Curious to hear about other people’s opinions on Death of the Outsider.
I was fairly disappointed by the level design, didn’t particularly enjoy any of the new abilities, and the story never felt like it achieved any sort of gravitas (which is frustrating, because the Outsider was a fantastic character and story in D2).
Took me about 11 hours and I don’t regret buying it, but I’m not sure I could recommend it either.
I really enjoyed it. Interestingly, it’s not DLC, but a stand-alone game. It reuses several levels from Dishonored 2, but modifies them enough that I still found them enjoyable. There’s no Chaos system, so feel free to murder everyone you see. You don’t have to worry about the Outsider giving you shit about it, like in previous games. There is an achievement for not killing anyone on a single mission, which is best gotten during the fairly simple first mission. And there’s an achievement for ghosting the whole game.
Took me about 18 hours to finish the game on Hard. Which means I had to reload a lot more. Original Game+ mode let’s you play the game with Dishonored 2’s powers, so I think I may give that a shot.
Edit - oh, and the game performs much better than Dishonored 2. I rarely dipped below 60FPS, whereas in Dishonored 2 I usually ran around 40-45FPS.
What didn’t you like about the level design? Most of the levels were directly lifted from Dishonored 2, but I thought they did a great job passing time along from the events of that game. They did a lot of neat things with mechanics like contracts and new characters in the world, I felt.
The powers were neat, but I wish there would have been a skill tree to invest in to expand on them, I think that’s all that was missing with the expansion. I had a blast with it, and thought the ending (the one I got, at least) was very interesting. It’s too bad it won’t go anywhere, though, as it sounds like this will be the last game (or the last one set in this time period).
It was average, I agree.
Only level it could really get cranking was the bank, and it let me knock everyone in there unconscious. Oops. Took all the challenge out of it.
Conservatory was just a bit of a hack job. Like some of the reused levels on the original DLC were.
I’ve played through both recently, and the first is the far superior game.
There is a real compulsion to play it. The narrative is strong, and the characters are quite memorable.
The narrative in the second is a mess. The characters motivations are speculative at best, and often they resort to the voiced player character directly imputing them, as the plot does not.
I am honestly baffled as to how they can pay top dollar for Hollywood talent to do voice, yet they don’t do the same for scriptwriters. Susan Sarandon as Granny Rags. Not cheap.
It’s much harder to write a sequel as the characters are boxed in, and they should have started afresh here considering their capabilities.
I don’t think they understand if they put a good story in there that compels people, their reviews will jump up 10 points. They will have to restructure their operations somewhat to get a good script, lock it in, then build the game around that.
The level design was so-so. Royal Observatory was the first major level to have that real Dishonored vibe, with lots of room to traverse the map in the vertical. Very good level. The Palace was another pretty good one in that vein (neglecting the wigged out guest AI).
Jindosh Mansion and Slab in the Crack don’t strengthen the game I think. Very nicely crafted, but gimmick levels mostly, and very confined. Dust district wasn’t very good. Can’t help but think it’d be a better game with a couple of well crafted usual maps in their place.
Nearly all the levels in the original were memorable and the design was extremely tight. The silent protagonist created a nice vacuum for the player to fill. Some parts were even even laugh out loud funny, But now they’ve got rid of that for and apologised for representation of women in the first game, the fucking idiots.
CN: To be honest I’m not even sure. My men, your Overseers, a few whores, a little too much ale. One harmless prank with a runaway chicken and ten minutes later Treavers Alley is a sea of blood and teeth.
HC: I almost wish I’d been there
One final thought. The change to a sepia tone didn’t really help the art design, and the sense of oppression and death by the plague was lost. The art design was top notch otherwise, shame it couldn’t be put together in a more cohesive whole.
But the proportions of the characters are all different. You’ll laugh, but it’s definitely there and has an effect. Obviously I haven’t heard anyone else mention this as it’s a bit borderline… I can’t figure out if it’s extra length in the arms or just the geometry of the buildings in comparison, but the world feels and looks much larger.
It’s not the sensation of being on ice skates either, it’s the proportion of the characters to the world around them.
I think the original may have just been more elongated, and the world felt taller.
Had that lovely water colour effect too, and was often quite striking. Wonderful game.
I’m gonna have to play this game from the beginning, since I got stuck in the Clockwork Mansion a couple of months ago and hated the way I distributed my powers, plus played a bit sloppy in the beginning and missed a few things in the first mission. Now I just barely remember what I’m doing when I start it, in the middle of some room in the mansion that I’ve moved around and changed the levels a couple of times, so I’m totally confused.
What are your tips on what powers I should unlock first? Especially what works in the Clockwork Mansion with the robots.
And oh, I’m playing as Emily, and want to play it on low chaos.
What works with the clockwork mansion robots? You didn’t try and fight them toe to toe did you? What I did was lure them into that wall of light after hacking it so that it was on my side. I also needed to get some more whale oil at some point to power it up again. Also shooting them in the head works, it causes them to be hostile against everything.
I think you can reroute them or something as well, but I basically wanted to sneak past them, since I like playing stealthy. But I think I got stuck in the room where you’re supposed to catch the doctor and put him in the chair…thingie. Sorry - it’s been a few months since I played it =)
I remember always finding a high ground, jumping on their heads and dismantling them that way. It never ceased being satisfying as hell.
You can jump on them? And then what? Punch them to death? I knew there was something about them having a weakness to the side, but I could never pull off a side attack very well.
I would drop a spring springrazor and then bang my sword on the wall so that they would come investigate.
Lol, that’s the easiest way to deal with them. You jump on them and remove their head automatically, then they are blind. So you can attack them in the back twice to kill them.
You jump and use your sword and Corvo/Emily takes their head off.
Huh, haven’t tried that. Mostly since I’ve been creeping around them.
Just a standing jump and attack? You don’t need to get up on a book case or in the rafters? Ill keep this in mind if I do another play-through at some point.
Bummer, I was hoping someone else was commenting on the change of bodily proportions to the surroundings.
I know I’m the only person who will comment on it, but I’m sure everyone sees it, perhaps not consciously.
It drives me nuts a bit trying to figure out what causes it. It’s probably a well known phenomenon in the industry.
I thought they felt more linear than in Dishonored 2, more ‘enclosed’, they never captured me with their atmosphere and they didn’t flow as well. Is it not only one level that’s lifted from D2 and even then, it’s significantly smaller?
It depends. If you have upgraded your athletics and have some skills with the controls, yes you can jump (holding the key before) over them directly. Other wise, you need a bookcase or something.
Playing D2 directly after finishing D1 and both DLC. I admit that I looked at walkthroughs in D1 to make sure I didn’t miss anything; in D2 I have decided to just play without using any walkthroughs or guides of any kind and if I miss things, so be it. I do tend to wander around a lot.
I’m at the 4th (I think?) mission, the one where they talk about the robot warriors. Do they count against my Chaos if I kill them? I’m playing Corvo, low chaos playthrough.
For some reason, I feel like I just don’t have the “vision” or ability to see things as well in crouch mode in D2 as I did in D1. Don’t know why. Also, Dark Vision is… different in D2.
I do not think there is a chaos thing in D2. I was fairly non lethal with a Corvo playthrough. There was no mention of my style by anyone. Then I started a 2nd play through with the princess and went for a full on murder spree to kill everyone I could. After several missions I could not tell any difference in anything by doing so.