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thesffcorner · 2 months ago

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Part 7: Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall

Dishonored’s first piece of story expansion came out in 2013, under the title Knife of Dunwall (KoD). You play as Daud, with parts of the story taking place on the day of Jessamine’s murder, while others overlap with Corvo’s escape from prison.

Hot take, but I like the story in the expansions better than the base game. I think the plot is more original, I like how it fills in the gaps of the main story, I like Daud better than Corvo both as a character and mechanically and many of my gripes with the base game start getting addressed here.

Changes:

The first and most notable change is that we no longer have a silent protagonist.

This is a really good change, not the least because it would have been incredibly weird to have Daud voiced in the original and not in the expansion. Michael Madsen reprises his role and he’s even better in this DLC; he gets more lines and more time to shine and develop Daud’s voice and character.

There is a longstanding debate in video games on silent vs voiced protagonists. I understand how someone might prefer a silent protagonist (especially if the alternative is someone who will not shut up), but I’ve always preferred the latter, especially in this series, since we are roleplaying as a specific character. Having a voice helps develop Daud's personality, and actually allows for dialogue and real interaction, instead of picking 1 out of 2 prompts while his scene partner just stands in front of him, looking straight down at the camera.

Though you can technically play as Corvo in Dishonored 2, the intended protagonist is Emily, meaning that every instalment of the series has a different PoV character, and each has their own personality, beliefs, skills and powers, and so none of the games feel repetitive or boring.

Moreover, many of the series staples, like the presence of witches, a conflict between different gangs and/or the City Watch, corrupt/black bonecharms and favours/contracts are first introduced in the DLC.

Story:

Daud can't sleep after Jessamine’s murder. Something inside him has broken, and the Outsider, who hasn’t spoken to him in years appears. The Outsider loses his interest in his marked subjects who use their powers ‘predictably’ - violence for power’s sake. Daud questioning his choices has made him interesting again, and he stands at a crossroads. Whatever path he chooses, things will never be the same again, and if he truly wants to change, he can start by solving the mystery of Delilah.

For the next 6 months, Daud searches for Delilah, and finally on the day that Corvo escapes Coldrige Prison he finds her - a whaling ship owned by Bundry Rothwild.

Instead of a revenge, this time we have a mystery, one whose answer will determine the course of Daud's life. Not only has he killed Jessamine, he has had a lifetime of killing that he can’t easily atone for. Finding out who Delilah is and how she ties in with Jessamine might be the very last chance Daud has to save his soul.

Gameplay:

The chaos system is the same from the previous game; stay quiet, stay unseen and don't kill if you want low-chaos; it’s even possible to do a full non-lethal run called Cleaner Hands (as opposed to Corvo’s Clean Hands).

High chaos still allows you to destroy everyone and anything, and gives you a different, darker ending. Once again, I am partial to low chaos, so for the most part, we’ll be discussing that.

In terms of gameplay, there are a lot of small changes that I found really improved the experience.

The first and FUNNIEST is that Daud, the assassin, has MORE non-lethal options than Corvo.

He has the standard sword/pistol combo, along with regular and explosive bolts, as well as grenades. Instead of a crossbow, he has an Assassin’s Creed style wristbow, with regular bolts and sleep darts. He also has 3 new weapons: an arc mine and a stun mine, the first one being deadly, the second not, as well as chokedust, a smoke bomb that’s invaluable when confronting groups. So he has 3 options in his arsenal that are non-lethal and silent, which is 2 more than Corvo did.

Daud too is marked, but his powers and abilities are different. Blink and Bend Time are the same, but his Void Gaze combines Corvo’s Dark Vision and the heart, highlighting both enemies and runes. He has another power called Summon Assassins which as the name suggests, summons an Assassin to help out in a fight.

Daud has 4 of the same abilities as Corvo: Vitality, Agility, Blood Thirst, and Shadow Kill, but he also has Arcane Bond which copies his own abilities to his assassins, so they can use the same powers he can in combat.

Daud’s powers and abilities are unlocked and upgraded with runes, and like Corvo he also collects bonecharms, which give him different buffs.

