Spoilers follow for Dishonored and Dishonored 2.

Delilah Copperspoon—servant, painter, playmate to a young Empress, then witch, usurper and Empress herself—is first introduced in Dishonored’s two-part DLC, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. In Dishonored 2, Delilah returns to Dunwall Tower with one mission: take back what’s yours. 

While Dishonored opens with Jessamine’s assassination, and Death of the Outsider ends with the removal of the Outsider from the Void, Dishonored 2 shows that the instigating act of the series’ narrative arc is one child blaming another. In Delilah’s account, a single act of childish cruelty cascades into a lifetime of misery for herself and her mother, as Jessamine’s privileged position as the daughter of an Emperor doesn’t extend to her half-sister. As a child, Delilah did not understand why she was excluded from the honour, prestige and love showered upon Jessamine. As an adult, Delilah continuously attempts to seize these things which Jessamine possessed. Her desire becomes an act of imitation. 

It’s clear that, in The Brigmore Witches and in Dishonored 2, Delilah wants the throne. As a villain, she pursues power with ruthlessness and cunning. But the nature of this desire and its origins are interrogated in both games. The throne and all its power seems to be a natural thing to desire for someone as ambitious as Delilah. Indeed, her first attempt in The Brigmore Witches makes her appear to want it for the sake of it; power and prestige are assumed to be their own reward. But across the games, the throne is shown to be a symbol of social relationships as much as power. It’s familial as much as legal – meshing the machinations of the state with the entanglements of family life. This only becomes clear when confronted by Daud in the final mission; Delilah pleads with him before her magically infused painting of Emily, claiming that the young girl stole her life away. 

This line, once ambiguous, becomes explicit when it’s revealed in Dishonored 2 that Delilah is believed to be the illegitimate half-sister of Jessamine Kaldwin. As daughters born out of wedlock to the ruler of the Empire, Delilah and Emily share an origin. But more than this, Delilah shows that she doesn’t simply desire Emily’s throne for the sake of it, but Emily’s entire life and history. In The Brigmore Witches, Delilah attempts to possess Emily’s body in order to take power. In Delilah’s desire for the throne, her imitation of Emily is so explicit that it leads her to try to become her. This magical possession becomes a literalised metaphor for the events that transpire in Dishonored 2.

Mirrors of desire

In this understanding, Delilah’s attempts at revenge against Jessamine are thinly veiled attempts to imitate her. And when Jessamine is assassinated and that power is handed to Emily, Delilah pursues Emily just as single-mindedly. But in doing so, she recreates the dispossession and misery which led her, long ago, to pursue the throne out of personal revenge. Motivated entirely by envy, Delilah desires the throne not because she desires to rule the land or govern the Empire. Instead, she desires the throne purely because it was denied to her, and she believes that the women who have held it since have stolen her birthright. While Delilah is focused on the injustice done to her, and the stratification of the Empire’s citizens into the haves and have-nots, she is unconcerned with rectifying any of it beyond personal vengeance. Her tragedy is as much her refusal to break the cycle of violence and desire which led to her deprivation as it is the petty, cruel and childish whims which have harmed her. Even Delilah acknowledges this when recounting the events of her life which lead to her deposing Emily. “It’s your turn now,” Delilah spitefully declares, unaware that her actions have merely created someone exactly like her, who will pursue the throne just as she has done.

The other antagonists of Dishonored 2 operate along these same themes, as each of the four coconspirators of Delilah’s coup can be undone by the doubles they use to exert control. Grim Alex, a Jekyll-and-Hyde creation of Hypatia’s own research, is banished by that same method. Jindosh’s machines turn on him and destroy the intellect that created them. Breanna Ashworth has her magical ability torn away by the same effigies she crafted to supernaturally influence others. Duke Abele is replaced by the literal body double he uses to avoid the consequences of his wasteful and thoughtless lifestyle. Even Paolo and Byrne, fighting over a patch of dusty territory in the once-grand Batista District, now stare each other down through a cloud of dust that obscures the mirrored nature of their relationship. In each case, these doubles, all created by a ruthless pursuit of power and used either directly or indirectly to harm others, are easily turned against them all. Delilah, in turn, is undone by the double she creates in Emily. 

