The Dishonored series has been, so far, both incredibly derivative and incredibly original. It picks up the mantle of the Thief series by being a stealth set in a sort of steampunk dystopia populated with guards who all sound exactly the same, but with Assassin Creed’s focus on assassination and verticality, where the player is empowered to steal anything not nailed down. The unique aspects come from a suite of magic powers that make moving around so much easier, and the fact that the game reacts to the choices you make — usually your decision to go through the game stabbing everybody or nobody, including your assassination targets. Replay value alert.
In Death of The Outsider, a standalone expansion to Dishonored 2, but more of a sequel to the Knife of Dunwall expansion from the first game, you play as Billie Lurk (voiced by Rosario Dawson), a supporting character from both campaigns as she sets out to rescue her former mentor Daud, before the two of them resolve to kill The Outsider, the amoral god who previously gave out the series’ magic powers to anyone who interests him.
Now that you’re trying to kill him, he can’t give you his Mark, so instead Billie has been affected by timey-wimey shenanigans from Dishonored 2, which means she now has a magic eye and arm from which she draws her new powers. You’ve got Displace, the obligatory short range teleport that lets you mark a teleport spot for creative planning, Foresight, which lets you scout around and mark targets, and Semblance, which lets you steal the face of anyone still living. All of this is on a cooldown timer as opposed to a mana meter, which lets you play around with your powers with no consequences whatsoever, something I greatly appreciated while rolling through the game.
The level design is exactly as good as ever, with plenty of incredibly durable chandeliers and reliable verticality, as well as multiple routes in and out of major strongholds. However, outside of the final level, nothing you’re going to be doing here is going to feel as fresh and experimental as an expansion should be, and the second to last level is just a retread of one from Dishonored 2. That game, despite the retread nature of its plot, featured quite a few cool ideas, like a level that lets you move between two time periods and a movable mechanical mansion of doom. Heck, there’s not even any real assassination missions in this game either, and inflicting some sort of creative non-lethal elimination on the targets was always a barrel of laughs.
Another problem for me, though this might be different depending on how murder-happy a given player prefers to get in these games, is that the Chaos system, which would change the world based on how many people or targets you’ve stabbed or not, is gone entirely. Allegedly, it’s because Billie hasn’t been given the Mark of The Outsider, but it cuts a fair bit of replay value out given that the world doesn’t actually change, and the ending is reduced to a Mass Effect 3 style choice that can be save scummed to see both outcomes, as opposed to a chance for the player to reflect on their play style. Stabby or not-stabby is purely based on player preference this time out, and I’m not a fan.
A problem that’s more general to the series is the fact that, by choice or accident, no character in these games seems to really care too much about what’s going on around them. Even Hollywood actors like Rosario Dawson and Michael Madsen seem like they’ve been assimilated by the Borg here. The only character for whom this is appropriate is the Outsider, who has always been the standout in a cast full of robots. If Arkane is going to continue the series after this, priority one should be to hire a voice director who knows how to extract some actual performances out of their actors, which should go a long way towards making the thing you play about as interesting as the backstory jammed into the world.
Otherwise, despite all my gripes, this is still a fun game to actually play. It feels great to both slip by unnoticed and stab everything in sight, but it’s not something you can’t get by playing the other games, which are packed with more replay value and more fun scenarios. Consider this at half off its $30 price tag, and only if you’ve played those other games.
Logan Graham is a senior studying media arts with a focus in games and animation at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Did you play the Dishonored series ? Let Logan know by emailing him at lg261813@ohio.edu.