Here the game includes a new mechanic - Corrupted Bonecharms. These charms have greater advantages in exchange for drawbacks; for example, taking no fall damage, but depleting all mana when falling. It’s up to the player to decide if the perk is worth the downside. Personally, I’ve never found much use for any of the bonecharms, but I imagine on challenge or higher difficulty runs they make a difference.

As for the enemies, it’s more of the same. Overseers, Guards, and the City Watch make a return; the only ‘new’ enemy are Soldiers, which are a reskinned version of the Guards. We still have gangs, but instead of the Bottle Street thugs we have Haters.

Characters:

Our protagonist is Daud, and he is a much more interesting character than Corvo, starting with being able to speak. He narrates the opening to every level, he comments on events and characters, and he makes quite a few jokes, especially in response to people questioning his authority.

His conflict is a lot more personal than Corvo's because he is the source of his own problems. Not only will he sentence Dunwall to destruction if he doesn't find Delilah, or if he continues down the bloody path, he has been on for years, but he will also doom himself at Corvo's hands. If he changes, he may live yet and save Dunwall from certain destruction. The Outsider tells Daud that his years of slipping into the shadows with no consequences for his actions are over.

If you played low-chaos in the base game, you already saw the kernels of his redemption; he curses Burrows, admits that killing Jessamine was a mistake that permanently changed him, and pleads for his life. In KoD, we see the journey he took to arrive there.

Is Daud truly sorry for what he did? Does he understand the consequences of the life he’s lived? Or is his repentance all a selfish ploy to get out of the vengeance that’s coming his way?

My reading is that Daud starts off his journey selfishly, trying to do what the Outsider told him in an attempt to deflect or delay the punishment he knows is coming. However, through the course of both of the DLCs he comes face to face with people who reflect his worse qualities back at him, some much worse than even the Lord Regent himself. This, I think, is what gets him to start changing sincerely.

I like Daud better because he's a more complex and more difficult character to like. Even on high-chaos you can easily sympathize with Corvo - he's a wrongfully accused man, he had everything he loves taken away from him, and even his allies became his enemies. The Guards he kills work for the same people who have his daughter, who murdered his lover and threw him in jail.

Daud has spent 30 years killing people for money. The people who want to kill him deserve to do so. And yet, despite everything, it's not too late to change. He can never bring Jessamine back, but he can make sure there are no more Emilies in the world, or at the very least, he alone can stop creating them.

The few other notable characters we have are:

Billie Lurk;

Delilah;

Bundry Rothwild;

Barrister Arnold Timsh;

Thalia Timsh;

Abigail Ames;

& Overseer Leonard Hume.

As you can see, the gender breakdown is already better than the base game. Not only are Billie and Delilah well developed and interesting characters in their own right, they are equally as important as Daud. We’ll talk about them more later; for now, let’s start with:

Level Breakdown:

KoD has three levels and like before have a mix of city levels and single location levels. There are levels here which are on par with Flooded District in length, which is impressive for a DLC.

We open on Daud narrating Jessamine’s murder. The Outsider pulls him into the Void, and it’s very apparent that whatever affection they had for each other is long gone. Daud is being replaced by Corvo, but he doesn't know that yet; all he knows is that the Outsider wants him to find Delilah.

There is no Hound Pits Pub-like area where Daud can relax and shop, so you start each level with an upgrade screen. This is where we are introduced to Favours, a concept that gets even further developed with the Black Markets and Contracts in the sequel.

Favours are small things that Daud can pay for to make the game slightly easier or open up different paths of playing, such as purchasing extra tanks of whale oil to be put in a specific location or having a rune hidden in the level. You can finish each level without them, but they are useful, and especially on low-chaos, quite helpful.

A Captain of Industry:

Boundary Rothwild, a former deckhand, now owner of the Rothwild Slaughterhouse, is brutally crushing a worker strike with the help of the City Watch and his Butcher enforcers.

Daud needs to find a way to infiltrate the factory, and he has help from his second, Billie Lurk. Billie is a Whaler, Daud’s point-woman, and the best and smartest of the crew. She’s snarky, sarcastic, and isn’t afraid to show anger and compassion alike during missions. I loved her and Daud’s banter; their dialogue really fleshes out their characters as well as their relationship.