Dishonored 2 opens up the nature of this desire for the throne even further by detailing Delilah’s disempowerment and contrasting it with Emily’s own. As an Empress, Emily is at best ambivalent and at worst unconcerned. Her leadership is weak and her political awareness undermined by rooftop jaunts after dark where she dreams of being free of responsibilities. After the coup that rescinds her birthright and encases her father in stone, Emily’s motivations come down to this same tagline: take back what’s yours. Finally free of the burden of her throne, just as she dreamed, her desires are unclear at the game’s opening. But playing as Emily Kaldwin unfolds a narrative concerned with these mechanisms by which our desires are formed. Suddenly thrust into a recreation of Delilah’s story—one of death, deprivation, and disempowerment at the hands of a family member—Emily is forced to confront her reasons for wanting the throne. Before the coup, she was a poor ruler, but a non-lethal, low-Chaos playthrough shows a young woman coming to understand the depths of her obligation to the people she has hitherto ignored. In contrast with the Duke and with Delilah, Emily vows to be a better Empress not because she wants power, but because she cultivates compassion. But in a violent, high-Chaos playthrough, it becomes increasingly clear that a desire for revenge against Delilah eclipses Emily’s pursuit of what she lost. Through this, Emily imitates Delilah to the point of becoming indistinguishable from her murderous aunt.

Emily's choice

Regardless of playstyle, when Emily approaches Dunwall Tower in the final mission she is confronted with the realisation that her position is the same as Delilah’s before the coup: a deposed empress taking back what she believes is rightfully hers. Dunwall is a ruin when Emily returns, with the infrastructure crumbling and the streets littered with the dead. Delilah, unconcerned with the responsibilities which possessing the throne implies, rules over an empire of corpses. Her attempts to become everything that Jessamine was ultimately fail, just as her attempt to become Emily in The Brigmore Witches had been a failure. The land that adored her half-sister does not adore her—therefore she tries to create another through magic. But Emily, set on the path to usurp Delilah, may well simply become her instead. In a high-Chaos playthrough, Emily ends the game by ruling over a land in disarray, filled with the corpses of her own subjects, who she doesn’t hesitate to kill in her destructive desires. 

Dishonored 2 depicts the violent ends of imitative desire. Delilah’s envy of her half-sister for everything she possessed—not just their father’s throne, but also his love—informs her desire more than any notion of ruling the Empire. And while her story is one in which she seeks restitution for a childhood wrong that caused her so much misery and pain, she is unable to see the imitative nature of her desire and, in turn, visits the same misery and pain upon Emily. The object of desire—the throne and all its power—is quickly obscured when the relationships that form around it are based on envy, spite and imitation. And while a high-Chaos playthrough of Dishonored 2 simply replaces one tyrant for another, a conscientious playthrough sees the young Emily Kaldwin resisting the easy urge of imitative desire and instead growing as a ruler and a woman. Delilah, meanwhile, becomes trapped within her own desires of an immortal rule within her painted world, unaware and unconcerned that she lives out a simple imitation.

God-killing might sound like an ambitious notion for a standalone expansion, but with Death of the Outsider, Arkane Studios promised players the opportunity to do just that. The expansion is also the latest example of a trend where developers experiment with an established series to create something that’s not quite DLC or sequel, but something in between. Refining certain ideas, systems and mechanics present in Dishonored 2 enabled Billie Lurk’s revenge tale to be its own beast. 

“It’s true that we could have told that story through a two or three-part season of DLC,” says Dinga Bakaba, the game’s lead designer. “The push for a standalone was really a choice that benefited the overall quality of the game the most.” Though smaller, more focused and arguably more linear than Dishonored 2, the tale of the Death of the Outsider was the perfect opportunity to give players a satisfying sense of finality. 

Almost everyone at the studio agreed that a separate release was the best route to take if the epilogue was to be done justice. The series’ long-standing director, Harvey Smith, had actually toyed with the idea since the first day of working on Dishonored 2. Though post-release DLC for the original 2012 game was well received, certain restrictions always come when developing additional content in the traditional manner. The plan for Death of the Outsider was to avoid those.

Killing chaos

“The maps, the features, the systems, the art, the narrative design,” says Bakaba. “The amount of polish that comes with not having to meet a shorter deadline and multiple submission processes that are associated with DLC benefits both us and the players.” 

While Death of the Outsider is, in many ways, a game about endings, the standalone offering also marked many firsts for the franchise. The most notable example of these firsts is the absence of the Chaos system, a previous Dishonored calling card where player violence affects things like the number of guards in the game as you progress. As Billie Lurk, you’re no longer punished for taking a more lethal tack when getting in and out of Karnaca’s objective areas.

“It’s a more compact experience, so we wanted players to get the most out of it and encourage them to use the tools at their disposal in our games, stress them, experiment, find solutions and create unique anecdotes and stories,” explains Bakaba. “I’m frustrated when someone says, ‘This is the right way to play Dishonored,’ or, ‘I wish I could play like this, but the game doesn’t want me to.’ I want players to play their own game, not the game that the systems tell them is the best.” 

