Bethesda releases Dishonored 2 system requirements

Bethesda has announced that first-person slash, stealth, and magic-'em-up Dishonored 2 has officially gone gold, confirming system requirements and the inevitable day-one patch.

Gamers wishing to play the sequel to the well-regarded Dishonored, developed by Arkane Studios and first teased back in 2011 prior to its launch through publisher Bethesda a year later can unsurprisingly expect to need a considerably more powerful PC compared to the relatively undemanding original. The good news, though: Anyone who is still resisting Microsoft's call to upgrade to Windows 10 will not be excluded from playing the game, with Dishonored 2 supporting Windows 7 and upwards providing it's a 64-bit install.

Hardware-wise, gamers will require a minimum of an Intel Core i5-2400 or AMD FX-8320 with 8GB of RAM coupled to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB or AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB graphics card. Interestingly, Bethesda is also mandating minimum driver levels: players will need to ensure they have upgraded their Nvidia driver bundle to version 375.70 or AMD driver bundle to 16.10.2 before installing the game, which will take up 60GB of hard drive space including the day-one patch.

Those wishing to crank up the settings or play in high resolutions will need an Intel Core i7-4770 or AMD FX-8350 processor with 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB graphics card. Bethesda has promised that the PC release is more than a mere console port, too, with day-one settings for field of view, no frame rate limiter, and multiple monitor support. Those running Nvidia hardware will also benefit from vendor-specific enhancements including Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion Plus (HBAO+), Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TXAA), and the company's new Ansel in-game photography system.

More information on the game's tweakables can be found on the official announcement. Steam preloading of the game begins November 8th, alongside PlayStation 4 preloading, while Xbox One gamers can preload the game's data files now ahead of a November 11th launch.