Dishonored 2's Emily Kaldwin presents a "completely different" experience to the first game's protagonist, says co-director Harvey Smith.

In the first Dishonored, Emily was a child, the daughter of assassinated empress Jessamine Kaldwin, but fifteen years later, she's an "empress outlaw on the run".

The sequel will see players controlling Emily for the first half hour, then making a choice between Emily and Corvo for the rest of their playthrough.

While Corvo's powers are approximately the same as in the first game, Emily "fights with a little more finesse than Corvo does,' sporting an array of new supernatural abilities, including Far Reach, Shadow Walk, and Mesmerise.

The tentacle grappling-hook Far Reach ability replaces Corvo's Blink teleportation, but "you can stick to walls, you can yank somebody toward you and assassinate them in mid-air [...] It begins to feel different, and it adds momentum. You can run and jump and it has rope physics to it."

Smith also promises that Emily's experience will be different narratively and thematically, though she and Corvo go on the same missions, and that she will be a unique character in video games.

"Obviously there are a bunch of tropes that people lazily reach for when they make female protagonists. But we worked really hard. Our narrative designer, Sachka Duval, was involved in that. It's been a good process."

Dishonored 2 hits new-gen consoles and PC sometime in 2016.