Bethesda to release Dishonored 2’s first three missions as a free trial

Bethesda will make the first three missions of Dishonored 2 available for free on April 6.

The free trial will be available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the PC. Such free trials are becoming increasingly popular as a way for publishers to merchandise their older games. Dishonored 2 came out in November, when a lot of gamers were busy with other titles.

Now Bethesda wants you to give Arcane Studios’ tale about Empress Emily Kaldwin and the royal protector Corvo Attano a second try. 2K also recently launched a free game demo for Mafia III, another title that came out in the fall.

The free trial can be downloaded from Dishonored 2’s store page on the PSN Store, Xbox Marketplace, and Steam. Players who decide to upgrade to the full game during or after the free trial will keep all of the saves made during the trial, and can continue enjoying Dishonored 2’s campaign from where they left off.

Dishonored 2 has been praised by IGN as “amazing” and “a superb sequel”, declared a “masterpiece” by Eurogamer, and hailed “a must-play revenge tale among the best in its class” by Game Informer. GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb didn’t like it so much, as it was buggy on the PC.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.