Released on November 11, 2016, Dishonored 2 is a first-person stealth and action game developed by Arkane Lyon and published by Bethesda Softworks for PC (Windows), PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It follows Dishonored and is built around “play your way” missions where multiple routes, tools, and outcomes exist inside large, flexible levels. A foundational speedrunning wrinkle is that the game supports different play identities from the start: runners can route around the distinct move sets of the two playable leads, or even commit to a no-powers approach, which naturally creates different run styles and tradeoffs.
As a speedrun, Dishonored 2 rewards gamesense and execution more than raw aim. The missions are objective-driven, but the sandbox design means “fast” rarely looks like following intended paths. Instead, a typical route is trying to compress travel and setup time by chaining fast movement, minimizing forced interactions, and triggering objectives in the quickest legal order for the chosen ruleset. Because the game’s systems are built to allow improvisation, runs often hinge on consistent ways to bypass or neutralize obstacles: using creative traversal, manipulating AI attention, and taking advantage of how the game loads spaces and checks progress.
What makes the scene feel distinct compared with many stealth-action speedgames is how clearly the leaderboard structure mirrors the game’s core themes. On speedrun.com, the main boards include Any%, Non-Lethal/Ghost, All Collectibles, and 100%, alongside character filters (Corvo, Emily, and No Powers), so the community’s headline categories map directly onto “finish fast,” “finish clean,” and “finish thoroughly,” with character choice acting as a route-defining variable rather than a cosmetic one. Even the way times are presented, with load-removed and real-time side by side, reinforces the long-term focus of the game’s speedrunning: make the actual play cleaner and more efficient, not just the loading screens.
Dishonored 2’s speedrunning scene took shape in public view through Speedrun.com, where the game’s board established the basic framework runners still recognize today: multiple core categories, platform listings, and character-based filters that reflect how different playstyles and powersets change route priorities. The earliest documented activity is preserved in verified runs and submissions that already show the community treating the game like a serious timing target, with PC runs appearing early in the archive and the run pages capturing the essentials that would become standard: category, character choice, timing fields, and verification metadata.
Early on, the “standard goal” naturally centered on finishing the campaign quickly, which is why Any% became the headline category, while parallel definitions grew around the game’s built-in play philosophies and completion structure. The leaderboard layout itself tells that story: a main Any% focus alongside categories like Non-Lethal/Ghost, All Collectibles, and 100%, plus character filters for Corvo Attano and Emily Kaldwin and an explicit No Powers option that formalized a distinct early constraint run rather than treating it as an informal challenge.
From the start, timing norms leaned toward treating loads as an external variable worth controlling for. The leaderboard presentation consistently surfaced both Load Removed Time and Real Time Attack, and runners discussed practical setup in the forums in a way that makes the early expectations clear: load removal support, correct game binding, and “game time” comparisons were not optional niceties, they were part of running the game cleanly and comparably.
As the game matured through updates, version awareness became part of the early conversation, not as trivia, but as something that could break tools, affect consistency, or force the community to decide what “normal” looked like. Threads about patch behavior and downpatching show runners confronting the same practical reality many modern PC scenes face: when a patch lands, autosplitting and load removal may lag behind, and runners may temporarily coordinate around workarounds while standards settle.
From early on, the Dishonored 2 scene treated Speedrun.com as its public record: the place where categories are defined, rules are posted, and runs are submitted into a shared archive with visible history and stats. The game’s hub is structured to keep discussion and documentation close to the leaderboard itself, with dedicated tabs for guides, resources, forums, and streams, so newcomers can move from “what counts” to “how it’s done” without leaving the same ecosystem.
As conversation matured, day to day coordination leaned toward chat based spaces. The game page prominently links a Discord server, and the forums show runners actively steering one another toward Discord for quicker answers and category discussion, which is a common pattern in modern speedrunning where real time troubleshooting and route testing benefit from rapid back and forth. Broader visibility and recruiting also tends to happen wherever the wider fanbase already gathers, including Reddit threads and Twitch chats when runs are streamed, but those spaces usually funnel runners back toward the central documentation and submission process.
Verification culture is built around clear roles and predictable expectations. The board publicly lists its moderators and verifiers, and submissions are processed through the site’s standard workflow, with guidance that moderators are generally given a window to review runs and are expected to stay reachable for feedback on rules and board organization through forums, social channels, or Discord. In practice, that means a run is not “part of history” until it has been submitted with the required proof and accepted under the posted rules, and disagreements tend to resolve through the same transparent loop: forum discussion, clarification of rules, and consistent enforcement.
