’ll swear, but you’ll know it’s your own failing. Within…

For the most part, your targets are information and items NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Standalone expansion to 2016’s best immersive sim. EXPECT TO PAY £20 DEVELOPER Arkane Studios PUBLISHER Bethesda RELEASE DATE: Out now REVIEWED ON i5-6600k, 16GB RAM, GTX 970, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER None LINK dishonored.bethesda.net I’m in a bank vault, up to my waist in water. This is still, technically, a ‘ghost’ run. No alarms have been sounded. But the hole in the roof above suggests a different story – one of planning, mild carnage, and, ‘Oh, what happens if I do this?’ Death of the Outsider’s third mission is a standout heist that shows Dishonored’s semi-directed design at its best. It’s not my favourite thing about this…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY Not a lot DEVELOPER Asymmetric Publications PUBLISHER In-house I turned 30 this month and I’ve been thinking about change. I know! I’ve just pissed off every reader who isn’t also exactly 30. If you’re older than me, you’re grumbling something about how it’s not that big of a deal and I have no idea how bad things are really going to get and so on. If you’re younger, I’ve just joined the growing set of adults who, at any given time, might feel compelled to impart some unwanted life advice. Enjoy your YouTubers and fidget spinners while you’ve got them, kids, that’s all I’ll say. Anyway, I want to tell you about change. I thought I’d revisit Kingdom of Loathing because West of Loathing…

It’s me again with my Robotrons. Waves is a Robotron in the manner of Geometry Wars. It looks exciting and feels nice, but what sets Waves apart is the number of variant modes it offers. You can engage in traditional Robotronnery, but you can also play a mode where your ball can’t shoot but can blow up enemies by delivering a bomb from one part of the arena to the other: a sort of twin-stick solo capture the flag, which would be a fabulous euphemism if I could figure out what it was a euphemism for.…

NOW I’M A CHUNKY GHILLIED-UP CHUCKLEFUCK WITH AN INVISIBILITY CLOAK TOM SENIOR THIS MONTH Discovered dark arts on the battlefields of Titanfall 2. ALSO PLAYED XCOM 2: War of the Chosen Do you love to snipe in multiplayer shooters? You’re a jerk. What’s more, I think deep down you know it . I say this with confidence because I have joined your club of murderous voyeurs. I have camped in the shadows and ruined others’ fun with each click of the left mouse button. I have punished players for having the temerity to wander around outside, and I’ve shot a few inside, too. People in videogame war zones don’t tend to board up windows for some reason. Titanfall 2 is my war zone of choice at the…

“Dark Messiah echoes Dishonored in the small details” NEED TO KNOW RELEASED October 2006 PUBLISHER Ubisoft DEVELOPER Arkane Studios LINK www.darkmessiahgame.com Dark Messiah of Might and Magic feels like it comes from Arkane’s adolescence. Dishonored and Prey are the more mature output of the same creative mind. Here is a fantasy action game with not a whole lot to say but an infectious enthusiasm for freewheeling violence. Intricate physics, AI and combat systems converge to create a world that is spectacularly lethal for everybody, except you. As adventuring wizard’s apprentice Sareth, you kick men and orcs with bone-shattering force into spike traps and off rope bridges. You combine directional movement and mouse swings to lop limbs with your sword…

THIS CROP OF TALKS INCLUDED DISCUSSION OF THE WIDER APPLICATIONS OF VR TOOLS VRDC Fall 2017 – the virtual reality developers’ conference – took place in San Francisco in mid-September. Aside from prompting the thought that the event would sound more zingy if they were to rebrand as “Cybergoggles NOW!” the VR shindig provides a fascinating look at the priorities and projects of its practitioners. Generally I’ve thought that the best and most interesting work in the field of virtual reality would probably happen outside gaming. That’s not to say that great VR games won’t be made, but for me it’s in the same position as Microsoft’s Kinect. There were some brilliant (and some brilliantly broken) gaming projects which used that tech, but there was also research into ideas like…

In a 2016 documentary by YouTube channel toco toco tv, NieR: Automata director Yoko Taro said, “Looking at AAA titles, of course I find them beautiful and interesting, but after 20 minutes of gameplay, I wonder whether it is going to be the same for the following 20 hours. I am a bit tired of this. If possible, I would like to make games that are unexpected, games that keep changing form.” The spirit behind this statement drove NieR: Automata to incorporate a mind-bending, emotionally fraught recursive narrative, and it brought the game incredible success. If this example is anything to go by, titles relying upon a sense of surprise and discovery have more of an audience than ever before – even…

PLAYERS TEND TO INSTALOCK CHARACTERS WITH A HIGH KILL CAPACITY NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Early Access DEVELOPER Hi-Rez Studios PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.paladins.com Hi-Rez really needs to patch out the near-gamebreaking bug in Paladins where I’m in a tense match and both teams are one single capture point away from victory, when a man comes to the front door and needs me to tell him if the current electoral register details for the residence are correct. Relatedly, the electoral register needs to fix its own bug which is that its stupid form doesn’t have a checkbox for, ‘Yes I do still live at this address, but in shame and defeat thanks to the timing of your visit.’ Paladins is Hi-Rez’s entry into the team-based cartoony FPS…

A MISJUDGED CAVE EXPLORATION ATTEMPT IS HOW I TURNED INTO A GOAT NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Early Access DEVELOPER Team Fugl PUBLISHER Kotori Studios Ltd LINK www.fuglgame.com The thing which always surprises and delights me when I pick up the meditative flying game, Fugl , is how the blocky avatar and the colourful voxel landscapes come together to create a fluid, swooping sensation. Fugl is an Early Access project which has popped up at a handful of games expos, so perhaps you’ve tried it out for yourself. If not, the prospect is a simple one. You drop into the world as a bird already in flight and flap and swoop your way through various biomes. On the way you encounter different creatures, and if you get close…

