Dishonored Death of the Outsider: Mission 5, "Hole in the World"

At the end of Dishonored 2 Billie Lurk reclaimed her real name, and here at the end of her own quest she can return the Outsider's true name to him as well, should she choose. The game's single assassination target, a supernatural being created by a cult that needed a central figure and a lodestone for their occult worship, who was stabbed through the heart in the Void before enduring thousands of years seeing and knowing all, is within reach.

This is the only setting in the series that isn't somewhere in Dunwall or Karnaca (although Brigmore Manor is technically just outside the walls of Dunwall). This is Shindaerey Peak, a mountain that has been visible behind the Karnaca skyline all along. There isn't supposed to be anything here - but Billie's investigations at the Royal Conservatory have revealed the existence of a secretive mining operation, as well as unlocking one of the best objective markers in the series: Flee to the mountains. This is where the corporeal realm and the Void meet, the edges of each overlapping. 

The town is seemingly abandoned, and in fact much like the first level the last one begins in a disused railcar station. Buildings are overgrown and at first only wolfhounds are seen to roam the streets. "I hate this place already", grumbles Billie as she sets out.

Geographically this level is a long corridor through which the player eventually needs to backtrack, starting with the mining town, offices, administrative buildings and processing centres as well as manufacturing plants, before entering the mine itself - where the walls are actually lined with vast bookcases, as the Cult of the Outsider have turned it into a labyrinthine library.

The cultists are one of the new enemy groups introduced here, some of whom have access to Void powers, in addition to the hardest enemies in a Dishonored game: The Envisioned. The cultists can be seen gossiping and bickering, patrolling and going about their business. Many of them are formerly powerful individuals, holding the status and eventually rank within the cult that the Eyeless coveted. Many of them have begun to experience a hardening of their flesh, and should they show dedication to the Void they will become the Envisioned. 

The Envisioned are huge beings seemingly made of Voidrite (the stone from the Void from which certain other powerful items such as Billie's Black Shard Arm are made) that move shakily, as if in stop motion. They are terrifying. If they get hold of you it's over, and you need fairly serious ammunition to take them down. They provide entertaining and tactical battles for those looking to use up some of their accrued gadgets and take advantage of Billie's regenerating mana, but despite fighting many of them I've found they never lose their menace. Not being seen is a good way to play any Dishonored game - with these things, I really don't want to be spotted, and not because it will lock an achievement.

Apart from presenting a series of stealth or combat challenges to overcome, the corridor-like structure of the level has the effect of presenting these new factions sequentially, letting you sneak up and eavesdrop before you either launch your attack or strategise how to stealthily eliminate or evade them. The cultists having access to some Outsider powers makes them similiar to the Brigmore Witches as enemies, letting you duel foes more fairly matched with you. 

If you activate Foresight at any point in the level, you'll see something gleaming painfully in the distance, that causes Billie's eye and head to ache. After navigating the library you'll discover that this is the Eye of the Dead God, a sliver of which forms Billie's own Void-touched eye. Touching it causes something big to happen.

Early in Dishonored 2, Emily wakes up, looks at the hull of the Dreadful Wale that forms one wall of her cabin, then goes to the door to find it locked... And turns back to the wall to find it blasted open, gaping onto the Void.

In a very similiar way, touching the Eye causes reality to break in Shindaerey. The Void is now leaking into this place, and Billie is able to look out at its bleak grey vales from cliff edges that were before simple rock walls. This is the real endeavour of the cult, as can be seen from the cameras and equipment arrayed at vantage points. You don't have a lot of time to absorb what has just happened, as an Envisioned lumbers fitfully around the corner. It's the final big twist of the Dishonored series to date, and it's majestic. 

You must now backtrack through the environment, which is the same but profoundly different, almost to the beginning of the level where you can access the Ritual Hold itself. Here whales swim gracefully through the sky. Are they phantoms, illusions, or have creatures native to the Void itself been slaughtered en masse to fuel the Empire's industrialisation and weaponry? Occultism and myth in Cetacean form put to the blade to make way for the future? 

Coming upon the Outsider himself, you will have a choice - restore his name, which can be deduced from research left behind by a cultist named Malchiodi, or kill him at the urging of a spectral Daud.

It is notable that the removal of the Chaos System means Billie is the only protagonist whose actions don't affect the world - until she kills a supernatural being and changes the course of history. 

Those who know their Dishonored lore or who may have read the follow-up novel The Veiled Terror will know that due to the disappearance of the Outsider the Abbey is of course dissolved and the Void, emptied of its inhabitant, begins to tear itself from the corporeal world. Billie might not influence the composition of the Serkonan ruling council or who occupies the throne in Dunwall, but her actions in this game have a more profound impact on the Empire of the Isles than arguably anything Corvo, Daud or Emily accomplished. The game's narrative and systems find a working class woman who has seldom been able to change anything, empowered to change everything. 

"Every street kid, every desperate wretch pushed to the edge - they all wanted you to speak to them. Why didn't you?"

Billie's conversation with the Outsider at the beginning of the level sees her ask the questions many players might have - why hasn't the Outsider applied some form of justice and evenhandedness when distributing his gifts? His answers are far from straightforward. Perhaps tellingly, he is more concerned with what will become of him. Godhood has been inflicted on this being, and he wears it heavily. Maybe perception grand enough to allocate power with an eye to balance is simply beyond him. 

Still, if Billie used the Outsider's gifts to strike back at the ruling classes who join cults to drink the blood of the poor for sport and who don't care if street urchins like she and Deirdre were to live or die, and Delilah shared her abilities with her witches that they might all rise above the injustices they had been born into, why kill the one that gave these women a chance to even the scales for a time? Is it a final, grand injustice that one of the cruel men who shaped Billie's life drove her to expunge this spark of much-needed chaos from the brutally enforced law and order maintaining the divisions of Gristolian and Karnacan society? This was the chaos that put Daud on his life path, that brought him to the rooftop of Dunwall Tower and put his knife to Jessamine Kaldwin after all, and created the moment he has gnawed on ever since. Is Billie just helping Daud work through his grudges in the most destructive way imaginable? 

Perhaps there is more to it than that. As often as he empowered downtrodden women like Delilah Copperspoon and Billie Lurk, the Outsider gave deposed royals and their enforcers the tools to reclaim the status quo. 15 years after Corvo Attano was first given a chance to right a wrong against him and the Empire of the Isles seems no more forgiving or inclusive of a place. If those with extraordinary power or influence cannot be relied upon to use it even occasionally in the interest of those outside their immediate circles or families, then perhaps they just shouldn't have it in the first place.

Dishonored as we know it, in my opinion one of the greatest video game franchises of all time, ends with a man who used to be a god, blinking in the light of a sun he hasn't seen in thousands of years. Behind him stands Billie Lurk, next to an old wanted poster of Daud, the Knife of Dunwall.