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Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall Mission 1, "A Captain of Industry"

With this mission I finally started my first run of Dishonored's talked about DLC story packs, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. These are each packs of three story missions that were released in April and August of 2013 respectively, following Dishonored's release in October 2012 and Dunwall City Trials in December. I did play around with the latter last week, it features a series of self-contained challenges that get you more familiar with what the game engine can do - they are very fun.

A Captain of Industry makes a pretty incredible first impression with the painterly visuals on show outside the slaughterhouse that functions as the main location. The other thing that makes an impression is Daud's version of Blink. You get a big advantage over Corvo's version, which is that if you are not moving time stops as you hold down the right-click looking for a place to Blink to. This recontextualises battle. Now, if someone spots you, you hold down the mouse button (or relevant trigger), take in the shocked or alarmed or furious face of the person frozen before you, and plan where would be best to move to and rearrange the fight to your advantage. A favourite is alerting someone then immediately Blinking behind them to execute them - this can be done as Corvo if you have the reflexes and precision, but now I can do it too. The ability is useful in stealth as well as you get longer to consider how to move past say, a patrol, but it really feels like it is in combat situations where it comes into its own as you essentially gain a tactical pause function.


Which is good because now I've seen the Low Chaos ending to the first game (and for Dishonored 2 earlier this year), non-lethal solutions to my problems are largely going out of the window for this series replay. There are lots of ways to have fun with the box of toys these games give you, and a lot of them have sticky ends. Daud gets the pistol, darts and combat knife that Corvo does, and also has the smokedust bomb. This seems like a very effective stealth tool, stunning enemies for a few seconds, but I used it to gain extra leverage in fights. Another trusty combination is kneecapping hostiles with a dart and then closing to finish the job up close and dirty.

This is a good level for this sort of mayhem. It has the big open area followed by a grandiose interior space like many of Dishonored 2's mission areas, but with a twist - you first have to contend with a corridor of tightly knit encounters including an arc pylon. It has the effect of letting a High Chaos player sort of burst out of this ugly street fight into a wide open air environment. You have structures and rooftops that will provide plenty of places to go to in a pinch whether you need to escape or just move those pieces around, and lots of corners and ambush points. Due to the story having to do with the whale oil that powers Dunwall you find plenty of flammable whale oil containers that can be used to blow up your enemies as well.

A whale you really should put out of its misery
The slaughterhouse itself is a typical Dishonored interior in terms of its ample hiding places and options for traversal at height or round and underneath, with the usual multiple points of entry and routs through. It is also right up there with the base game's The Flooded District and From Software levels like Dark Souls' Blight Town and Bloodborne's Hunter's Nightmare for making me relieved I can't smell video games. This is one of the most gory and downright disgusting environments I've seen in a game. It goes nicely with another eminently killable target, ruthless business leech scumfuck Bundry Rothwild. Set his labourers free from where he's locked them up intending to literally electrocute them until they agree to leave their union, make sure the wall of light is down so they can escape, and then engage in the catharsis that games like Dishonored and Hitman offer.

This may sit oddly with players trying a bit too hard to RP, as this is an example of a Dishonored game where you are explicitly playing as a murderer (this time it is "Cleaner Hands" instead of "Clean Hands"). Thematic analysis and lore-crunching isn't really the point of these posts and everyone will find they unpack Daud's relationship with morality differently, but it promises an interesting trajectory to follow over these DLC packs.

Non-lethal solution:
Speak to Rothwild as he is confronting Ames
Knock him out and put him in his interrogation chair in the meat locker
Electrocute the truth from him
Agree with Billie to pack him into a crate bound for Tyvia


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