Billie informs Daud that all worker timecards have been confiscated, and many workers are still trapped inside.

Outside the Slaughterhouse, you will be dealing with regular City Watch; inside are the Butchers. Butchers are my favourite enemies in the first game; they are brawlers who come in two flavours: regular dudes who use a cleaver and massive giants with whale oil powered chainsaws. The death animation from their saws is GRUESOME. They scare me every single time, no matter how many times I replay this level. They also set you up for a fake out with Rothwild; the whole level you imagine him as a giant brawler too, and when you meet him, he's a regular dude who lifts.

There’s quite a lot to do before you enter the Slaughterhouse. First you can visit an apartment that gives you Granny Rags’ first side quest. Though she’s not physically present in any of the DLCs, she still has the most involved side quests, and the reward for all of them is a rune.

In this particular one, you need to find a Weeper body and then the eye of a whale. The body is nearby; the whale will come later. From this apartment, you can find a safe whose combination is a favour you can purchase, hidden behind some planks. That very same balcony is also where you can climb down and talk to a man in a boat. He mentions someone named Abigail who could help you, but she’s stuck inside.

From the boat you can easily get to the impromptu prison, where Butchers are keeping some of the striking workers. If you free them, one will give you his timecard, though you don’t actually need it to get inside. If you already have one, the workers are shocked you saved them and are asking nothing in return.

The best way to get inside is to power up a crane and use a balcony on the other side. This not only gives you a good vantage point over the whole slaughterhouse entrance, but also lets you get to a body with a rune.

The Whale Butchers (the jacked-up cousins with the saws) are threatening a worker. If Daud saves him, he will tell Daud about Rothwild's torture chair. You can find the chair in the next area, where you get to see, and more disgustingly hear the Whale Butchers using their saws on carcasses.

The chair is electric, and it will serve nicely, should you elect to go that route with Bundry.

The Slaughterhouse is my favourite location in the first game. It’s fairly big, with many interconnected paths, and interesting things to do and see. You can find the other half of Granny Rags’ recipe in the Whale Harvesting Room.

Apparently, the best way to get oil from whales is to slowly and brutally electrocute them to death. Billie will outright ask you to put the whale out of its mystery, which you should. To do this, you need to power up the machine and electrocute it quickly; then you can steal its eye.

The area is grim, every detail contributing to its atmosphere. The river of blood and oil running under the whale, the Butchers with their smoking saws, powered by the same oil the whale is being tortured to produce, the clashing noises of their saws and the whale cries, the enormity of the room. It's a brilliant piece of world building.

From this room, you can blink up into the archives, circumventing some Butchers. There’s a safe here that you can rob, and you can listen to Bundry’s really creepy audiograph in which he's doing an ASMR gloat.

Currently, Rothwild is arguing with Abigail Ames. Ames only appears in this one level, but she knows who Daud is. To the workers she was a union rep; to Rothwild she was the head of his labour force. In reality, she’s an agent for Lord Ramsey (the guy who called the Guards on you at the Boyle party), sent to kill Rothwild and steal his workers.

If you decide to play non-lethally, you will be met with scorn and resistance from everyone you encounter. Here especially, both Billie and Abigail make fun of Daud for considering alternatives. Abigail agrees to tell you about the boat if you blow up the slaughterhouse, and when you ask about the workers, she mocks you for growing a conscience. She doesn't consider Rothwild or the Butchers are people, so she doesn't care if they get caught in the explosion.

If you are serious about doing a non-lethal run, don’t leave Abigail and Rothwild alone; she will stab him with a screwdriver. It’s best to knock her out and put Rothwild in the chair.

Delilah belonged to Lord Arnold Timsh. He sold the ship to Bundry for a quarter of its market value, because he wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

This leaves Daud with two choices. You can leave Rothwild in the chair or you can put him in a crate that will take him to the furthest part of the Empire. If you leave him in the chair, in the next level, Butchers will be waiting for you at the docks, to kill you for what you did to him.

