French Studio Arkane consistently continues to delight us with a fascinating and very atmospheric games. In may of this year I told you about a fantastic shooter Prey, and for months before that — about the wonderful role-playing stealth action game Dishonored 2. Hardworking Frenchmen never sit idly by and suggest we get back to the gloomy Island Empire in a spin-off called Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. However, this time, to play not for young Empress or her father, and for dark-skinned assassin Billy Lerk.
Game: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows
Genre: Action-Adventure, Stealth
Release date: September 15, 2017
Developer: Arkane Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
The game takes place almost immediately after the ending of Dishonored 2. Contract killer Billy Lerk decides to track down his mentor Dawood, which she betrayed 15 years ago and is now experiencing because of this crisis of conscience. Yes, the Daud killed the Empress in the very first game. Legendary assassin captured members of the Cult of the eyeless, worshippers of a godlike Alien being who is the source of supernatural abilities of the protagonists of the first two games. To rescue a comrade from captivity, as atonement for his guilt Billy called to help Daoud to carry out his old dream – to kill a Stranger and to put an end to the dark times of the Empire.
Unlike the first two games, the Death of the Outsider presents itself exclusively as a qualitative addition to allowing more time to be in loved by many players worldwide. The game consists of five missions, and the total duration of the passage is about 7-8 hours. If you’re sophisticated perfectionist and prefer to explore the game 100%, it is possible to stay in the game for 15 hours. The nonlinearity of the gameplay is present here in great abundance, which is very conducive to replayability.
Despite the fact that Billy Lerk is not marked with someone else’s, it still has several supernatural powers. First, the protagonist is able to teleport short distances. Second, it is still able to project your consciousness to the astral plane and thus to explore the location without the risk of being seen or caught. And third, assassin is able to steal someone else’s appearance and pretend to be another person. Each ability Billy takes the magical energy of the character, but from a vessel of mana, the developers decided to abandon in favor of automatic restoration of the blue scale.
In addition to the cold weapon in the Arsenal protagonistki has a gun, able to shoot not only bullets, but also electric and fiery Darts, various types of grenades, mines, and gems that you can throw on the floor to distract opponents. As before, you can pass the game in stealth mode, not falling into the eyes of enemies and like a shadow slipping past the guards. But this time in the game nobody is trying to limit you “level of chaos”, so go through the Death of the Outsider can, killing everyone in their path. At the end of the game is not affected, can not survive.
I really liked the new system side-quests, or what we call “contracts”. In each mission you will be asked to perform a few unnecessary tasks, for each of which the main character will get a certain amount of money. Contracts are available at the Bulletin Board, located in the same room with the black market. For example, you will be asked to steal in one of the bars secret popular rat tincture or kill the edge of the brazen street MIME, to steal from the cell Bank expensive gem or to stage a suicide of a specific person. Every job is quite exciting and will give you many pleasant moments.
Visually, the game has not changed since the release of Dishonored 2. The world Death of the Outsider looks just great, and the interface will be familiar to those who have passed the first two games. You can return to the familiar location: on the ship “Fallen house”, in the southern city of Karnak, visit of the Royal Cabinet of curiosities and other places. I was somewhat frustrated by the lack of synchronization of Russian voice characters with their facial animation, making facial expressions is pretty awful. And that’s what the game became significantly better – in terms of optimization. Download unlike Dishonored 2 was incredibly fast, and you no longer have minutes on end to admire the loading screens.
It’s nice that the developers did not forget about previous games and constantly throws the player a cute “Easter eggs”. From newspaper clippings you can learn about the future of young Empress Emily Goldwyn, the court inventor Anton Sokolov. And in one mission you can even detect the name of the protagonist of the game Prey — Morgan Y. Very cool, I think the ability of the protagonist to hear what they say to each other rats, flooded the narrow streets of the Karnacki. Rodents say charming thin voice and discuss with each other not only places for a quick bite to eat, but also give the player valuable clues about the secret passages and even additional side quests.
In the game there are a huge number of alternative ways of problem solving. I was particularly impressed with the mission, in which Billy Lerk had to Rob a Bank (I think the third one). It’s just incredible! From the abundance of options I was spinning head and wanted to try them all, but as it was necessary as soon as possible write a review, periplocoideae I decided to leave until better times. The developers have done a great job over the environment and carefully consider every hotel mission, every contract, every miniscule detail that most players might not even be noticed in the game. But that is what we love of games Arkane Studios, isn’t it?
From the second part of the game moved on amulets. You can find them as you progress through, buy on the black market, and made of found materials like whale bone. Amulets are both very positive, and defiled – having both strengths and weaknesses. For example, this amulet can make your sword strikes are much stronger, but slower. With the help of amulets, the protagonist can jump higher, run faster, more efficiently, restore health by eating food, and significantly improve their combat skills.
In the process of missions the player will offer to search for hidden amulets, but also to collect works of art and discover the different posters through which the Alien communicates with the main character and collect gold coins and other valuables like fine statues, dear fans and other paraphernalia of aristocracy. Earned money you can spend on improving their weapons and equipment on the black market. There you can refill ammo Darts, ammunition, grenades and mines. On completion of the mission the game, as before, a verdict on just how good you are in “stealth” and how you are “merciful” to his enemies. The truth of this, as I said above, now almost nothing depends.
The game is not devoid of problems with which we are familiar since the times of Dishonored 2. Not disappeared the trouble with the lifting of small items. When you are trying to pull coins from the cash register, but miss is literally a millimeter, then accidentally close it. And here again you are forced to watch a long animation of opening and closing in order to remove from the register a few miserable gold pieces. Not really I like the fonts chosen domestic localizers for the Russian version of the game. They are too ornate and delicate, making them very difficult to read from the TV screen. In the mirrors, as before, there is no hint of the normal reflection – but this, I believe, the problem is the graphics engine, common to all games Arkane.
Despite the fact that I have never faced in the Death of the Outsider with any bugs, of which there were plenty in previous Dishonored, the game still managed to disappoint me. I’m talking about crumpled the end. It seems that the last couple of missions have done in haste, causing severely affected not only the rhythm of the narrative, but the fascination of the gameplay. Also seriously saddened me both endings of the history of Billy Lerk, her mentor, Daud and others. Yes, we finally tell you how this godlike creature came to light, but the way this ends, it would seem that such a promising story, leaves you in complete bewilderment and disappointment.
Pros:
- Absorbing plot and a charismatic protagonist.
- Finally we learn the truth about the origin of the Alien.
- Enveloping atmosphere, typical of the world of Dishonored.
- Just a great mission with a Bank robbery.
- Wonderful new abilities protagonistki.
- Promising new missions system-contracts.
- An impressive number of ways to complete.
- Talking rats captivate from the first seconds.
- Loading levels were significantly accelerated.
Cons:
- No sync facial animation with speech.
- Both endings of the game are frankly disappointing.
- At the end of the game sags in fascination.
- Problems picking up small objects.
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is a great game for fans and just fans of the genre stealth. It is very “uneven” in terms of quality of missions, but only one Bank robbery I’m ready to strongly recommend this game to acquire their readers. Atmospheric adventure Billy Lerk will allow you to spend a couple of evenings in the company with the adorable talking rats, crazy cultists and demonic creatures from the Abyss. Despite the fact that it sounds pretty creepy, the game leaves a very pleasant aftertaste, even in spite of the blurry ending to this story. I give her 8 out of 10 points.
Game overview Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
Sergey Grey