Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (2017)

If you take this for what it is, a standalone DLC and not a full blown game, it is very good. There's a lot more side stuff to do here compared to D2 thanks to the contracts which fleshes out the levels and there are some interesting things you can do with the Semblance ability similar to how you change outfits in the Hitman games.

If you plan on playing the game once, you might get between 5-7h of playtime out of this. If you're an achievement hunter you will definitely get 15h+ as long as you're not rushing through things.

If you can, get this with the Dishonored Complete Collection and not on it's own.

Quick thoughts first: Worse than the other 2 but still good if you like them I guess. Basically no chaos system (which is good).

More cumbersome and awkward powers, but you can just stab people so there is always that.

Billie Lurk is an okay character, tho I don’t like what they did to Daud’s character. It felt off.

Story was bland and not as interesting as it sounds. Taking the character with the most promise, “The Outsider”, and just falling flat like a wet towel. And you are supposed to be interested. Story was weak. Ending was weak. Writing was weak. Gameplay was weak. Level design was still pretty good tho. Smaller maps (some even recycled from Dishonored 2), but very focused. Not a negative imo. Arkane always impresses with level design and this is no different.

The Contracts side quests were a good addition. It’s basically the side quests you could find around town in the other games only now you can see them from the Black Market and see waypoints. Good addition.

Jugablemente ofrece una experiencia similar a Dishonored 2, con grandes peros: Los niveles son bastante cortos, no ofrecen mucho desafío al sigilo, huelen a reciclaje y los poderes son pocos y no dan demasiado juego. La historia parece estar un poco desinflada, como si tuvieran en mente cosas más grandes para el Forastero y hubieran decidido finiquitarlo todo corriendo y con un final poco imaginativo y satisfactorio.

Mi recomendación es que lo juguéis a precio reducido cuando tengáis oportunidad, si os gusta la saga como a mí da más horas de diversión, pero la realidad es que es un producto muy inferior a las entregas principales.

I don’t have as much to say about Death of the Outsider as I did about the first two Dishonored games. The fact that this was originally planned as DLC became apparent after the 9 hours I spent with it, but I also understand the motivations to make this a standalone experience. The matter at hand is quite significant after all: whereas in D1’s DLC you're essentially going against someone who had been, at the time, an ‘invisible’ presence in the Dishonored universe, here you are facing someone who has loomed over the player’s shoulders from the moment the first game began. That doesn't mean DOTO handled this premiss perfectly, but it does set the stage with an intriguing concept capable of easily luring fans of the franchise to one final adventure.

I had quite a bit of fun with this game when all was said and done, but it was also the only one I didn’t feel like returning to after finishing my first run. It didn't help that DOTO starts off poorly, featuring the worst first level of the entire trilogy, and even though I appreciate the foreshadowing of what the next game would be about at the end of D2, the whole thing still felt forced to me for some reason. That said, Billie Lurk is definitely one of the highlights of the last entry. It was very smart for the devs to make us spend as much time with her as we did in D2, since this way there is an almost immediate connection to the main character, her past and her motivations. I thought the story left a lot to be desired overall (with the big exception of delving deeper into the history of the Outsider, which was awesome), but Lurk takes on her shoulders so much of the narrative burden that it made me not care as much about the poorer writing quality of the main thread. Aligned with this, I appreciated the return to a visually darker world when compared to D2, something very fitting with the broader story strokes.

Gameplay wise, you get a couple of genuinely new tools (hook mine, hagpearl, etc) and powers (semblance, displace and void strike), but you don’t get runes and the power system is significantly stripped back both in quantity and in quality. This made me feel I had a lot less recourse to go about my business. The main problem I had with it is that the relentless sense of style and badassery I mentioned in my D1 post - and which was to me one of its principal hooks - feels largely gone here. I had a really hard time coming to grips with the strict timed nature of the powers, though this could've been a me thing. Another thing I feel DOTO does worse than the other 2 games is level design. I didn’t have too much of a problem with the fact that a lot of it felt like a recycling of Karnaca’s levels from D2, but to me, the design overall seemed uninspired in comparison, at times lacking any real consequential verticality and logical layout, two of the highlights of the levels in the first games. There are exceptions, however. The bank mission is fantastic in the challenge it presents and the different approach options it gives you, and the last level exceeds every other in tone, atmosphere and tension. They weren't enough to ignore the problems felt in the remaining missions, but they were still a big plus.

Going back to mechanics, I do like how mana now recharges over time instead of with potions (this needed to be done in order to play well with the new timed powers), but in a way, looking at what was on offer and the nature of the main protagonist, I almost feel like this would've been a perfect opportunity to have a pure non-power Dishonored game. Such would not only make more sense narratively, it would also facilitate the inclusion of a much wider array of gadgets at Lurk’s disposal.

So these are my overall thoughts on the DOTO experience: it starts off badly yet ends on a strong note; it keeps the same mechanical enjoyment, yet regresses on the number of options it gives you; it comes with an unimpressive overall level design when compared to its predecessors, yet it features a couple of impactful missions and also returns to the darker tone that made D1 so memorable to me; it offers a forgettable story, yet the main protagonist and focal point of the narrative are plenty enough to keep you engaged; it is the worst game of a very strong trilogy, yet on the whole still a very fine game capable of standing on its own two feet, and pretty much a must for fans of the franchise seeking a solid conclusion wrapped up in one last bang. 7.5/10

Standout missions: The Bank Job for design and One Last Fight for atmosphere.

I was initially a bit disappointed with this game as I felt Billie's powers weren't as good as Corvo and Emily's but soon I realized that this short coming is more than made up for by full auto regeneration of the void energy which allows Billie limitless usage of precious and scarce abilities of her predecessors. Another way in which this differs from the previous games is that the predecessors slowly ease us into the ways of the Dishonored world but this one already expects us to know it well.

Having been released only a few months after Dishonored 2, it differs very little from it in terms of game play mechanics and graphics. Even some of the initial levels are quite similar to the previous game. The bank job and the stolen archives are the levels where the game comes into its own.

Though it has been called a standalone expansion, by the making the Outsider the focus of this game, the developers intricately tie it into the beginnings of the series when Corvo first encounters the Outsider. Going to the eye and releasing the Outsider makes us nostalgic about the early phase of Dishonored 1 when we first get a taste of the void's powers. This is an impressive achievement when we consider the fact that most games these days struggle to stay in our memory even for a few hours.

This is one of the rare IPs that combines story, action, adventure, strategy and stealth to great effect.

Steam Curator

I've been playing through all of the Dishonored games and their DLCs this year, and after months of being blown away I've finally hit a game that disappointed me.

Death of the Outsider is a budget game/standalone expansion, so I was expecting less content. What I wasn't expecting for that smaller amount of content to not meet the same high bar that this series has set for itself in the past.

Death of the Outsider isn't a bad game, it just has the unfortunate distinction of being the only 'fine' game in a series of excellent games, and its hard to recommend it when you could just go play Dishonored 2 again.