With that done, beware of the Butchers that enter the Slaughterhouse from the front door (this is why I like the roof entrance) and leave. You can finish Granny’s recipe for the rune, and on your way out, you’ll get your first real brush with the Overseer music box.

Music boxes were used in the base game, but Daud encounters them far more frequently. They disorient magic users, taking away the use of their abilities. Billie is surrounded by Overseers and disoriented by the box. The best way to save her, is to chuck a chokedust at them, and she’ll blink out herself.

Billie asks Daud if she can tag along for the next mission too, since she was already planning a hit on Timsh. Daud agrees.

Eminent Domain:

Daud narrates the start of the second level, explaining what he knows about Arnold Timsh. He is a wealthy noble, barrister, and close friend of Hiram Burrows, and during the plague, he's tripled his fortune by confiscating property from plague-stricken families (not all of whom had the plague). However, he’s embroiled in a familial war with his niece, Thalia Timsh, over his mother’s will.

Armed with this knowledge, Daud seeks Thalia out, and she agrees to meet him at Treaver’s Close.

The level starts with you and Billie taking out some guards; if you didn’t kill Bundry, Billie will follow your lead and knock the guard out. Treaver’s Close is on the other side of the wall of light, so you have to make your way there.

The main advice I have for you is to SHUT IT OFF. If you don’t, there’s no way across the wall and no way to deactivate it from the Waterfront side, so you will essentially break the game. Do it and save yourself the frustration.

Thalia is waiting for you; a Hatter has killed her bodyguard and is harassing her. This is a trap: two of his buddies are waiting behind the roof, and they’ll attack you as soon as you take him out. Moreover, if you’re not careful, and you say, try to get into the open window, you might alert ALL the Hatters in the area, since there’s a lot of them.

Thalia tells Daud that Delilah completely messed up Timsh’s mind; he is erratic and seems to now be afraid of her, whereas before they were lovers, and he was willing to leave everything to her. Thalia wants Daud to kill Timsh and replace his will, which is maybe a problem if you’re playing Cleaner Hands.

Before you can worry about that though, there is the slight issue of getting into the Legal District. If you listen to the City Watch talk outside, you’ll hear that they lost the key to the Legal District to the Hatters, and you need it if you want to get inside.

If you’re low-chaos, the key will be in the Hatter building on the second floor. In high and medium, it’ll be with a dead Hatter named Chauncy, whose body changes rooms. The stronghold is crawling with Hatters, so be careful.

The other thing to note is that if you break the wooden planks on the Hatter side of the street, you’ll start a war with the City Watch. It’s easy to get caught in the crossfire, and this also alerts the City Watch,

There’s an apartment here that has another incomplete Outsider shrine with a bone charm instead of a rune. On the shrine you can find Granny Rags’ second recipe and this one is a lot more involved than the first one.

If the Slaughterhouse was my favourite location, this is my favourite level. I love the city levels where you get to explore the interconnected apartments and observe the street below. Apartment 10 is presently locked, but well be needing it. For now, get as close to the entrance as you can, and after you hear the guy being congratulated for finally getting a squad after what happened last night, enter the Legal District.

Since the Whalers have been planning a hit on Timsh for a while, you have a scope location already set up where you can talk to Billie and stock up on weapons and gear. Before you do that, it’s good to visit one of Timsh’ former ‘friends’, Roland.

Timsh has destroyed Roland's entire family by falsely accusing them of having the plague and confiscating their property. Roland wants revenge, so he gives daud the address to his old apartment, where he has a fake immunity document signed with the forged signature of the Lord Regent, along with something to make his apartment infected with the plague; a bag of dead rats.

The apartment is 10, and it makes it easy to circumvent the Legal District entrance and return to the Waterfront. Conveniently it’s also the best vantage point to blink into Timsh’s third and fourth stories. Inside, behind a bookshelf is the actual Outsider shrine.

Billie is aware that Daud can speak to the Outsider and wonders what he’d say to her. I find this very sad; the actual first time the Outsider speaks to Billie, he’s 20 years too late.

As for the Outsider, he’s not too thrilled with Daud’s sudden ‘no killing thing’. He thinks it’s another desperate attempt to avoid his fate, rather than a genuine change of heart, something that many fans seem to believe to this day.

