Bought Dishonored 2 on sale from Gog. Installed just fine with Gog G. Pressing Play in Gog G or trying to run it straight from the executable does NOT start the game.

There are no notices. No pop-ups. No errors. No requests to install redists. Nothing. Dead silence.

I suddenly remembered why I hadn't been back to Gog for years. THIS very problem with other games I had purchased AND they too failed to play; refunded them too. I did submit a report, but I'm hoping someone here knows the answer to this odd as-yet unresolved problem.

For those who ask for more details, what part of nothing happens, game doesn't start, no errors, no pop-ups is confusing to you?

edit: nevermind. I tried the offline installer, and it too failed to launch ANY of the games I bought last night from Gog. I asked for refunds, this post is closed. Dear God, Gog, get your shite together.

Check out the Dishonored series sub-forum here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/dishonored_series

There are already threads about this very problem. This one sounds promising:
FIX: Dishonored 2 doesn't start

I had this just a few weeks ago (no onboard graphics card). seems to be a general issue with the game (GOG or not). Can't remember how i got it running last year though (same setup).
:/

In short: no easy fix for some.
Edit: and current version from GOG is the same as my backup.

So we can infer the full offline installer does the same or no?

Dishonored 2 is a NOTORIOUS game known to be problematic with any "unknown" or "exotic" setup of any given PC. It is engine related and how the engine is doing the startup management using system resources including preparing a "shader cache".

If anything is weird or unusual on the system spec, it will fail to boot without any error given.

Nothing to do with GoG, this is related to the game itself.

I once had the same issue when i was exchanging my MB without completely reinstalling my OS... a bunch of games failed to work but... most games did still work. About one dozen of games had issues... Dishonored 2... including Cyberpunk 2077 was one of them.

You really need a very "proper" system there, else some games will just fail to work.

I am almost certain there is something weird on your OS or system in general but without sufficient details i can not tell the reason.

What very problem? That Dishonered 2 does not run on your PC? How could it affect you years ago, if you just bought the game?

If others are to believed, this has something to do with the game not liking an internal (AMD?) iGPU if it detects one, and affects e.g. the Steam version just the same.

I installed and ran the game (offline installer) on my Lenovo Legion 5 Pro gaming laptop (Windows 11) half a year ago, I didn't have any problems at least back then. Not sure if I have an AMD iGPU, but maybe I do as the laptop does have an AMD CPU and a NVidia RTX 3080 discrete GPU. I have always set in NVidia Control Panel it to always prefer NVidia GPU over internal GPU, wondering whether that is a reason I didn't see the problem ie. the game correctly chooses the discrete GPU over iGPU because I have told the system to always try to do that?

It may be also related to me normally using that gaming laptop with an external monitor, as I've understood many gaming laptops only then use only the discrete GPU, and not routing everything first through the iGPU (still using the discrete GPU as well, but the "routing" through iGPU causes a performance hit anyway). Some gaming laptop reviews found out that games got higher FPS rates with an external monitor vs. the laptop internal screen, and also some laptops let you disable the iGPU altogether in BIOS/UEFI settings, which also fixes that performance issue with the laptop screen.

Sometimes the fixes or root causes can be quite hard to find. For instance this case, where Shadow Warrior 2 would get stuck during the intro, if you had "In-game overlay" enabled in Geforce Experience. Go figure, the game apparently has some issue with that NVidia feature.

https://www.gog.com/forum/shadow_warrior_series/the_game_freezes_at_the_sword/post4

Those games, including Shadow Warrior 2, make some sort of "caching" in order for allowing a faster start up process. This surely can reduce loading time but it makes those games more vulnerable to any sort of configuration issues. So, in worst case the game simply can not "read" the cached settings and files anymore and ultimately fails to boot or even work. So this behavior is a "2 edged sword".

However, according to my experience, Dishonored 2 is NOT vulnerable to cheap GPUs, as even a bad Intel IGPU i once used on a Surface 7 may still work... but as soon as there is some setting issues... it will simply stop to work.

There are some rare games, for example "Vikings Wolves of Midgard" that may simply deny any work without a discrete GPU, a rather rare case. Usually games "take" even the worst GPUs (they may have 5 FPS, yet they still boot), but are MORE LIKELY vulnerable to settings and sometimes CPU specs.

We really need more details. Which version of Windows are you running and what's your setup like? Also, what do you mean by 'dead silence'? Is it a black screen or does nothing show up at all? You can also try using the fixes for fullscreen issues and the main menu taking a long time to load in PCGW.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dishonored_2

By the way, several people have complained of similar issues on Steam too so you might want to check there for potential solutions. I doubt this is GOG's fault.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/403640/discussions/0/217691032442948312/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/403640/discussions/0/3829789648153254424/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/403640/discussions/0/217691032446093727/

Bethesda also has an official help page for this issue.

https://help.bethesda.net/app/answers/detail/a_id/36726

Something stupid worth trying:
Have you tried launching the game via Wine using the Windows Linux subsystem?

Yo, guys...no need to try to help any further - OP has already asked for a refund.

Really? He can not be serious?!
Surely there is a issue with his system but okay... leave it be. Oh... okay... then nobody could actually help... simply need to go back to that other place it seems. Goodbye then.

Yeah, good luck with Steam or whatever.