Video Game Reviews

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider Review

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider was a very interesting game to play as it has a very similar situation to Marvel's Spider-Man and Spider-Man Miles Morales where it is essentially the DLC for Dishonored 2, but it was made into its own game, its own powers, and the main characters for Death of the Outsider and Miles Morales are both black.

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I am glad this is not twitter, cause I think I would've gotten canceled for making a comment like that, anyway let's get started. 

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Premise:

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is a DLC turned into its own stand alone game by Arkane Studio and published by Bethesda Studios as a direct continuation of the second game's story, while the game also went ahead and confirmed that Emily Kaldwin is the protagonist for the second game, which I was glad to see. The story follows Billie Lurk from Dishonored's DLCs or Meagen Foster from the story of Dishonored 2, who starts the game off by searching for Daud, her mentor from the first game, the man who killed Jessamine, and... well... I can go all day on what Daud has done, but yeah he's kind of a bad dude who redeemed himself in Dishonored 1's DLC story... that was in vain since Delilah came back in the second game to be the main villain. The game keeps its focus on Karnacca, the region from the second game, and has us go to the void a couple times, which was really fun.

The story has five missions, all of them are pretty fun... except the final part for the last mission with some issues, and of course how the writing is done for the Outsider which I was not a fan of. 

The main character is of course Billie Lurk who gains a void prosthetic and a void eye after the first mission courtesy of the Outsider, which gives her three new abilities, two of them are familiar, the third one is a unique twist that I liked, and I'll be going over that.

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Gameplay:

The gameplay of Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is ripped right from Dishonored 2, which makes sense since its the same engine as the second game, so I won't be talking about a lot of the gameplay.

For the most part, the stealth AI is largely the same, with some minor improvements, with a lot of the enemies noticing anything that you do that impacts the environment, this was shown even more in the bank heist job with the clockwork soldiers making a return, with a whole new look and a giant nerf that I was glad to see, and the abilities came very hand for the stealth.

Billie Lurk has three abilities she can use. She has a teleport that I forgot the name of and took some time to get used to. It's essentially Blink, but you place down a waypoint first and then use the ability again to teleport which was kind of cool, I won't lie. The second one is the vision ability but you actually control it and move around the area being able to see through walls, mark certain enemies, and everything else. The third power is my favorite, the ability to shapeshift, you can go ahead and knock out an enemy so you can then go ahead and mimic there appearance allowing you to go through other areas much more easily. 

Besides the void powers, most of the usual gear is gone, the sleeping darts are instead stunned darts that I rarely used since they made the person scream out and alert nearby enemies so I mostly just snuck around unless I could take down someone stealthily. You also have mines, stun mines, no gun this time instead you have the crossbow thing from the Dishonored 1: DLC's which was cool to see.

But here is the one thing I hated.

I always aimed to do a low chaos mode when I played the Dishonored Games and guess what...

In this game... THERE IS NO CHAOS SYSTEM! What the fuck Arkane Studios?! I like seeing consequences for my actions, it makes the game more realistic and immersive! I only found this out after I beat the game by the way, and I only killed two people, who were enemies in the final mission that were pissing me off. 

But now we're onto the story and... like Dishonored 1 to Dishonored 2's story, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider has an even weaker story... which I wasn't surprised to see. 

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Story:

The story of Dishonored: Death of the Outsider felt... so weird to me.

The concept is fine, but killing the Outsider, the main deity for the Dishonored cities and keeping it confined to a DLC just feels so off, and the fact that in order to kill him you have to acquire a dagger that had made him the god that he is and find the place where he was sacrificed to become a God by a cult. 

Daud wants to find the dagger and Billie does so, while also finding the location of the altar where the Outsider was made into a God, and when Daud dies and goes to the void where we find the Outsider, trapped in stone with what also appears to be several other people who had taken his mark, with a choice, either let him go if you find out how to free him or kill him with the dagger. 

But... heres the thing... 

I feel like the developers tried to make the game like Prey (2017) due to a new enemy in the final area that reminded me a lot of the Typhon Phantoms from Prey (2017) except they were largely invulnerable which was... very annoying, and also tried to make the story feel more insightful or more focused on the actions of people when it comes to using the powers of gods.

And they tried to... I don't know villainize The Outsider, which I can see why they do that, and the way they wrote Daud... it felt like they brought Ryan Johnson, the director of the Last Jedi to help out, but kept him on a firm leash to make sure his character wasn't entirely ruined but...

I just feel like the story could have been much more better if the game had a couple years in the oven, and let us play with Corvo, Emily, Daud, and Billie for the game as it would be a nice way to end off the series... since... there is no Dishonored 3 or Dishonored 4 coming out any time soon. 

But I do want to talk about the Outsider.

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My issues with how the story ruins the Outsiders character:

I feel like the Outsider's best characterization was in Dishonored 2, as I greatly enjoyed how his character evolved into the second game compared to the bland voice and character that he had in the First Game, with the second games incarnation being kind of snarky, have a dark humor, and just toy with Emily or Corvo. 

But... in this story it just feels like he's made... so pitiable really.

I always saw him as a powerful void like God who oversaw those who could use the void, and gave them there powers.

But in this game, he's shown to be controlled by a Cult that we never heard of until now, and just... it just feels so wrong that one Cult was able to control a fucking god, and that this same cult created him which also makes sense I guess but it just feels wrong that this how the Outsider is potrayed. 

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Ending Thoughts:

In my opinion, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider... its fine, it's not good and it's not bad, it's just fine.

I'm going to give it a 7/10. I know that Dishonored 1 and Dishonored 2 9/10's, but Dishonored: Death of the Outsider feels kind of off in the terms of both story and how it made me feel playing it.