The Black Shard Arm communes directly with the Void, removing the need for Billie to refill her mana with Addermire Solution or Piero's Spiritual Remedy and regenerating it after a short time instead. This contributes hopefully to a faster paced and more experimental approach, as players no longer need to worry about resource management where powers are concerned.
Daud has learned of the existence of a twin-bladed knife that could be wielded against the Outsider, being held somewhere in Upper Cyria. This district is near the Cyria Gardens, where the Royal Conservatory can be found - with such a strong presence of the Eyeless and their gang leaders nearby, it could explain why some of Delilah's witches have now fallen in with the cultists.
Because Death of the Outsider has only one target, the remaining missions and bulk of the game becomes one big leadup to the hit itself. Billie needs to gather information and appropriate weaponry and then actually reach the Outsider, and to reflect the fact that this is a far more intimidating and elusive mark than Corvo, Daud or Emily ever hunted, it will take four whole missions to do so.
Newly imbued with purpose as well as her Outsider abilities, she steps into a far more expansive environment than the Albarca Baths or her cramped boat. Upper Cyria is as massive, intricate and elegant as many of the upscale neighbourhoods from Dishonored 2, if not more. Ritzy apartments, sunlit boulevards and the powerful Dolores Michaels Bank are situated in this huge sandbox. This massive area also functions as a vestibule for the next mission, as you'll return to Upper Cyria before infiltrating the bank. It all shows the strength of the level design and how different styles of gameplay can work well in these environments. Personally I would play a game that was just six mini open worlds like this and a series of contracts I needed to complete throughout each, like a first person Hitman.
The NPCs roaming the streets are upper crust and nobility as well as upwardly mobile merchants and specialist tradespeople, with the Serkonan Guard a constant presence. The thing is, many of these (other than the guardsmen) are Eyeless members as well - just more senior ones. Billie doesn't have an individual target to eliminate, but she will very much have to infiltrate a faction.
There's just one thing to get past once you get off the railcar - a single gate. In Dishonored 2 you can get everywhere without powers, and refusing the Outsider's mark makes for an extremely rewarding way to play through the campaign. In Death of the Outsider, you wouldn't make it further than this barrier. This is literally a gated community, and if she hadn't just been given the Displace ability Billie wouldn't be able to get past it. It seems that the inequalities in Karnaca run deep enough that somebody like Billie Lurk can't even get into the posher neighbourhoods without actual supernatural powers. So she shimmers past the bars and her own Wanted poster and into the upmarket district.
Billie will eventually have a chance to challenge the Outsider as to why he wasn't more judicious in sharing his gifts with the downtrodden, the impoverished and marginalised. Because of powers gifted to her by her target she moves unseen among those who would have her arrested as soon as look at her. The question of who should receive these gifts and how they might be used is one that hangs over the series.
The loose espionage framework for the level and its meandering open world feel allows for a series of interconnecting short stories about the district's inhabitants.
Karnaca itself was one of the most striking things about Dishonored 2, and as you explored its streets and apartments you grew to know the city. Its history, culture and politics became more familiar with every book, journal entry, painting and loudspeaker announcement. Returning to it in Death of the Outsider and especially in Follow the Ink, you now get to know the people. This is helped by the fact that this mission has the best implementation of the Contracts system in the game, in my opinion.
The Contracts help funnel you through a meaningful route around this sprawling level. The first stop is the Red Camellia, easily accessed using a combination of Foresight and Displace from the front or through a window at the back. This is a tattoo parlour connected to the Eyeless gang which gives you your two key espionage targets from the appointment book. These are famous singer Shan Yun and city administrator Ivan Jacobi, founders of the Eyeless gang along with Dolores Michaels herself. Approaching the chair in the tattooing studio itself offers maybe my favourite interaction prompt in all of gaming: Tattoo yourself/ Never mind.
Because only the Red Camellia, Shan Yun's mansion, Jacobi's residence and Colibron Plaza (where Jacobi is making a speech) are mandatory, there is an optimal route through this space. However, the wealth of side activities waypointed and otherwise tend towards a roaming, open-ended approach. There are non-waypointed side quests you can stumble upon, like the journalist who wants you to get incriminating information on Jacobi, or the taxidermist who turns out to be kidnapping people and using them to incubate bloodflies. The level rewards you greatly for exploring, listening to NPCs and taking your time. In Dishonored 2 I was usually passing through the manors and apartments of Karnaca on the way to my objective; I love this level because I feel like I am just existing in this environment and soaking it up.
Shan Yun's house is its own self-contained miniature level, with almost as much going on as One Last Fight. There are plenty of guards to fight through or sneak around, and like past vertical spaces in the series such as the Addermire Institute this is a great opportunity to play cat and mouse with your adversaries. While you can't scale the outside of the property and get in and out at the windows (it is a separate instance from the main level and has to load in) a dumbwaiter in the kitchen provides similiar opportunities to either bypass the guards or get the drop on them. The target is Shan Yun's safe, which will only unlock if one of his recent hits is played. Stealing his face gives you the opportunity to let Billie try to impersonate him, only to sadly find out that she still doesn't have his vocal chords. The required audiograph is protected by an electrified floor, which you can turn off by removing the whale oil or navigate with a mix of Displace and careful timing.
"The rich pay to poison themselves with this shit," Billie will have muttered earlier when seeing the list of treatments at the Red Camellia. "Wish they'd just finish the job." Her contempt is matched by contemptible behaviour, as at the Spector Club, high ranking members are paying a premium to enjoy "The Sanguine Infusion". This involves hooking kidnapped citizens up to tubes and draining their blood into the rich "customers" waiting for a high on the other side of a dividing wall. Billie can meddle with the equipment to reverse the flow, knocking out the snobs on the other end and rescuing the victim - which will complete one of the contracts if she drops him off at a canalside shack.
Meanwhile Jacobi is speaking at Colibron Plaza, and Billie will have to steal his house key to get into his office, rifle through his stuff and steal his key. While Shan Yun is in a fortress-like environment, Jacobi is out in the open but no less well protected, with a heft contingent of the Serkonan Guard.
As much as this level is about casing the area, getting a look at the bank and acquiring the information and vault keys Billie will need to pull off the heist, it also establishes the nature of the Eyeless as a group. Unlike say, the Brigmore Witches or the Whalers, these aren't outsiders and mercenaries as much as they exist within Karnacan society, sharing its social strata. It sets up that there is a reason the game's central, middle mission, the one which has as much build-up as the journey to Shindaerey later, involves robbing the bank where Karnaca's elite and the Eyeless' top brass stash their wealth. Just like she Displaced past the gate at the beginning of the mission to get into places she isn't supposed to be, Billie is preparing to infiltrate the vaults and treasure troves of the powerful to seize their coveted weapon for herself. The quest to kill the Outsider will take her to other planes of existence and the Void itself - but power and the occult being intertwined the way they are in the world of the Isles, it seems she has to smash through the corporeal realm's glass ceilings first. Now that's upward mobility.
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