Let us continue our adventures as Billie Lurk, master assassin on a quest to kill a god.
Not only do we finish up The Bank Heist, one of the greatest levels in the series next to Crack in the Slab, Clockwork Mansion, and Lady Boyle’s Last Party, but we only return the Observatory and tussle with the occupying Overseers.
If you wish to watch content like this as it’s recorded, be sure to check out my Twitch channel.
As people in the chat noticed, I was a lot more… bloodthirsty in this run than I’ve been in previous “Improvisation Runs”. Were I playing by myself, I would be reloading and playing a lot more carefully. Indeed, even on camera, I’m usually a lot better at keeping casualties to a minimum. That said, it is hard to overstate how important it is that chaos is no longer being tracked. Removing that variable liberates the player in so many ways.
In the Death of the Outsider episodes, you’ll also notice that I’m a lot more fast and loose with the tools at my disposal. Even when I was caught in the other games, I was cautious to avoid using abilities and/or tactics that would spill too much blood. Sure, I did make a few kills, but I also took pains to protect my enemies from the worst of it. Here, I am able to cash in even more on the “Improvisation” part of the tagline, experimenting with and utilizing tactics that I come up with in the heat of the moment. It’s easier to show than it is to describe, but when the player has the controls in their hands they feel the difference.
Part of that also has to do with how much more varied and interesting the objectives are now that they’re no longer tied to the idea of having to perform an assassination/takedown. Something like this bank heist mission would not be possible in other Dishonored games, because the highlight would be less on the vault and more on the target the player would need to eliminate. Sure, the most straightforward solution is to move the vault into the bank director’s office, but there are several more interesting options available thanks to the more open-ended objective.
It’s a damn shame that we’ll probably not get another Dishonored game for quite some time, if at all, because they struck gold with this standalone.
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