MANIPULATING THE WORLD MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE A JAMES BOND VILLAIN NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2018 DEVELOPER James Patton PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.spinnortality.com I’ve just launched a social media network in Europe that, based on your personality and posting habits, buys things before you even know you need or want them. But it’s a disaster. The angle is all wrong, the market hates it and I’ve lost millions. But while this may have ruined a lesser company, the PC Gamer evil megacorporation has a plan to dig itself out of this hole. I decide to siphon cash from my pension fund, yielding up to $20 million for each worker I currently have employed. Of course, there’s a chance I’ll get caught and exposed, ruining my reputation. But it’s worth it.…

With the unexpected success of Civilization II , another sequel was inevitable, though not before some litigation over naming rights and the launch of Activision’s Civilization: Call to Power series. After suits and countersuits, the licence eventually ended up with Hasbro, and by 2001 the company had been acquired by Infogrames. Firaxis, which was founded by Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds and Jeff Briggs in 1996, could finally work on the next game. And, once again, the question became: what could possibly be added to such a huge thing? “Sid and I used to joke with each other that after designing Civilization, what else could you do?” Jeff Briggs recollects. “The scope of the game spans all of human history from the agricultural revolution…

As soon as work wrapped up on Civilization V’s final expansion, Brave New World , the design team had already moved onto Civilization VI . And with Ed Beach leading development on both, it’s not surprising that the pair share a lot of similarities, with the latter fleshing ideas introduced in the expansion and Civilization V’s other pieces of DLC. Ever since it appeared in the third game, culture has evolved into one of the key pillars of the Civilization series, and for Beach it was a priority in Brave New World, which saw the introduction of the tourism system. It became a priority once again in Civilization VI, culminating in a new progression system that…

You can win by old-fashioned domination or by meeting the objectives Idon’t remember the name of the desert. It was somewhere near the Black Pyramid of Nagash, split down the middle by a crevasse. A band of dirt connected the two sides. The undead, lacking missile troops, scurried across the sand towards this bridge. My High Elves moved to block them with a line of spears, but I’d forgotten that my general’s last upgrade was a warhorse. Instead of moving up with the line, he raced ahead unnoticed and was now alone, facing down sprinting ghouls, shambling zombies and the Vampire Countess leading them. Rather than retreat, I ordered the Silver Helm knights to rush in (I’d been keeping them in reserve to flank-charge anyone who broke through the spear…

The original still has a thing going for it: the bugs have been stamped out NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Capital S Sim racing, with Indycar licensing and esport dreams. EXPECT TO PAY £45 DEVELOPER Slightly Mad Studios PUBLISHER Bandai Namco REVIEWED ON Windows 10, i7 2600k, 16GB RAM, GTX 1070 MULTIPLAYER Up to 32 players LINK www.projectcars game.com When was the last time you were truly immersed and engaged in an activity? Mindfulness types call this state ‘flow’, and positive psychologists say this situation of total involvement is what we really mean when we talk about happiness. So, with that in mind, Project Cars 2 is the most demanding simulation racer I have ever played, and it is a positive psychologist’s dream. With all…

The combat is simple, fun and disarmingly challenging at times NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A mysterious, atmospheric puzzle platformer. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Runic Games PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON GTX 1080, Intel i5-6600K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.runicgames.com The oversized left arm of Hob’s silent protagonist is mechanical, gifted to them by a friendly robot early in the game. This magnificent appendage has multiple uses, from charged punches that make enemies explode and walls crumble, to activating arcane machinery and changing the layout of levels. You also have a sword, letting you cut foes down in a stylish flurry, but it’s that great metal fist and its upgrades which really stand out. When you charge and unleash it you can almost feel…

Infinite is Capcom’s attempt to make the series more accessible NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Capcom’s latest crossover brawler that pits Marvel’s finest against their own roster of heroes and villains. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Capcom PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Core i5 7600k, 16GB RAM, GTX 970, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER One-on-one LINK www.marvelvs capcominfinite.com At first glance you can boil Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite down to one question: do you want to see erstwhile Dead Rising photojournalist Frank West throw a shopping trolley at Thanos? Frank is a man with a camera, a penchant for slapstick comedy and a fighting style that relies on picking up random bits of tat to assault his foe. Thanos is about two…

A mouse-and-keyboard setup may rule for most things PC gaming-related, but there are occasions where a different sort of controller comes in handy. Racing games, beat-’em-ups and platformers are much easier when played with a gamepad, plus sometimes it’s just nice to sit back and play a game from the comfort of your sofa, which is much easier to do with a controller. So, we’ve gathered together seven of the most popular gamepad options you can buy right now. These include all three of the main console controllers – PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch – as well as a selection of alternatives, both pricey and perfunctory. The main things we’ll be looking out for are the comfort of the controller and the precision of its various controls. Beyond that…

THE BLOODFLIES ARE WHIPPED UP INTO A FRENZY AS THEY SENSE A MEAL ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Served up a slice of poetic justice. ALSO PLAYED Divinity: Original Sin 2 While exploring Karnaca’s Upper Cyria district, I find a taxidermy shop hidden down a side street. The owner is pleasant enough, but because Dishonored games turn me into a raging kleptomaniac, I investigate the locked door in the back. I wait for her to turn away, snatch the key from her belt and descend into a dingy basement. Then, suddenly, I’m on fire, having just triggered a tripwire. Why does a taxidermist need an elaborate security system? Something is going on here, and I intend to find out what it is. At the bottom of the…