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Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall Mission 3, "The Surge"

The final mission in Dishonored's first DLC expansion features a return to a familiar area, as Daud comes back to the Flooded District to find it has been assaulted by the Overseers and his assassins captured. This means infiltrating some familiar spaces but on different terms - you start with Daud's key, obviously, and it is the first thing you use. Almost as if the game is telling you that actually this is Daud on his home turf.

I like this mission concept as firstly, going back over familiar territory in new contexts is pretty fun in these games - like in the return to the Hound Pits in the base game, and later in the series the trip to Karnaca's Royal Conservatory as Billie. Secondly I like the idea that from now on whenever I play The Flooded District in the base game I will have a much stronger association between it and Daud, how he would move around in it, and his approach to defending it.

So you blink around the crumbling rooftops of Dunwall's formerly thriving financial sector, now sunken into sodden disrepair, dealing with teams of Overseers guarding your captive assassins and murdering various individuals of note. You can climb straight up into the top floors of the commerce building where you closed in on Daud as Corvo, or take a trip around the other buildings and streets first. In high chaos, this was a perfect opportunity to get rid of the various munitions and weaponry I had allowed to build up in my inventory, whereas in low chaos I was reminded why this is such a fun stealth sandbox with its jutting walls and the dense layout inside Daud's layer itself.

I'm able to make the comparison despite having played this level for the first time today because I immediately ran through the DLC again in low chaos to see the alternate (and also canonical) fate for Billie Lurk, my favourite Dishonored character. Took an hour plus. I enjoyed playing them again so quickly in part because the maps are memorable as ever for the series. The sense of place that seems to be held as a value in the game worlds Arkane Studios design comes through strongly on replay, when you can spawn into the level and immediately have a mental map in front of you. That's not a possibility for many games for me, absentminded and poor at directions as I am, so I attribute that to strong design. I ended up playing the slaughterhouse mission twice back to back since I wanted to see what it was like blowing the place up, which the game considers a high chaos action. 

Delilah shows up at the end and it turns out she and Lurk have been in conspiracy. A murderous Daud loses the respect of his best lieutenant, while a cleaner-handed approach sees her balk at betraying him. So depending on your actions so far you can see how events line up for Billie's storyline in Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider in low chaos, while high chaos gives you a boss fight with her. She blinks around quite a lot but otherwise is very susceptible to Bend Time unlike Daud when you fight him as Corvo, which is quite a neat little nod to his still stronger connection to the Outsider.

Next week, the Brigmore Witches.

Non-lethal solution:
Shoot Overseer Hume with a sleep dart or otherwise knock him out rather than kill him and take his letter
In low chaos Billie will offer her life which you can choose to spare




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Comments

  1. Glukeose15 April 2020 at 21:19

    Played through all of Knife of Dunwall today! Eminent Domain is still the best mission of the DLC, but this was a great ending to the first episode of Daud's story. His voice gives him a really strong sense of character in a way I wished Corvo had in the base game.

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    Replies
    1. Jon Cheetham16 April 2020 at 00:49

      Nice! Yeah Michael Madsen kills it as Daud.

      Delete

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