Knowledge preservation is one of the healthiest signals in the Dishonored 2 community’s setup. Alongside written guides and tutorials, the resources section functions like a living toolkit library, including things like movement macros, split files, and even downpatch guidance, which keeps technical know how from being trapped in ephemeral chat logs. Over time, that combination of centralized records and portable tooling is what lets the scene stay coherent even as runners come and go: the board documents what is valid, while the guides and resources document how to execute it.
On the public leaderboard, Dishonored 2’s speedrun categories are built around a small set of full-game goals paired with a character filter. The main category family centers on Any%, Non-Lethal/Ghost, All Collectibles, and 100%, with runs typically sorted further by whether the route is played as Corvo, Emily, or under a No Powers restriction. This structure makes the game’s “rules identity” feel less like dozens of disconnected modes and more like a few core objectives that get reinterpreted through character kit and self-imposed constraints.
Timing for Dishonored 2 is commonly presented in two parallel formats: a load-removed time (shown as LRT) and real time (RTA). In practice, that means the community treats loading as something that should not define performance, while still keeping a transparent real-time figure for context. Runners generally stop the timer manually at the finish, and the community has explicitly noted that the scene does not rely on automatic splitting the way some adjacent games do, with end timing tied to the moment you lose control at the finale. Tooling discussions also show that load-removal and auto-start functionality can be version-sensitive, which is one reason runners pay attention to patch choice when setting up their timing.
One of the clearest “big rule decisions” is that the leaderboard does not revolve around a formal Glitchless or “no major glitches” category. Moderators have framed the issue as both definitional and practical, and they have stated that if someone wants to run glitch-free, they can still submit those attempts to the main Any% board rather than requiring a separate ruleset. At the same time, the resources linked from the game’s page make it clear that the community embraces helper tools for execution and setup, including shared macros (such as bunnyhop-related macros), split files, and other run-adjacent utilities.
Version and platform policy show up more through community practice than through hard splits on the main page. The resources section includes downpatch materials with explicit guidance about preferred patches, while forum discussions also point to different patch preferences depending on character or route and note that some timer features work only on certain versions. Platform-wise, the game page itself highlights PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and moderators have stated plainly that console runs are accepted, even if PC dominates the top end of many boards.
Over time, Dishonored 2 running became increasingly movement-forward, with routes built around carrying momentum through large mission spaces rather than carefully “playing” encounters. A core throughline has been jump timing optimization, often discussed as bunnyhopping, and the practical setup that makes it consistent, like binding jump to the mouse wheel and using a free-scroll mouse. The same movement focus shows up in Emily-specific tech where Far Reach is used not just as a traversal power, but as a speed tool through cancel timing that preserves or amplifies forward carry into the next movement chain.
As the scene pushed for consistency, execution tooling became part of the normal runner toolkit rather than an edge-case advantage. Community-made jump macros emerged to replicate rapid scroll-wheel inputs so runners could bunnyhop without specialized hardware, and those tools were documented openly with simple “bind wheel down to jump and hold space” style usage instructions along with an explicit note that the macro is allowed for Dishonored runs. This is a common kind of maturation in modern PC scenes: once a movement technique proves central, the community gravitates toward setups that make it repeatable and comparable across runners.
Route refinement also moved beyond “big skips” into small, reliable time savers that reduce friction in otherwise mandatory moments. One example is how runners iterated on a bottle-throw setup in the early safe-room sequence, describing positioning and camera cues that made the throw both faster and more consistent before immediately triggering the next cutscene. That kind of micro-optimization is a hallmark of a stabilized route, where the run is no longer just about reaching objectives, but about polishing every forced interaction into a practiced, low-variance routine.
At the same time, discovery never stopped, but the culture around new tech became more evaluative. Out-of-bounds clips and unconventional mission bypasses were proposed and discussed, yet they were often weighed against the existing movement meta, with runners noting that high-speed “leaps” and chained traversal could make many OOB paths slower or riskier than simply staying in-bounds and flying to the objective. The practical outcome is that “paradigm shifts” in Dishonored 2 tend to stick only when they are both faster and stable enough to survive full-run pressure.
Tooling for timing and practice also tightened the scene. Load removal support in LiveSplit became part of standard setup, with forum guidance focused on correct game binding and enabling the load-removal component so runners could compare clean game-time results while still tracking real time transparently. Alongside that, version awareness became part of the technical conversation, including downpatching and patch recommendations that differed by character, reflecting how small behavioral changes can matter when the route is built on precise movement interactions.
One of the most important milestones for Dishonored 2 speedrunning was the moment its leaderboard identity stabilized into a “public record” that newcomers could actually learn from. The game’s hub on speedrun.com consolidated the core full-game categories and character filters into a recognizable structure, and it normalized side-by-side timing fields that made load-removed comparisons a community default rather than an advanced preference. That shift mattered because it turned scattered personal routes into a shared standard: runners could argue about improvements while still agreeing on what a legal run looked like and how it should be measured.
