Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is a standalone expansion of the Dishonored series from Arkane Studios that moves away from the two main protagonists of previous installments and instead puts the assassin Billie Lurk in the lead role, alongside her former mentor Daud, known from the first Dishonored, where he appeared as one of the key characters in a side storyline.

The game remains true to the immersive-sim genre the series is famous for – the player moves through carefully designed, layered levels where objectives can be completed in a great many different ways, from silent stealth through social manipulation to direct combat using both weapons and supernatural powers. Compared to previous installments, the game abandons the magic of the Outsider tied to his mark and replaces it with a new set of supernatural abilities that Billie obtains through a different path, which also shapes the narrative and the main character's motivation throughout her campaign. The central goal of the game is, paradoxically, to rid the world of the Outsider himself, the entity behind the supernatural powers of the whole series, which gives the expansion a thematically self-contained, at first glance bold framework and raises questions about the nature of the power this being had granted to player characters in previous installments.

The expansion was received positively, with reviewers particularly praising the well-designed levels, the freedom in approaching objectives, and the fact that, despite a smaller budget and shorter length, the game holds up to the high standard the series had set in previous installments. Death of the Outsider is now seen as a dignified and thoughtful conclusion to Dishonored's main storyline, one that, thanks in part to its smaller scope, also works as a suitable entry point for players unfamiliar with previous games in the series. The absence of the classic chaos system affecting the ending based on the level of violence used, which fans were accustomed to from previous installments, was in fact seen as a deliberate shift toward a more personal, morally less black-and-white narrative.