The Forgotten Chapter of Dishonored

so i'll be quick about this but before we get into today's video i just want to thank you guys for all of the support on the merch so far i've been blown away by the reception so far and uh if you want to pick some up you can get it in the link in the description all right let's do this i've talked before about how much of a shame it is that dlc tends to be forgotten about in videos like mine in the same way that sequels often refine a game's formula and become fan favorites it's not too uncommon for dlc to surpass the base game in a lot of ways two of my favorite examples of this are the knife of dunwall and the brigmore witches the two narrative dlc for the first dishonored game anyone who's been watching for long enough knows that i absolutely love the first dishonored game it's one of those games that's like a second home to me where i'm so familiar with it that i can kind of play it like a piano on a good day i don't even want to think about how many playthroughs i've done everything from no right clicks to be detected by every enemy to no reloading saves to use a ton of hacks with a cheat engine i've put this game through the ringer but even with that said the dlc for this game still blows the base game out of the water in my book there's a whole lot to talk about in dishonored these definitely won't be my last videos on the game really each mission could have its own essay dedicated to it but for now let's talk about the three missions in this first piece of dlc the knife of dunwall in which you play as the assassin dowd who killed the empress of dunwall dowd is walking a fine line after the murder of empress jessamine dowd saw corvo's dead eyes and knew that he would pay for this one he realized as he left dunwall tower that he only had a few short months to redeem himself to recognize that he's too powerful to use his skills for creedy purposes he knows that corvo's coming for him and all he can hope to do is find some way to erase a bit of the bad he's done before his encounter with corvo fortunately the outsider sees this new remorseful side of doubt and offers him a chance at redemption in the form of a name delilah the first mission a captain of industry has us breaking into a meat processing plant in search of information on a ship named delilah this mission has a whole lot it needs to accomplish in terms of game design narratively it needs to establish a couple of characters build up the relationship between dowden's protege billy lurk and it needs to remind us what life is like in dunwall as well as getting us hooked on this new story however in terms of gameplay its requirements are even trickier as the first mission in the first piece of dlc it needs to be both challenging to players who are already experienced and remind players how to play the game as well as introducing all the new items and powers that dowd has access to well that's a lot to unpack and we're really going in deep here so let's look at this mission linearly and take things piece by piece first things first we start out in this long chord or leading us to a view that will immediately remind you why you love dishonored and billy lurk gives us a bit of intel on the area ahead there's some sort of a strike going on and a little bit of industrial sabotage so the scabs have taken the punch cards from every worker who's with the union barring their entry then however billy lurk hands us a rune i know you collect these this reminds players who maybe haven't played the game for a bit that runes and bone charms are indeed a thing and it prompts us to open our upgrade menu and take a look at the options revealing to us in a very natural way that doubt has a couple of powers that corvo didn't have in the base game once we've made our selection taking the upgrade we want or choosing to hold off on upgrading yet it's time to move forward taking in the scenery around us we get an immediate reminder of one of the most important aspects of dishonored gameplay the high ground is everything we do our work from the rooftops up here we can watch what's happening below overhear conversations plan out routes assess threats from the rooftops the streets look like a candy shop and it's up to us to choose which candy we pick up well the only issue is that the enemies have taken the high ground too they're actually a bit higher up than you are at the start of this and you have at best the high jumping ability agility one to help you get above them where you belong watching this area the guard up on top of the catwalk really is a rogue element when he's inside he could easily be looking right out towards where you want to blink to you really don't have the visibility you need to safely blink ahead undetected so you might be reminded that one of if not the most important ability and dishonored was dark vision which allows you to see enemies through walls we cast dowd's equivalent void gaze only to find that we still can't see them through walls instead at level 1 it enables us to see runes and bone charms essentially filling the same role that the heart filled in the base game cool now we've been reacquainted with the basics high ground is everything find artifacts using void gaze however we still don't have an easy way to get to that high ground and pass this first stealth challenge this one's a bit tricky as it's the first quote-unquote puzzle in the dlc it's a simple matter of waiting for this higher guard to turn around and claiming your rifle place at the high ground however when you activated void gaze you probably caught that there's a bone charm in this first alleyway like this first stealth challenge getting the bone charm here is all about intel it doesn't feel safe to enter this room because we can't have void gaze 2 