There are many ways to go after Timsh. My favourite is to blink to the fourth floor and speak to Delilah first. She knows who Daud is, and warns him to stay away from her, but do whatever he wants with Timsh, who is no longer of use to her. Billie calls Delilah a bitch and hopeless painter.

Timsh is on the third floor, arguing with his Head of Guard. He’s supposed to get a visit from General Turnbull, but Turnbull is late because of Corvo kidnapping Sokolov. Once the argument (concerning Thalia) ends, Timsh goes upstairs, and you can knock him out and steal his key. On the third floor you can replace his immunity document with Roland’s forgery. You can then steal the will, which to Daud’s shock, leaves everything to Delilah.

Before you dump the dead rats in the cellar air duct, finish Granny Rags’ recipe. On the first floor of Timsh’s house there is a deck of tarot cards. If you have Granny’s note, pull out the World card. Then, return to apt 10, place the card on the Overseer Shrine and cut your palm over it. Take the bloodied card and throw it in Timsh’ fireplace. Whoala; you have a rune.

With that done, dump the rats, and watch Turnbull arrest Timsh for using a forgery of Burrows’ document.

Thalia is waiting for you at the docks, like she said she would. Though she's not a good person, she does keep her word, and give Daud Delilah's backstory.

Delilah was a baker’s apprentice in Dunwall Tower, before she became Sokolov's apprentice. She met Timsh and they became lovers, but this led to conflict between Timsh and his mother because he would put her life in danger for Delilah and tried to write Thalia out of the will in order to give everything to Delilah.

Timsh is Delilah's experiment for her real plan which involves Emily, but Daud doesn't know this yet.

On their way back to the Flooded District, Billie comments that she likes the poetic nature of Timsh getting taken down by a forged document, like he had done to so many (a callback to Daud's speech about the Lord Regent) and muses that she might have misjudged Daud.

This for me is the platonic ideal of a Dishonored level. It's long, but doesn't drag, it involved a lot of weaving from building to building, carefully knocking out or avoiding enemies, but also some sneaking through corridors and hallways. The scenes between Daud, Billie and the Outsider are great, Granny Rags' side quest is interesting and not too easy, and I really enjoyed seeing a different part of Dunwall. It’s nice to see that Dunwall was still a functioning city while Corvo was out killing people.

As Daud returns to the Flooded District to regroup and plan however, Delilah has other intentions.

The Surge:

As soon as Daud enters his base, Billie Lurk informs him that Overseers have attacked the hideout. Many of the Whalers are dead, and others have been captured. Billie is adamant that you can still push back against the Overseers if you free your men and attack. Daud is more interested in how the Overseers found the base in the first place.

This is the final level in KoD, and I HATE it.

It's not dull like A Light at the End, but it combines my least favourite elements of the series. I hate fighting Overseers and their Hounds, and I hate dealing with the Overseers music boxes. I don't like single location levels where you fight a bunch of enemies, and this one has the double whammy of being a reused location from the base-game. It's also a hard level, full of groups of enemies that can’t be easily separated, and to make it worse, because the base has many walkways and bridges, using projectile weapons will have you reloading at least 5 times a minute to save all the Overseers you accidentally kill by knocking them off the edge.

The last time I replayed this level, I think the game glitched on me, because all the Overseers were in a permanent alert state which made it fucking impossible to do anything. I’ve never had hostiles notice me from that far away, like buildings away (some could even see me THROUGH walls and barriers) and become that aggressive that quickly. I had to restart several times over, and even when I finished it, I still felt like the game was breaking under how many enemies it threw at me, even though I was playing Cleaner Hands AND Low Chaos.

The only positive I will say is that story wise, this is the most famous of part of the first game, and it's crucial to everything that happens in BW and the sequel. So, let’s go over it.

You can retrace Corvo’s footsteps from the base game to discover the absolutely insane number of Overseers in the base. Like always, there are multiple ways you can do things, but honestly? They are all bad.