A second milestone type was the rise of a movement-first “route language” that made the game feel less like a stealth title being hurried through and more like a traversal puzzle being solved at speed. Emily-focused tech, especially Far Reach canceling behavior, became a defining example of the kind of system mastery the scene prizes, and it also forced the community to confront version realities. Some movement behaviors only function on earlier patches, which is why downpatch awareness and version guidance became part of the scene’s long-term vocabulary. The practical outcome was a clearer separation between “what the game allows” and “what the leaderboard expects,” with runners learning to treat patch choice as a route-defining decision rather than a background detail.
Another lasting milestone has been the community’s shift toward durable, teachable knowledge instead of oral tradition. Dishonored 2’s guides section grew into a recognizable learning track, including focused Any% tutorials and explicit setup documentation for the freescroll macro. That kind of documentation changed the culture of improvement. It shortened onboarding time, reduced hardware-based barriers to consistent bunnyhopping setups, and made innovation easier to preserve because the “how” lived somewhere more permanent than a chat log.
Finally, marathon showcases served as watershed visibility moments that helped define how outsiders first understood Dishonored 2 speedrunning. A notable example is the game’s appearance at Games Done Quick events, including a Dishonored 2 run at Summer Games Done Quick 2017. Later, the game also appeared on the Awesome Games Done Quick 2021 Online schedule in an Any% Emily showcase format. These events mattered less for any single time and more for what they changed: they gave the community a public stage, pressured routes to be explainable under commentary, and pushed the scene toward clearer standards that could survive scrutiny outside its core Discord and leaderboard spaces.
heafun – Any% (Corvo) – 30m 12s (LRT) – listed as “8 years ago” (≈ 2018) – PC (version not specified on entry) – An early-era benchmark that reflects the scene settling into a recognizable mission-to-mission route and consistent execution standards.
Firepaw – Any% (Corvo) – 31m 21s (LRT) – listed as “9 years ago” (≈ 2017) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A snapshot of the very early leaderboard era, useful as a reference point for how quickly core routing tightened in the first wave of recorded runs.
WaveClipping – Any% (Corvo) – 20m 07s (LRT) – listed as “2 years ago” (≈ 2024) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A post-optimization-era time that represents the mature skip-and-movement meta without being tied to “latest record” framing.
Cearadeth – Any% (Corvo) – 19m 26s (LRT) – listed as “1 year ago” (≈ 2025) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A modern benchmark run that shows what fully developed routing looks like when the goal is pure tempo and clean mission transitions.
WormdogBS – Any% (Emily) – 21m 54s (LRT) – listed as “2 months ago” (≈ Dec 2025) – PC (version not specified on entry) – Notable for reflecting ongoing refinement and discussion around specific mission tech (the run description references “m6 oob”).
Cearadeth – Any% (No Powers) – 26m 16s (LRT) – listed as “1 year ago” (≈ 2025) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A defining example of how the “No Powers” rule-set reshapes priorities toward stealthy movement lines, safe positioning, and efficient objectives.
Judgy53 – Non-Lethal/Ghost (Corvo) – 40m 15s (LRT) – listed as “9 years ago” (≈ 2017) – PC (version not specified on entry) – An early landmark for the “clean run” side of the community where consistency, routing discipline, and verification clarity matter as much as raw speed.
Sin – Non-Lethal/Ghost (Corvo) – 1h 03m 04s (LRT) – listed as “9 years ago” (≈ 2017) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A foundational early completion for the stealth-focused category family, useful for tracking how the community steadily reduced risk while cutting time.
xcoolmrdimas – Non-Lethal/Ghost (No Powers) – 1h 39m 12s (LRT) – listed as “9 years ago” (≈ 2017) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A clear “early standard” reference point for No Powers stealth routing before later optimization compressed the category.
Wampirchik – All Collectibles (No Powers) – 51m 30s (LRT) – listed as “1 year ago” (≈ 2025) – PC (version not specified on entry) – Represents the category’s identity: routing that balances movement speed with reliable pickup order and minimal backtracking.
Cearadeth – All Collectibles (No Powers) – 49m 12s (LRT) – listed as “11 months ago” (≈ Mar 2025) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A modern, efficiency-driven collectibles route that shows how “completion” categories still reward aggressive optimization.
Cearadeth – 100% (No Powers) – 3h 08m 11s (LRT) – listed as “3 years ago” (≈ 2023) – PC (version not specified on entry) – A long-form showcase category where the “speedrun” challenge is sustained routing, consistency, and fatigue-proof execution over a full-completion ruleset.
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tomatoanus. “Dishonored 2 Any% Speedrun in 20:11 (Corvo).” YouTube video. Accessed February 12, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMOR9Cc6e3k
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