yet and we can't see into the room however taking the long way around and rapping back to the far side of this catwalk we can see a bit inside and by the time you get there you'll have probably caught wind of the guard taking him down makes it feel much safer to proceed to the bone charm as i said in my other dishonored videos dishonored is a game about having the high ground and deciding when and where you want to go down to collect things from your quote-unquote candy shop that is the more dangerous street level moving forward billy lurk appears to tell us about a man watching the refinery from the river and thanks to clever framing the next room we go into will almost definitely be granny rags's hideout which introduces a new gimmick for the dlc granny rags as recipes granny rags's first recipe is cryptic but if you pursue it you might remember a couple of weepers whose bodies you passed as you navigated the rooftops behind you perceptive players can go back and grab the weeper body required for the recipe now but if you didn't see those bodies the game will draw your attention to them in a scene that i'll point out later all while making it much harder to retrieve the bodies once again perceptiveness is rewarded anyways whether you get the weeper corpses now or not this window acts as a threshold to the rest of the level yes you can get over this gate in a couple of other ways but that's almost definitely not what you're going to do thanks to the framing on this second rooftop and my point stands regardless here you've got a million options you're past the more linear opening section of the level and now we've got this huge yard each building here acts as its own stealth challenge and we'll go into those shortly when spoiled for choice like this it's only natural to cast void gaze and see if there are any runes or bone charms to collect the two that you see point you to a couple of very important locations throughout the level one is high up one is low down we want to be free and dishonored going from rooftop to rooftop being the badass magic assassin we are so i think most players will probably go up for the higher one first arriving here bunches are locking workers in the pump control station by the docks if you could get in there i bet the workers will tell you just about anything you wanted to know boom we've got intel pump control station by the docks i guess we'll see where all of these pipes lead to and there we have it a cage now we've got an objective in mind for how we might get one of those punch cards and get inside the slaughterhouse but let's go ahead and grab that last bone charm before we get started moving towards the dock this arc pylon makes it very clear that we aren't getting to the water easily and even if we swam towards the bone charm what's the deal with that lever the wire is leading towards the water where we want to go we better disable that arc pylon if we follow the cable from the arc pylon we get to this whale oil receptacle there are too many windows and nearby guards to risk taking this guy out so we sneak past him to open the box but it's locked so we go back to our high ground where it's safe and see that that same guard has a key on him so now it's like the game is saying nice job sneaking past that guard bet you can't get the key off his belt entirely naturally without so much as a note in the quest log the challenge has gone up a tier and presented itself clearly information is king and dishonored and this level delivers it in a downright genius way there's even a key on this boat if you're really observant allowing you to skip pickpocketing the guard information is king anyways we get the key we open the box we remove the whale oil we flip the lever and we get the bone charm and that's when we find another way into the slaughterhouse turns out we didn't need the punch card at all but let's keep looking out here there's still a lot to explore and there are a lot of other ways to enter this building that players might stumble upon again i like to look at this view as the game prompting you to try out different isolated stealth challenges to get you re-equipped with the skills you'll need going forward we've got one room where you'll basically have to take a guard down when his friend turns around and hide the body in time we've got an area outside of the cages where you'll have to take a guard down in a big open area we've got this section where you'll need to handle two guards who seem to always be looking at each other either by waiting for the perfect moment when something blocks their view or distracting them a challenge of movement a challenge of subtlety a challenge of timing a challenge of situational awareness and a challenge of environmental utility if you can pass these five challenges without much strife then boom you're reacquainted with dishonored and this first level has done its job so now we've got a myriad of ways to get into this place including one that takes advantage of dowd's new ability to freeze time while selecting a blinking location now it's time to dig into the interior of the wath wild slaughterhouse this is a fairly unique area for a dishonored game like the golden cat bath house and the base game it's an interior that you can get into from multiple points some high some low some near some far but unlike that area it has a strong contrast between wide open areas like the killing floor and cramped areas like the meat locker and well there's something that's been screaming at me over the last few pages of this script i'd love going full assault in this game i've done an entire video about dishonored combat so how does this level design impact that sort of playstyle information is most certainly not king when i just cut off a man's head attached an arc mine to