Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider thrives on contradiction. It’s a tale of repentance and redemption, but one that follows a dark road to get there. It’s both an epilogue and a new beginning – a game that closes a few key doors but opens still more.

In terms of narrative, Dishonored the first still hasn’t been topped. Corvo was the perfect vehicle for the player no matter how they wished to play. Want to roleplay as an assassin hell-bent on revenge? Corvo was perfect. Or would you rather play as the unseen savior of the kingdom? Corvo suited that role, too. The high chaos and low chaos paths in Dishonored both not only made logical sense, but also felt like organic developmental pathways for the protagonist – a feeling no other Dishonored game or DLC has been able to fully replicate.

It’s kind of a shame, too, because I’m quite fond of the Dishonored universe’s extended cast. This time around we play as Billie Lurk; she was great in Dishonored 2 and she’s just as effective as the lead. But I’m not entirely sold on the impetus for her quest. She hunts down Daud and then Daud sends her to kill the Outsider? It feels forced, a plotline lacking sufficient motivation. It’s epilogue for the sake of epilogue.

Still, the developers make the best of it. The level designs are as clever as ever – robbing a bank has never been more fun – and Billie Lurk gets a trio of supernatural powers that complement each other well. Playing as Lurk feels slightly less twitchy than playing as Corvo or Emily, but her power of Foresight offers the player greater ability to predict and plan around her enemies’ intentions.

Yet despite featuring a new character, Death of the Outsider can’t quite shake the feeling of “been there, pilfered that.” While playing I felt glad that Arkane Lyon put the series to bed and moved onto Deathloop, which felt innovative in ways that Dishonored hasn’t since part one.

Arkane Studios has been beset by choppy seas of late – Deathloop was a critical hit that didn’t pan out sales-wise, and Redfall was supposed to mark the beginning of Xbox’s return to relevance but instead misfired in embarrassing fashion (although I personally enjoyed it more than most). My hope, though, is that the studios in Lyon and Austin resist the temptation to retreat to the safety of Dishonored and instead keep pushing forward. There’s ample space for new ideas in the immersive sim genre, and I have faith that Arkane can suss them out.

I consider myself an avid fan of the Dishonored games and Arkane Studios’ gameplay style so I was interested in seeing what this little dlc expansion had to offer. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is set right after the events of Dishonored 2 and follows Billie Lurk (a.k.a. Meagan Foster from Dishonored 2) who decides to return to the city of Karnaca in search of the infamous assassin Daud (a villain from the first Dishonored) as he was a sort of mentor figure to her. You rescue him from this crazy black magic using cult known as The Eyeless and he hands down a mission onto you; asking you to kill The Outsider (the mysterious man at the heart of “the void” giving out supernatural powers to dangerous people and causing disorder among the empire). LOL if you’ve never played the dishonored games before then this stuff likely won’t make sense to you but this is the gist of what’s going on in this dlc.

The Eyeless possess a special knife that supposedly created The Outsider and what you wanna do is steal it, figure out how you’re gonna reach the void, and kill the guy (potentially...). Near the game’s beginning The Outsider transforms Billie’s right arm and eye into void artifacts allowing her to perform supernatural abilities and self-replenish mana. She has the displacement ability that every Dishonored protagonist MUST have; but she also has a foresight ability where she can separate her mind from her body and scout out the area marking enemies, special objects, and even placing displacement points for you to teleport to making Billie’s “displacement” gimmick a little more interesting than that of previous protagonists. Lastly she’s got a semblance ability that allows her to steal people’s identities for a short period of time after you’ve knocked them unconscious. Billie’s also got gadgets like an electrified crossbow, grenades that ensnare foes with wires and hyperbaric grenades that send foes flying. She even carries around an artifact that lets her listen to rats speak and they’ll sometimes give you little hints and clues about how to solve an objective or what hazards lie ahead.

All of these abilities did make Billie feel kind of over powered compared to previous Dishonored protagonists but it was a fun power trip I won’t lie, the game just pretty much always felt good to play. You can use coins to upgrade your weapons a little bit in black markets and this game also has bonecharms that you can find hidden throughout the world, however runes are gone and you don’t upgrade your supernatural abilities at all. There are about 5 missions in the game that are all designed fairly well but don’t really introduce much in the way of new features or hazards. The “play your way” design is here for the most part but; since the bulk of your objectives are stealing things rather than eliminating live targets you don’t get to uncover those interesting “non-lethal” paths that get you to really explore each area and use your noggin.

The best level in my opinion was the bank mission where you had to break into this heavily guarded bank and gain access to a vault that moves around on an elevator contraption. The cool thing about this mission too is that you can approach it from a few different angles and even complete a separate side mission that has you sedating all of the human guards in the building by releasing drugs into the ventilation system. The worst mission was the Royal Conservatory where they basically just recycle the same level form Dishonored 2 but manage to make it less interesting. The ending in this game is kinda lame too I was really expecting more since this might be the last we see of this franchise. Yeah I don’t know I mean this dlc is perfectly fine and Billie Lurk is a fun character to play as; it’s just that this game doesn’t really add anything new to the formula other than making it a bit too easy. I was also a little let down with the ending and recycled Royal Conservatory too. I’d only recommend this to the biggest Dishonored fans.