Arkane on story and powers in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

During our visit to Gamescom in August, we were lucky enough to sit down with Arkane duo Dinga Bakaba and Christophe Carrier, who had plenty to tell us about standalone expansion Death of the Outsider.

"It takes place slightly after the events of Dishonored 2, but it's more an echo to it rather than a straight up sequel, the same way the Daud DLCs were an echo to the events of Dishonored 1," Bakaba explained when describing the game and talking about its leading lady, who fans will know well from previous entries in the series.

"Basically it's a few months after the events [of Dishonored 2] and we are following Billie Lurk, who is an assassin, she's a killer for hire, and she's been through an interesting character ark from when we first saw her in the DLCs from Dishonored 1, and then her new persona in Dishonored 2, and now in Death of the Outsider; it's an interesting character that we wanted to focus on a little bit more on.

"But in the broader picture I'd say that we've started two story threads with Dishonored; we have the story of the powerful, I would say, the Kaldwin family with the assassination of Jessamine and what happens to Corvo, and then later the usurpation of the throne etc. So there's this story, and there's the other story, the story about the underground with Daud as a killer for hire and his remorse about his hit-job of killing Empress. And we went into the underground of Dunwall with Knife of Dunwall, and now we are going to the underground of Karnaka with Billie, and we are going to basically continue that story thread and give it a conclusion."

Throughout this extensive interview we talked about level design, as well as the new powers in the game and the decision to open those powers up to the player from the start.

While we wait for our imminent review, there are gameplay impressions waiting to be found here. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on September 15.