Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
Chaos theory
Fora standalone expansion meant to wrap up the story arc of two games and the associated DLC, Death of the Outsider is pretty light on plot. As former Dishonored antagonist Billie Lurk, players must help their old and ailing mentor, Daud get revenge on the Outsider, the black eyed gentleman outside of space and time responsible for all the supernatural shenanigans in the Dishonored games, by finding a magical widget capable of killing a god. This knife is in the possession of The Eyeless, a large and powerful gang/sect with members from all walks of life and social strata.
Rather than the assassination missions that formed a core component of Dishonored and its sequel, Death of the Outsider is paced more as a series of fetch quests, with Billie having to find and obtain items from specific members of The Eyeless so as to obtain the god killing weapon. The individual areas in which these characters and missions are located are wonderfully designed. While none are as spectacular as the Clockwork Mansion from Dishonored 2, they each have their own style and personality whilst remaining true to the world. They feel like places that should exist there and give players ample opportunity to play with Billie’s new, Outsider gifted powers.
As Billie didn’t willingly take the Outsider’s mark like Emily Kadwin or Corvo Attano, her powers come from a slightly different place, making the new protagonist feel different and decidedly more powerful than the previous heroes. Equipped with a bone arm and glowing red metallic eye, Billie has three powers at her disposal dealing with movement, vision and disguise. For movement, Billie can Displace. Instead of simply being a teleport, Displace allows Billie to create a ghostly clone in a location and then instantly move to it. A double click with the skill is essentially a teleport, but the fact that you can place a doppelganger somewhere, perform an action and then teleport to that location opens it up to all kinds of possibilities. Foresight, the vision power ties in with Displace, extending its range greatly, but also allows Billie to detach her sight from her location, explore a level and tag enemies. The final skill, Semblance, allows Billie to briefly assume the appearance of a unconscious enemy. Changing faces has a nice effect but we didn’t find much use for the skill due to its high maintenance cost.
Perhaps the biggest, and most impactful change is one of the least noticeable. Chaos no longer affects the world, so murdering people has no lasting impact on the game world. On the one hand this means that accidentally killing someone if you’re going for a low chaos playthough no longer feels like a failure, giving players more freedom to experiment, but on the other hand it does mean that there are no real consequences to Billie’s actions.
Despite the short play time, relative lack of story and flaws, there is something great about Death of the Outsider. It ties a bow around a chaotic package that may not be neat but is fitting.
chaos no longer affects the world, so murdering people has no lasting impact