I knew not to expect much from this game. Released barely a year after the disappointing Dishonored 2, Death of the Outsider was marketed (well, “marketed”) as a standalone game – something that non-fans could use as an entry point to the series. Nothing could be further from the truth; I’m a long-time fan of the series and even I had trouble keeping up with what was going on knowing everything about the world and characters already.
I love the original game. I consider Dishonored to be one of the best games ever made. The unique alternative pseudo-Victorian world it was set in was an ingenious backdrop to a game that excelled because of its sheer simplicity: we play Corvo Attano, the Empress’s bodyguard, who is dishonoured and accused of her murder. After a visit from the mysterious Outsider – the avatar of the Void – he is gifted with supernatural powers, and it is his choice as to whether he regains his honour through mercy, or through revenge.
That was what made the original game so brilliant. It was simple but exciting and interesting. It was effective and unpredictable. And most of all, it didn’t treat the gamers like they were idiots.
Death of the Outsider is boring, predictable, and treats the gamers like they’re idiots.
We play this time as Billie Lurk, who if Arkane is to believed is a “fan favourite” (though I cannot personally attest to seeing much fan-worship of her, and I’m pretty deeply involved in multiple Dishonored fandom circles). Before the first mission has even started, she knows exactly where to find Daud, her former mentor, and then finds him; his mission which he passes on to Billie is to kill the Outsider.
There are a lot of reasons why this premise doesn’t work, not least of all because the game doesn’t balance the line between explaining things and exposition-dumping very well. Billie's personality has been stripped; all that's left is the vile "Magical Negro" trope and her only purpose now is to be an black woman with special powers whose sole purpose is to help white characters out of jams, seemingly unconcerned about her own life. This isn’t even addressing the fundamental flaw of the game: the DLCs for Dishonored – the critically acclaimed (and with good reason) The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches – already dealt with Daud realising that individuals are responsible for their own decisions. Him coming to the conclusion that the Outsider is responsible for the chaos in the world makes no sense. The game seemingly justifying this belief makes even less sense.
Billie’s motivations, similarly, make little to no sense. She was a victim of hierarchical society, one of the downtrodden underneath the excesses of the upper class; her step into the hardcore supernatural to take down a god because she believes the Outsider is responsible for the chaos is bewildering misunderstanding of her core character at best, a betrayal of her core character at worst.
For weeks I predicted that the “twist” would be that Daud and Billie realise that humans were autonomous all along and responsible for their own actions, with or without the Outsider’s influence or with or without the Outsider to blame their own bad deeds on – something almost every single player of the series worked that out years ago – but the game seemingly justifies Billie’s belief that the Outsider is to blame for all the chaos in the world. Arkane has forgotten what made the series so beloved in the first place: the sheer, raw human element that is now ignored in favour of flashy powers and a convoluted supernatural plot with a deeply unsatisfying conclusion. Arkane has derailed this series badly from its original unique, heartfelt concept, and the writers of this game are vastly inferior to those who penned the brilliant first game.
Death of the Outsider could easily have been sold at $19.99 as a DLC for Dishonored 2; its length and content doesn’t justify its own standalone release. The game will find its fans and power to them; I hope they enjoy it and I'll be glad that they do. But I am not one of them. I have no interest in playing a future Dishonored game without the Outsider as the Outsider, or a game with such lazy writing, Death of the Outsider has spelled out the death of Dishonored for this once-devoted fan.
1/10. Billie's powers were sort of cool, I guess.