it and threw it at his rushing buddies i'm the king in that scenario well as it turns out level design that's helpful to stealth is also helpful to this game's medium range centric combat elevation for easy drop assassination kills and quick getaways and cover to break line of sight and not be shot at too much when trying to engage enemies in melee combat on the hardest difficulty master assassin one hit from a sword is pretty much all it takes to do you in so you'll need to take advantage and have a slightly more tactical approach to combat than you needed in the base game where enemies are generally in smaller clumps and tighter corridors you'll really want to be using that high ground and executing slide combo attacks and using things like choke dust and crossbow bolts to stun opponents basically the way the dishonored combat is designed it kind of just works out so long as you keep a steady supply of mana potions health potions and ammo which these levels do so that being said we aren't really going to talk about combat much for the rest of this video the level design lacks its subtle genius when you're going full combat but it works just fine anyways the rothwild slaughterhouse it's a couple of tight corridors connecting some bigger halls you're given ample opportunity to take advantage of blink and get some really crazy spots after being led to them by runes and bone charms it's a really fun level but it's kind of the same premise from a gameplay perspective as that outside courtyard only made more difficult by the claustrophobia of interiors and the higher density of enemies you scout around using the high ground and you choose which stealth challenges will be worth the risk we've got some exploration benefits like finding the shipping crate early so that you have a plan to execute if you intend to get rid of rothwild or realizing that you can get that poor side eye of a whale that was mentioned in the granny rags recipe by putting this poor whale out of its misery with sokolov's whale oil stimulation machine and my personal favorite thing gained from exploring this level this fantastic audio diary we hear where rothwild talks to a captured whale what a sad song the old behemoth sings it looks right at me when i sit here to have my nightcap yeah look at me a fly next to you but i'm your master ain't i as i said it's kind of the same design themes as the exterior with an escalation and difficulty due to being inside watch from above and poke at the world below we've got a couple of optional objectives and artifacts to provoke more interesting interactions with the enemies below but this level actually has a lower emphasis on exploration than the exterior probably because you aren't as free to move around inside as you are outside so it's really just about raw execution testing the skills you remember during your time outside carrying bodies seeking extra information before moving forward remembering little details you picked up on earlier that sort of stuff we can either torture rothwild or abigail to get the information we need about the delilah and ship them off to the north pole where they can't hurt anyone else or we can destroy the entire place in a bombastic climax to the mission which emphasizes how much impact doubts decisions can have then it's just a simple matter of exfiltrating on our way out we get one final test our blinking is interrupted by an overseer's music box stopping our traversal looking to the source we see that billy lurks been captured by overseers and is being interrogated her powers muffled by the music box like your own we can step in and deal with one of the trickier enemies in the game head on or we can find another way sleep darts or a crossbow bolt to the leg will do the trick billy can totally handle these guys if they aren't playing their music but that would be messy if instead you've been experimenting with the tools at hand over the course of the level you'll realize that the masks you and billy wear prevent the two of you from being affected by choke dust you can throw some at these enemies temporarily stunning and blinding them and billy can just teleport away clean as a whistle however if you weren't being super observant way back at the beginning of the level you'll need to get a bit more hands-on look past billy and you'll see something important a weeper corpse had you not noticed it earlier this scene would make sure that it catches your eye assuming you remember that you were looking for it but to cleanly grab it now you'll probably want to knock these two overseers out with the choke dust sleeping dart combo attack either way you slice it this is a skill that will prove invaluable later on in this dlc but for now let's exfiltrate thematically how does this mission tie into dodge redemption well in classic dishonored fashion the choice is up to you here it isn't a simple matter of violence or mercy as it tended to be in the base game here it's a matter of degrees it's about going the extra mile we can get in and get out of here easily enough all we have to do is break in torture the information out of rothweiler aims and leave however you can also go the extra mile and destroy the facility freeing the striking workers to be rehired with better pay and safer conditions than they could have ever hoped for under rothwild or if all of that violence isn't your style and you don't mind missing out on a bit of gold from ames you can yank rothwild out of the torture chair and pack him into a shipping crate intended for aims and send them packing straight to the farthest reaches of the isles where he can't hurt anyone again as i said it isn't a matter of choosing how you complete your mission hell you can use violence to achieve a pretty great outcome here it's just a matter of