The Kaldwin saga comes to a satisfying end.
HQ
HQ
All things must come to an end. It’s typically sad, but sometimes it’s also necessary. We’ve grown incredibly attached to Arkane Studios’ glorious game world and its inhabitants over the years. Sure, the franchise as such isn’t dead, but this particular chapter full of empresses, betrayed lovers, child abduction, and assassinations is at its end and it’s a chapter we’ll cherish and replay just to remind ourselves how brutally delightful it was. Arkane closes the door on Corvo, Emily, Jessamine, Daud, Bille and the mysterious dark-eyed deity with a final adventure starring an indecisive heroine.
Billie Lurk, the resourceful assassin who started her life on the dirty streets of Gristol, has been a key character ever since the first game. She was lurking behind the scenes of the first game with her capable mentor at her side, knife in hand and with the death of an Empress on her conscience. Characterised as a reliable friend who then got caught as a traitor in The Knife of Dunwall, and undercover in Dishonored 2 she helped the family she once tore apart. In the finale, Death of the Outsider, she has been promoted to protagonist, and while she is worn out and bitter, she’s still a breath of fresh air on the fly-ridden, corpse-littered streets of Karnaca.
As the expansion starts up Billie awakens in a familiar place, the room where the player was kept in the previous game, below deck on the massive whaling ship The Dreadful Whale. Once outside you’ll soon realise the ship has seen better days. Rooms have been sealed off, walls torn down, and the beast is stranded. It mirrors the state of the land after cult members and those fascinated by the supernatural stepped out of the shadows through the guidance of the mysterious deity known as The Outsider. Billie’s career as a captain may be threatened, but her mission is simple, she must aid her former mentor Daud and destroy the evil force that granted us powers in the previous games.
Speaking of powers, even if Billie isn’t granted these by The Outsider as she doesn’t carry his mark, they still play a large role in this final chapter. This time the player can use powers as much as he or she wants as the mana is replenished automatically (no need for potions). The powers you are granted will be used through the entire game and if you want to power them up you need to seek out bone-charms along your way.
Displace is Billie’s version of Corvo’s Blink and Emily’s Far Reach. Unlike the similar powers of the father/daughter duo, Displace adds more tactical options for the aggressive player. This ability isn’t immediate but lets the player produce a copy of Billie that you can then teleport to with a second press of the trigger. It can be used as a last resort to escape an encounter before you die, to move behind an enemy, or it can be used as a weapon (if you target an enemy with the ability the enemy will explode, but Billie also takes damage). It is, however, more difficult to use the ability to remain undetected as it takes a little longer to teleport between the two phases.
Foresight is another evolved version of a power we’ve already seen (Dark Vision) and it lets Billie step out of her body, stop time and fly around as an all-seeing spectre. In this mode you can see items and enemies through walls and you can also mark them so you can still see them after the mana runs out. In addition to spotting and marking pesky guards, the ability can also be used to place copies of Billie in place you cannot reach by other means when using Displace.
Semblance is Billie’s third and final power and it gives her the ability to “borrow” the face of another character to get past guards. The power can be used on anyone, even key characters, and they don’t even have to be conscious. If the bodies are found in the street without faces the guards catch on to what’s happening and you’re detected.
Apart from these supernatural powers, Billie also carries a versatile arsenal that’s ready to deal with enemies in both lethal and non-lethal fashion. Bombs, grenades, stun guns and deadly arrows. Billie comes prepared.
The mission structure has been given a proper revamp this time around. The five chapters lead you through a range of homes, a bank guarded by robots, and a mansion we’ve visited many times before, but Billie doesn’t have any targets to find and kill. No poor victims, no real key individuals to track down, it’s just The Outsider who needs to die. This meant we weren’t thinking as tactically when taking on a mission and if it wasn’t for the new Contracts (smaller missions Billie can accept for coin) we would likely not have been as interested in these tasks.
The hallmark of Arkane Studios is without a doubt character and level design. The level design here is as masterful as it is in its predecessors, and the sense of being able to do whatever you like is still plain as day. If you want to you can steal a key from an apartment owner, teleport to the balcony, use the key to get in, steal his valuables, and then make your way out the window at the opposite side of the apartment. If you’re not interested in stealing random stranger’s valuables, you can walk straight towards your mission objective along guard-infested streets. The sense of absolute freedom when you, as a player, can choose which path you want to take to get where you need to go without any limitations – be it charging through guarded, open streets or crawling through tiny elevator shafts – is extremely liberating. It doesn’t hurt that all of the different paths are designed by geniuses and you get to enjoy the view wherever in Karnaca you are.
The fact is that the game design of the series is one we’ve really cherished over the years, and we were mildly shocked that the consequences of a lethal or non-lethal playthrough weren’t there for this one. Instead, it’s only one choice at the end that matters, regardless of how many guards you’ve killed or spared along the way. The benefit is that those who just want to relax and play the game don’t have to bother with remaining undetected, but obviously the replay value takes a knock. To compensate for this there’s the option to play through the game a second time with Original Game+, a mode where you have access to the powers from the previous games, but does that really compensate for the lack of a karma system?
In spite of the fact that Death of the Outsider is a scaled down Dishonored experience, it’s a visually stunning adventure with new enemy types, spectacular chapters and levels, brilliant voice acting and better accessibility. It’s obvious that Arkane has wanted to satisfy those who rather chop their way forward in a linear, yet highly sandbox-flavoured action-adventure. What about those who prefer stealth then? Well, they’re getting an easy-to-play ending to the Kaldwin saga and their questions regarding The Outsider are finally answered. And that’s not too shabby.
HQ
Keyword: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider