It is not a very big boat, nor is it a very crowded boat or interesting boat, even if Rosario Dawson gives you your mission briefings. You just get your briefing (which, being that you haven’t been rescued by People With A Plan like the Loyalists, is usually very “here is a bad person, go find a way to deal with them”) and then head off to the next mission. On rare occasions there are as many as three characters there, and there’s very little to do. Even your base in this game, the Dreadful Wale, pales in comparison to the Hound Pits Pub as a between-mission environment to explore and chat to people. With a short few exceptions, characters are incredibly one-note.
There’s little build-up to anything that happens. While things don’t move quite this quickly throughout, it’s hard to say that Dishonored 2 has anything like the emotional feel of its predecessor (which was hardly a hugely emotional game, but hey, I hated some of those villains). To say that the pacing is a little bit shot is an understatement. No build-up or explanation to any of these elements: they all just happen, one after another, in a single cutscene – and, hell, one of them is resolved by the end of the second level. And the antagonist witch Delilah turns up. Within the course of about two minutes, you’re told about a “Crown Killer” brutally murdering Emily Kaldwin’s political opponents. The opening sequence is a particularly breathless example of this.
Dishonored 2 is ostensibly a stealth-action game with a hefty dose of exploration, but you can also play it like a sword-wielding loon if you fancy.