Developer: Arkane Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Tested on: Xbox One
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider – Review
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is the final chapter in the Dishonored series. It’s basically the finale of Dishonored 2. Whether or not you are ready to let go of the franchise, it’s ultimately up to the developers to decide when and where a series ends and to that end, it’s best to send it off on a high note. Seeing as Dishonored 2 completely missed the mark sales-wise, it was only natural for the developer to drop it in its completion, but instead of doing a ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’ and completely leave fans in the dark, they’ve opted to wrap up the semi-loose ends in favour of fans. That’s something Bethesda does well, keep your player base, no matter how small, content. That and milking Skyrim dry.
Story
So you play as Billy Lurk, for those of you who’ve played the DLC to the original Dishonored, that name will ring a bell. She’s the character Daud either kills or shows mercy at the end of the Brigmore Witches. The canon story, as it always goes in sequels to games with ‘morality’ systems is the good ending, where she’s spared and she goes on redeeming herself for the death of Emily Kaldwin. In Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, she goes looking for her long-time and long lost partner in crime: Daud. He’s the only one who could look at her with an emotion that doesn’t border loathing or hatred and she’s ready to spend her last days with him, searching far and wide to be by his side. She eventually finds him and he’s –not at all- in good health. He’s also hell-bent on stopping ‘The Outsider’, the guy with the creepy black eyes that drags people with ‘The Mark’ in and out of ‘The Void’ on his whim to monologue at them.
This stand-alone DLC tries to end it all and give a satisfying end and does its best to keep players engaged. Somehow, Billy Lurk and her sidekick Daud don’t make for interesting characters as they feel shallow. The thing with morality systems is that you either go all bad or all good, but Dishonored: Death of the Outsider doesn’t quite do the ‘morality’ system good, as your actions don’t portray themselves in the world around you like they did in the main game, and Billy Lurk comes off as just going through the motions than really making the player feel like she’s certain that it’s the only way forward. The DLC is also too small to explore Billy as a character making the already shallow characters lose any semblance of emotion or drive really fast. Without spoiling too much, a major event doesn’t even bother Billy, or she doesn’t really come off as being bothered which makes the narrative even more jarring.
Graphics
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is built on the same engine as: Dishonored 2. So graphically there’s not really a problem. The level design, unlike the main games and the DLC to the first Dishonored feels too compact, sure there are still a few ways to get to your objective, but it feels constricted and more straightforward. The final level is quite a maze and though it does give you back that feeling of exploration, it’s too little, too late.
Sound
Whatever the main games had to offer sound wise, this DLC offers too, there isn’t much that can be said about the audio when it comes to Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. The voices of the people surrounding you are engaging enough for you to want to listen so you can find out some clue to your objective. When you pull out a weapon they genuinely sound distressed or annoyed. It’s something that should be commended, there is however the complete opposite of it here, too. Billy Lurk is probably one of the more underwhelming emotionless, boring and shallow characters in AAA gaming of the last year. Whatever she says is in the same manner that could come off as a number of emotions: annoyed, angry, snide, bored, happy. It’s like she’s the voice acted version of Kristen Stewart.
Gameplay
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is an action/adventure game that’s in the vein of the previous installments. You are a character that gets some magical powers from beyond the veil, or in this case ‘The Void’ and you are on some quest to right the wrongs or wrong the wrongs or something in the middle and just make up a scenario as you go. Kill the bad guys, don’t kill the bad guys, whatever you feel like. In this DLC however the morality system has no effect, so there’s no reason to spare anyone, unless you are going for the Gamerscore on your list. The game even proceeds to reward you for playing aggressively, giving you the breathing space to explore much more relaxed. It also causes the DLC to be finished in a little over four hours.
There are side missions that you can look into before you start your main mission and you can buy items at the ‘black shops’ provided you go out of your way to explore the map to get to them. Which is a pain, in the previous game, the path to the Black Markets were not too far from the main thoroughfare and you’d almost naturally stumble across them, making buying of items easy and really made it worth it combing the levels for every coin. In Dishonored: Death of the Outsider on the other hand, money isn’t a necessity, so you can just be oblivious to the contracts as they’ll only give you coin you’ll never use, and you don’t need the items as you’ll find plenty around after you’ve murdered everyone and nicked all their stuff.
When it comes to the staple of the series, the powers, they are new, yes, they can be creative, yes, but most of them feel quite situational. There’s a power that lets you have an out of body experience and lets you set ‘Displace’ markers on other places, where you can teleport to if you are in line of sight. Displace as mentioned before is the ‘Blink’ of the main games but it now takes two taps of the teleport button instead of one, like a passive aggressive delete notification on your computer. “Yea, I’m damn certain that’s where I want to teleport too, there’s nine enemies and two dogs nipping at my heels, I’d love to be out of danger, thank you.”
Finally there’s a power that lets you become anyone whether they are conscious or not, assures the game. So you confidently stride up to a guard, slit his or her throat only to get the message, you can’t impersonate him/her. Only to have a little caveat on the next loading screen assuring you, you can’t impersonate the dead. So you either walk up to them and use it, or knock them out. Also one character can only be impersonated once. The limitation is there… for gameplay reasons, though it makes no sense. If the developers didn’t want players to cheese the game, then why give the players powers to tinker around with in the first place.
It’s also worth noting that you can’t upgrade your powers. Which is another limitation that’s thrown into the mix that makes this DLC feel even more contrived. That’s because limitations feed creativity. Which is fine, but having the limitations thrown onto things that were previously there and better of all, worked, doesn’t really aid your cause. You want to build on your franchise, not strip away and let the player base go back to a previous title, thankful that those limitations weren’t a part of it then.
Conclusion
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is a game for that fans that crave just that little bit more of the franchise, and want to know what happens after all of it just to see if killing a god is possible. If you weren’t a fan of the franchise, then don’t buy into it, it’s a stand-alone DLC, but you need some background story before you dive into this. Sadly you won’t get enough of it in here. So it doesn’t even paint a decent picture to the newcomers. A good game with some nice ideas behind it executed poorly and too limited. Not the send-off you’d want for any franchise.
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider - Review,
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