deciding if getting just what you need is enough when you could have done more next up we've got the mission that puts the biggest smile on my face eminent domain dolly attempts has a mission for us eliminate her uncle barrister arnold temche and retrieve his mother's will and she'll tell us who he sold the ship delilah to the mission begins with a pretty important little detail having played the first game we already know that our actions have consequences and that the game is paying attention to how violent we're being but in this beginning section where lurk either kills or knocks out a guard based on our actions we see that she specifically is paying attention to our behavior anyways after a typical short linear challenge in which we use a movement-oriented route or a positioning oriented route to pass over a wall of light we see three whitewashed skulls that signify that we're meant to be meeting dahlia and we rescue her from a couple of hatter gang goons before she tells us everything we need to know to complete our mission for her we're going to go through two possible routes through this area as we hit a bit of a fork in the road after rescuing dahlia it's also worth noting that the key that we're after will be in a different location depending on how many people died at the slaughterhouse firstly moving forward from here we might end up getting to the trickiest part of this particular map the hatter gang's hideout the risks here are high multiple guards below another guard at our elevation making it more difficult to pass above and lots of cramped corridors preventing easy movement through the stairwell in this building hopefully by this point you have void gaze level 2 and can see the enemies through walls because otherwise this will be very difficult either way at first glance you don't really have much cause to stick around it really is just a couple of goons hiding out in a particularly defensible abandoned hotel however it does give us quick access to the streets beyond and we're able to move through and scale this building where we're instantly deterred by not one but two high elevation guards this dlc really wants to emphasize that high ground isn't necessarily your playground as it tended to be in the base game at this point you might feel a bit spoiled for choice being on this huge street so you cast voidgaze to pick up a nearby bone charm and find another artifact at the bottom of this drop on the far end of the street going down there and collecting your prize isn't tricky but on your way back you'll definitely notice the giant gate up on the northeast side of this map heading there it's revealed that the door to the legal district timch's place is locked and that the captain who took the key is up in the alms house heading over there and eliminating the captain we see a telltale hat in this room and a note saying that the hatters took the key and we're back to square one looks like we have a reason to raid the hatter's hotel now upon closer inspection there's actually a key right here which is easy enough to grab with some careful timing either on the key or on the individual guards but picking up the key reveals that this isn't the one we've been looking for instead a nearby note reveals that it was taken up stairs and sure enough if we use some stun mines or carefully blink to get past the guards on the stairwell we can finally get our hands on the correct key and get moving towards the legal district if however you have the guts or the indifference to take on the hatter camp immediately you'll find this key before you even get to the door it opens and with that the rest of the level becomes your playground in which you can steal and gather intel to your heart's content before moving on anyways once we get into the legal district lerk blinks in to indirectly remind us not that we needed a reminder to get off the street and up to the high ground as soon as possible this prompts us to immediately blink up to this balcony where we can hear a bone charm whispering to us from the far side of this door opening this door we meet a man who offers us a clean way to eliminate barrister temps all we have to do is move down the street to apartment 7 to read up on the plan get some necessary tools as well as our payment in the form of arun so here's the plan barrister tim she made this fortune by accusing the healthy of being plague ridden in the form of phony eviction notices and seizing their assets for himself he also carries a letter of immunity on his person at all times clearing him of any legal responsibility for false evictions so we're going to replace his letter of immunity with one of his own phony eviction notices and here's the kicker we're going to put something so rancid in his air system that he'll be arrested as a plague victim as soon as the guards catch wind of it on the way to apartment 10 or maybe afterwards we can take a moment to meet billy lurk on the rooftop she told us about to acquire our stash and some very useful intel a map of the place info about timch's whereabouts some useful means of ingress that sort of thing with all this info the only excuse for getting lost in this place is a chaotic combat situation billy even nabbed us a key to get into the basement where the ventilation system can be tinkered with and hell if all of that's too complicated for you and you don't mind spilling a bit of noble blood you can just snipe temps through the window here making this whole job a lot simpler with one quick squeeze of the trigger although you will want to get close ahead of time to make sure that the facade doors are open a true shot it's a shame you stop to go inside and find the will we could just go back to red shore otherwise anyways if that isn't your style we can do things the more subtle