Game details Developer: Arkane Studios

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Platform: Windows (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4

Release Date: September 15, 2017

ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Price: $30

Links: Steam | Official website Arkane Studios: Bethesda Softworks: Windows (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4September 15, 2017M for Mature: $30

Ten minutes into Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, I thought it was a slick standalone addition with smart mechanical improvements over its predecessor. An hour later, it was already my favorite Dishonored title to date.

That praise isn’t quite as effusive as it might sound. I've never gelled well with Dishonored’s joyless world. If there's a character you're not encouraged to torture or kill in a Dishonored game, it's because that character only exists to tell you how much worse off the steampunk world is elsewhere. Meanwhile, the assassination-centric plots are too focused on revenge to bother righting any of the endless societal wrongs.

In Death of the Outsider, somebody finally feels like doing something to fix... well, everything. That somebody is Billie Lurk, a major antagonist from the first game's DLC duology and major accomplice in Dishonored 2. After meeting up with her former mentor, Daud, the two hatch a plan to kill the one ultimately responsible for their planet's often supernatural ills.

Make a difference

True to its name, that “ultimate source of all evil” is the demigod of chaos called the Outsider. Since the Outsider is the one who usually bestows magical powers on people, Billie is denied most of the supernatural arsenal that other series protagonists have enjoyed. She does have a few tricks, however, and what her powers lack in quantity they make up for in quality and mechanical improvements.

Billie can "blink" around her environments, just like Corvo and Emily from the main games, but her method of teleportation isn't instant. She instead summons markers that she can "displace" to at any time, so long as the player maintains line of sight. Placing Billie-shaped waypoints at your destination removes any uncertainty from the move and also opens up a whole host of new stealth and murder tactics. I've always loved to play death-from-above on unsuspecting guards, for instance, but Death of the Outsider lets me prepare instant escape routes back to my chosen perch before every drop assassination.

Billie's two other spells offer more fundamental changes to the series. "Semblance" lets Billie siphon off living NPCs' faces and wear them herself. It's great for Agent 47-brand stealth and nonviolent runs. "Foresight," meanwhile, is a play on Dishonored's Dark Vision, which highlights enemies and items through walls. The new ability freezes time while Billie astrally projects to scout ahead and mark points of interest. There’s no more need to play the entire game through a hazy, transparent orange peel for the sake of never missing something important!























The rules of magic

Overall, there’s much less “fear of missing out” in the $30 expansion. Mana regenerates automatically and fully, for instance, so there's no reason to hold back because of limited mana potions. The "chaos system," which altered the previous games' story depending on how lethally you progressed, is either invisible or gone this time around. For the first time in a Dishonored game, you can choose to tackle any enemy in any way you please without fear of being judged by the game itself.

In fact, mixing up violent and nonviolent means is encouraged. Most of Death of the Outsider's five stages are speckled with optional contracts. These give orders to kill, steal, or kidnap specific targets without the benefit of objective markers. If you complete them to the letter, they're worth hefty chunks of change toward upgrades at black markets in each location.

Contracts are a much more open-ended excuse to explore your environment than hunting skill points and augments in Dishonored 2. Since the contracts don't directly point you to any of the objects or persons of interest, you need to pay a good deal more attention to context clues in your environment. Then you still have to figure out how to complete each job. That's not always easy when you need to, say, abduct a single VIP from a crowded bar that turns hostile if you act suspicious or make a mime's untimely death look like a suicide.

The end is the beginning

You can skip the contracts, of course, but here Death of the Outsider uses my craving to see and do everything as a force for good. The contracts drag me all across a given location and require me to think about every one of my tools, rather than encouraging me to play the game as a first-person chokehold simulator because I want to get the "best" ending.

Sadly, the contracts get less interesting as the game progresses, and they disappear altogether in the game’s final act. About halfway through, Death of the Outsider becomes less of a sandbox and more like its predecessors. In turn, I grew less and less enamored with it as I fell back on those old one-two combos on the branching path to a single target. I suppose you can't make something called "Death of the Outsider" without eventually narrowing the focus down to that singular figure. I only wish Arkane had addressed the elephant in the room by using more of the lessons the studio has clearly learned since Dishonored 2.

Said lessons still make the meat of the game feel more liberating than any other Dishonored. It's even fitting that Billie, who's quick to point out that she has suffered under her world's abusive pecking order more than most, is the one to finally loosen the series' reins—even while tying up the last of the games' major loose ends. That closure might indicate that Death of the Outsider is the last we've seen of Dishonored for a while. If so, my only regret is that we never saw more of what it offers.

The Good

Contracts encourage exploration and experimentation.

Superpowers are limited but some of the best in the series.

No morality system means no need to min-max lethal and non-lethal tactics.

The Bad

The sandbox features drop away near the end.

The Ugly

I can't help but wish Dishonored had been more like this all along.

Verdict: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider frees itself from the franchise's usual restrictions, while putting its usual tools to satisfying use. Buy it.