By the very nature of its roots in the amazing Dishonored 2, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider was already well on its way to being a great game. I was overjoyed to drop back into the city of Karnaca and try on a new set of supernatural assassin abilities, even if the things I did there weren’t quite as compelling this time around.

Death of the Outsider puts you in control of the charming but troubled Billie Lurk, who is helping her now old and dying mentor Daud get revenge on the black-eyed god behind all the magic happenings since the Dishonored series began: the Outsider. It aims to tie a neat little bow on the story arc that started with Jessamine Kaldwin’s murder in the first Dishonored, though it’s unusually light on story itself.

Apart from some brief exposition between missions, there’s really not much more going on here than a quest for a mystical MacGuffin item that can kill the Outsider. It’s straightforward, but still a satisfying way to end this five-year arc. With Daud’s strength fading, Billie sets out to do the job with a creepy new bone arm, a red eye straight out of Terminator, and some cool new powers.

Lurk Before You Leap

Your main movement ability is called Displace, and it opens up some great new opportunities for magical ninja mischief and murder. Instead of just teleporting to a location as Corvo does with Blink, you drop a ghostly image of yourself wherever you’re aiming. You can then reactivate Displace to hop to the ghost, as long as you have line-of-sight and aren’t too far away. This lets you double-click to use it similarly to Blink, or you can pull off some cool tricks like setting Displace on a ledge, dropping down to pickpocket someone, then immediately teleport back to safety before they can turn around.

Displace is complemented by Foresight, Billie’s brilliant replacement for Dark Vision. Instead of being able to see through walls in real time, Foresight freezes time and lets you fly around the map, marking targets and scouting out the area around you, draining your Void energy as you go. You can also drop a ghost to jump to with Displace once Foresight ends, effectively extending its range - though it was a little tedious to have to use it every time a ledge was just barely too far away for a regular Displace.

The real success of Foresight is that I no longer felt the need to constantly check for enemies in the ugly but irresistibly overpowered world of Dark Vision. I would use Foresight, take a look around, mark enemies, then play through the area I had just scouted in my regular view. It’s truly freeing, somehow feeling like both a stronger ability and one I didn’t need to rely on nearly as much.

The third and final ability is Semblance, which lets you knock people out and disguise yourself as them, Hitman style – and naturally spending energy whenever you move. It’s an interesting ability with some gorgeous visual effects accompanying it (including magically slurping off your victim’s face like an iPhone X-like facial scan), but I rarely used it. Whenever I stole a face to sneak through a guarded point, I usually found myself standing still about to run out of energy with nowhere to hide and no way to Displace. It didn’t suit my playstyle, but it’s still a neat tool to have available.

Going lethal or non-lethal is now entirely a matter of personal preference.

Despite being exciting abilities, all three of them were a bit played out by the end of the roughly eight-hour campaign, due in part to the fact that they’re all handed to you right after the first mission. Apart from a new attack, there were no new abilities or items to unlock, and there’s no way to upgrade or alter your powers except for a few Bone Charms that don’t make a radical difference. With only five major missions, I get that there isn’t a whole lot of space for deep progression, but not being able to modify my abilities more significantly was a bummer.

Wild and Crazy Kills

Thankfully, Death of the Outsider makes a few changes that gave me more freedom to use the abilities I did have. Your Void energy will refill automatically no matter how often you use abilities, instead of having to use elixirs to top yourself off. This meant I could get reckless and fast with my Displace jumps, which felt great after having to carefully time and space out abilities in Dishonored 2.

The other huge change is that there’s no more Chaos system, which I have mixed feelings about. Going the lethal or non-lethal route is now entirely a matter of personal preference with no ultimate effect on the game world or the outcome of the story. It makes sense given the shorter campaign length, and it was refreshing to have more freedom to make a mistake and not feel the immediate need to quickload. But it also undermines the allure of a full non-lethal approach, as it now seems like more of a self-imposed challenge rather than a playstyle that levels were designed for.

The lack of a Chaos system did free up space for some interesting Contract side missions. One required I kill literally every guard (over 50 of them) during a mission to collect my reward. That followed a Contract on the previous mission that wanted me to remain completely undetected. Those clashing goals generally couldn’t both be completed in a single run for previous Dishonored games, so I like that the lack of a Chaos system let Death of the Outsider encourage varied styles without having to start a new save file. I’m not sure I would want to play a full-length Dishonored game without consequences for killing, but it was a lot of fun in this context.

No level stands out like Dishonored 2's Clockwork Mansion, but they're still compelling to explore.

On the other hand, violence not affecting the story, combined with Billie’s only real goal being to end the Outsider, had the disappointing result of all the more prominent targets along the way being rather inconsequential. In fact, there aren’t any “targets” as you’d think of them in other Dishonored games. There are named characters that you usually need to steal something from, like the pompous singer Shan Yun or the extortionist bank director Dolores Michaels, but whether you leave them dead or alive is mostly irrelevant.

The levels these characters reside in are much more interesting. They’re wonderfully detailed, with care and creativity poured into every nook and cranny. Guards and civilians chatter about these people and their surroundings, sharing backstory and making them feel like real parts of the world. I particularly liked the Conservatory mission, which takes place in what felt like a large museum controlled by Overseers, with glass cases full of animals and oddities scattered all over it. None of the levels are standout successes like Dishonored 2’s Clockwork Mansion, but they’re still compelling to explore and conquer.

Dolores’ Bank could have been that standout mission, taking place in a rich and lavish building with a seriously awesome elevator vault to break into. But an optional objective I’d completed knocked out every single guard and employee before I entered, which turned what might’ve been a great mission into just a lot of walking safely around that space. I ended up regretting a decision Death of the Outsider encouraged me to make, which didn’t feel great.

That being said, given its shorter overall length, an ‘Original Game+’ mode that lets Billie use abilities from Dishonored 2, and a custom difficulty mode that lets you toy with over 20 different options like footstep noise and enemy bravery, most of these missions feel like challenges meant to be replayed, encouraging experimentation with new routes and harder difficulties instead of getting caught up in moral decision making.

In general, Death of the Outsider feels like an extension of Dishonored 2, which it pretty much is despite being sold as a standalone game instead of an expansion. It doesn’t mess up what made its predecessor great, and thankfully ran significantly better on PC at launch for me (I maxed it out on a GTX 1070, and it still ran great on a GTX 970), but it also ends up being a flatter version of an incredible game.