way sneak up behind tim should sit through this sickening dialogue in which he resorts to threats to get his way with the maid so turns out it's completely random which conversation you get from barrister temps i've been grinding for that conversation for about an hour and a half but it is 7 p.m on a sunday and i just do not have any more time to keep trying to get this conversation rest assured he says some absolutely despicable stuff to his employee and if you can avoid pulling out your sword then and there you'll have a couple of pretty good opportunities to replace his letter of immunity with your own eviction notice then it's just a simple matter of getting to the basement with the key that lurk stole for you and putting the sack inside the ventilation system then simply watch the plot unfold and if i or any of my men contract the plague because of this visit i'll see that your head no this isn't the right document this get him out of here before he starts bleeding from the eyes and secure this court it's under quarantine yes sir boy is this fate deserved seriously timch is even worse than this guy and to be served one of the same bunk eviction notices he handed out to so many innocent people is the most poetic non-lethal elimination in the series as far as i'm concerned anyways eurex filtration is simple enough the location of a rune in apartment 10 probably already nudged you in the direction of an easy exit route so now it's just time to reflect on what just happened while we make our way back to dahlia having already reacquainted the player with their essential dishonored skills in the first mission of this dlc the second mission is free to explore some other ideas that weren't really present in the base game to this degree this mission has two key elements in my eye firstly the scavenger hunt aspect the way that dowd has to go all over the place following clues to find the key is a great setup for this mission which combined with lurk's extensive intel on temps paints a picture of a man who's all about acquiring as much information as he can before executing a plan it paints a picture of a man who wants to clean up his act and start doing things in a more subtle way somebody who wants to be a force impacting the trajectory of dunbaul rather than a boogeyman that parents will tell stories about to frighten their kids however the inverse of that is the second element of this level temps as we learn throughout our exploration of this level timsch has everything figured out too he's got a great little setup using bunk bureaucracy to effectively steal from the frightened and downtrodden keeping his own mother in an elusive state claiming her will as his own all so that he can give the spoils away to a woman that's taking advantage of him as evil as this man is the setup he's made for himself is ingenious this parallel between dowd and tempt begs the question what is it exactly the dowd wants to save is he trying to save dunwall from going over the edge or is he trying to save himself from the same is he trying to save the city from the knife of dunwall or is he trying to save himself from it the fact that timsch's niece dahlia betrayed him for his selfish actions is also pretty important and relevant to a greedy or doubt as we'll see in a moment mission 3 has an interesting set of challenges it needs to provide a satisfying endpoint to the knife of dunwall while still leading us with plot threads to hang onto in the follow-up dlc the brigmore witches it needs to make an environment we've already played through in the base game dowd's hideout feel fresh and lastly it needs to act as a general test of our success in adapting to dow's new abilities and items or if nothing else one of our general willingness to take as many opportunities as we can we'll handle the narrative side of things for later for now let's just get straight to those two game design challenges how does this level make an environment we've already been in feel fresh and how does it act as a final test of our skills they actually share the same answer enemies it's actually a pretty clever trick they've pulled anyone who's played this dlc has supposedly played through the base game at least twice one run for low chaos one run for high chaos so on the gameplay side of things the player already knows the area and on the narrative side of things it's dowd's hideout so of course he knows the area too in terms of gameplay though both the player and dowd's understanding of the area has been flipped on its head with the presence of a squad of overseers that have taken the area over only dowd is able to free his captured apprentices and stop the overseer's assault on his home in its tracks this whole area is about as vertical as anything else in the game when going up against dow's assassins in the base game that verticality only enhances their ability to guard the area as they can blink all around fighting overseers however well an area like this is our element and it sure isn't theirs they're the toughest common enemies in the game but they can't blink and so we only ever have to fight a few of them at a time however they're also armed with music boxes which sap her powers meaning we'll need to rely on dowd's raw human skills if we want to go through this with an all out assault play style crossbow bolts to the legs to stun the music box wielders giving us the split second we need to blink behind and go in for the kill arc mine's around corners when enemies are chasing you catching enemy grenades and throwing them back you'll have to really bring your best foot forward to do well in combat here as should be the case in any final mission doing things stealthily and less violently however that's where things get even more interesting remember back in the first