The best thing I’ve found is to free all your captured Whalers (there’s 4 of them), and then go after Hume, because that way you can get to the best position to get to him; through the window and floors of the neighbouring building where you fought Daud as Corvo in the base game.

Dealing with the Overseers for me is like pulling teeth, so I won't belabour things; my only advice is that chokedust works well to disorient and briefly scatter groups, and gives you enough of a window to choke out the music box carries, and THEN shoot the rest, because the boxes are impossible to deal with when they start playing (they also alert even MORE Overseers to your location).

The trick with this level is that it’s actually deceptively simple. You don’t even NEED to save the captured Whalers; all you need to do is choke out or shoot Hume and steal his letter which is how you know that the Overseers had a plan that Hume moved early on. You still need to actually look into the Overseer plans, which are in a heavily guarded building across from your base, but knocking Hume out will open the possibility to rendezvous with the rest of your crew, and you can order them to choke out or kill the rest of the Overseers.

Taking Hume down is easiest by using the window and Bend Time. One thing to note, is if you do go after Hume, and you’ve saved at least one assassin, make sure to knock him out and run before you’re seen, because otherwise Billie will help you, and she will sometimes just kill Hume even after he’s been darted.

The plans you find will let you know that Hume was tipped straight to your hideout, and that there’s a massive Overseer force coming. However, with your knowledge, Billie and the others can bottleneck the Overseers and prevent them from taking over the base.

Once you do all this you can talk to the Whalers. Billie comes clean; she is the one who gave Delilah your location.

Unfortunately, because of how well known this scene is, it was spoiled for me before I got to play it, but I still loved it. Billie has been your partner the whole game; she bounced ideas off of you, helped you develop plans, commented on your actions, joked with you - she is clearly as close to Daud as much as he lets anyone get. To find out that she sought Delilah out and wanted to betray you is a genuine blow.

What’s more, even on low-chaos, Billie’s biggest regret isn’t attempting to kill Daud, or getting her friends killed; it’s moving in too early, before she was ready. She regrets it because she failed Daud's teaching; that is not what he would've done. It's still a reflection on him; she messed up because she wasn’t as effective a killer as he is.

It's not that Billie doesn't regret betraying Daud; she tells Delilah Daud deserves better when Delilah appears, angry at her failure. It's more that Billie is mad at herself for misjudging Daud, mistaking his unwillingness to kill for weakness.

It was really Hume who blew the whole thing; had he not moved early the Overseers would have taken the base, and Billie would have killed Daud in his tunnel. Delilah mocks Billie for telling Daud that her life is in his hands (which Daud echoes in his confrontation with Corvo), and after your decision, she bamfs out, with a ridiculously over the top warning that she will “crush your cold heart and walk into your skin”.

This is your final, real choice as Daud: kill, or spare Billie.

To compare this choice to Covo’s choice of sparing or killing Daud, I think this was done much better.

Firstly, Billie has been with you for 3 straight levels. She has a strong personality and presence in the story, both physically and to Daud as a character.

She betrayed Daud directly, and if you died a lot in this level like I did then you have a lot of personal reasons to be angry with her. Your feelings and decision as a player are aligned with that of Daud, the character. In the base game, even after two expansions all about how Daud changed, I still don’t think Corvo would let him go. Corvo doesn’t know what happened to Daud, nor do you when you are playing as him. Daud knows everything about Billie, and your choice informs the way you see his character: do you believe that he is changing, really is sick of killing and trying to make amends, or is it all just a shallow facade in an attempt to avoid his inevitable fate?

I also like Billie’s little aside about how she and Daud, both knew it would end like this between them; Billie was going to betray him at some point, and he would have had to face her. Even Delilah acknowledges this, by saying she knew Billie’s betrayal would have been sweetest.

We end the DLC with Billie boarding a ship away from Dunwall, and I don’t just mean in your choice. Billie Lurk is one of the most important characters in the Dishonoured franchise and her story isn’t even close to being over.

As for Daud, we stay with him for the second of the DLC expansions - The Brigmore Witches.

Part 6: Dishonored: Concluding Thoughts

Part 8: Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches

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#dishonored #dishonored retrospective #dishonored kod #knife of dunwall #moni talks

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