mission i emphasized that a well-thrown choke dust was enough to free billy lurk from the music box's hold on her enabling her to blink away well that isn't going to work here see our assassins hands are bound they can't blink away what this means is that we're either going to have to burn through tons of mana casting bin time in order to free our apprentices non-violently or we're going to have to take these guys out in some other way a combination of choke dust and tranq rounds should work or maybe we can attach a stun mine to some sort of throwable object and knock them out in bulk that way making sure to use choke dust to keep them from calling for help maybe we could time it perfectly and choke them out with our bare hands but that's going to be a tough one we could also create a distraction and free our soldiers while the enemy isn't looking but that isn't going to work in some situations no any way you slice it whether it's mana choke dust shrink rounds or stun mines doing this stealthily and non-lethally is going to be a test of the resources we've accrued and preserved over the course of the previous two missions if you've been frugal and collecting all the money you can you'll have no problem going into this mission with maxed out equipment and mana and freeing your men will be more or less trivial so long as you think things over first but if you've been less frugal and are low on resources you'll need to find those resources for yourself therein lies another home field advantage that dowd has which corvo didn't when he went through this area he's got his key on him from the get-go littered all over this place are stashes of equipment that dowd can open up it's just a matter of actually getting to them some of them are easy like the stash on the top of the chain in the beginning with a choke dust and an explosive dart in it both incredibly helpful most however will require you to go a bit out of your way you're often led to these stashes with bone charms and runes which serve the double function of pointing you towards important objectives like the overseer's base of operations and which doubt can learn the enemy's plan and infer that somebody in his own ranks must have leaked their location to the overseers anyways we worm our way through the familiar interior and exterior with some previous obstacles removed and some new ones such as the music boxes added we eliminate the overseer's commander we break into their fob to gather intel and most importantly we free our men by any means necessary and then it's time for our final judgment if you've been adding to the chaos creating more bodies to feed the rat plague and generally taking the easier less patient route then one thing is clear dowd isn't trying to save dunwall he's going after delilah to try and save himself he may have been shaken by corvo's look after the death of the empress but on playthrough like this his actions show that he didn't learn a thing he's still being just as selfish as he always was only this time his target is someone who's genuinely evil if however dowd shows more of a commitment to helping the people of dunwall rather than just ruthlessly following leads well maybe billy lurk was wrong about him lurk is the one who sold doubt's gang out to the overseers she was the rats and if you prove her right that you have lost your way she'll happily fight you to the death and stand by delilah over your corpse if however you prove that she was wrong about you she simply offers you her sword and her life and the choices on your hands slit her throat or banish her from dunwall giving her her life she simply blinks away without words never to be seen again god will always work from the shadows the world will never truly know what he did and did not do his redemption in the eyes of history is impossible however that's not what this was about this is about going after somebody even more dangerous than he is this is about taking down delilah before corvo takes you down it's been months since i killed the empress but it feels like only seconds ago i heard her yelling for her daughter emily corvo's face going slack with shock and somewhere in my head the outsiders laugh here to settle our debt you understand i will make this easy for you um as always before i see you guys off for the day i'd like to verbally thank my patrons for supporting me i'd especially like to thank those who are donating 10 or more monthly such as ahoy bowie paulie k alex van der wudd almost dead again anatoly volnov andrew melnick arthur d gonzalez martin big time jim collin gagic cooper sutton coss cosmo borski daniel christman darius fazzier david kaiser duncan bristow fralem in bloom jack eisenberg jano j.o john strange jp jw max benning mellow mixer rules money and muses patio furniture ceilo silver silence wolf hd and young master pig i have worked my ass off getting this video out on time i really wasn't expecting the script to turn out to be as long as it was and uh even now it's 2 30 a.m before the monday this is meant to go live and i don't know if i'm gonna add music to this thing or just let the ambient noise do its thing so thanks for all the love and support on last week's video it really did help motivate me to get this thing done although that being said crunch is unhealthy and you should not do it anyways have a good day guys

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 139,311

Rating: 4.9685559 out of 5

Keywords: dishonored, death, of, the, outsider, knife, dunwall, daud, dlc, fist, one, first, nonlethal, barrister, timsh, rothwild, slaughterhouse, billie, lurke, empress, corvo, brigmore, witches, ending, explained, analysis, level, design, video, essay

Id: zhqaolC-b0k

Length: 30min 13sec (1813 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020