It’s a difficult balance to strike, but Death of the Outsider largely manages to pull it off successfully. Billie offering the player a grey moral compass—a far cry from the duty-bound personalities of Emily and Corvo—signifies an Arkane willing to trust players more than in previous outings, particularly in terms of pacing and how to best tackle the game’s optional side activities. Also contributing to that attitude is the fact that activities can be approached differently thanks to Death of the Outsider’s big new power: Semblance. This lets players assume the likeness of any available NPC, essentially stealing their faces to open up new solutions to problems. 

“The idea for Semblance came in the first phase of the project where the plan was to rework existing powers,” says Bakaba. “Heavily based on Possession originally, not everybody here originally believed that it would be a good power; some thought it might never work. But as we decided to make the game a standalone product we took the opportunity to invest in making the power more ambitious through mechanics, AI, feedbacks and such. Jérôme Braune, our senior system designer in charge of the feature, did a great job in turning it into a really useful power, but he was the first to be surprised when people mentioned it as one of the best things in the game.”

Everybody wins

Death of the Outsider, then, makes the case for expandalones being the perfect means by which to blend systems and mechanics that are both old and new. They can be an ideal way of placing less strain on developers while still creating a product for new players who want an entry point to the world, or seasoned players aching to spend more time with characters and a setting they’ve grown to love. 

“Returning players will likely enjoy the story more because the plot is about the Outsider, Billie and Daud,” says Bakaba. “The narrative works much better if you are familiar with the characters, you get the biggest payoff that way. But at the same time, in terms of gameplay, it’s a brand-new player character with new powers and gadgets. 

“We added video tutorials for new players, the action can be very unshackled as it ships with features like custom difficulties, and the new Contracts system allow you to plan a shorter play session around more bite-sized objectives. So new players can really enjoy it for the gameplay.” The intention, Bakaba explains, is that “all will have a great time” with the game.

It took our Bitcoin mining rig two weeks to spit out the solution to 'what is the hardest GOTY award to be mad about,' but our unscrupulous power consumption was worth it. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the first uncontroversial Game of the Year award we've given in years. We finally did it!

Of course it couldn't last, though. After just a few days of basking in positive reinforcement, we also published awards for PUBG and Destiny 2, prompting questions such as: 'Are you drunk?' The answer is: probably. But we must press on. The end of the year is for awarding awards, and no number of incredulous reaction gifs and all caps emails can stop us. So before calling it quits, we grabbed a handful of rejected award ideas from our award box (after paying our office manager $1.99 for the key) to bring you the 2017 Looties, our other GOTY awards.

Best Mass Effect Game

Winner: Mass Effect: Andromeda

However you feel about Mass Effect: Andromeda, you have to admit that it's the best Mass Effect game that released this year, and at least the fourth best Mass Effect game of all time. Not too shabby! —Tyler Wilde

Most Effective Word of Mouth Marketing Campaign 

Winner: EA for Star Wars Battlefront 2

Wow! EA pulled off quite the marketing stunt for Battlefront 2: even politicians are talking about it. To make this word-of-mouth magic happen, the marketing savants at EA constructed a business model that it would be impossible to look at, even on paper, without saying: 'Excellent! Everyone is going to be very mad about this! In fact, even Disney will be mad. We'll definitely make Belgium's Justice Minister mad.' And like clockwork, that's what happened—literally anyone could have predicted it, which goes to show just how airtight the plan was. Nice one, EA! —Tyler Wilde

Most Unexpected Death

Winner: Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider

It was a closely guarded secret all through the production of Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider: The Outsider would die. The efforts taken to hide the death of the Outsider were extreme, with several fake endings to Death of the Outsider, in which the Outsider did not die, being fully produced and animated. The Outsider's voice actor spent days recording dozens of lines of dialogue intended to throw off any suspicions in case of a pre-launch leak, lines like "I am glad I did not die!" and "I, the Outsider, continue to live" and "There sure are a lot of deaths but thankfully none of them are of me, the Outsider." These efforts were completely worth it, because we were completely stunned when we got to the part of Death of the Outsider where we experienced the death of the Outsider. In fact, we feel a little bad not including a spoiler warning before this award, because now you know the Outsider, in Death of the Outsider, dies. —Chris Livingston

Most normal house

Winner: What Remains of Edith Finch

As evocative as the Finch's family home is, it's the realistic slice-of-life details that make it so compelling. For instance, there's the subtle inclusion of secret tunnels that only small people can fit through. We all know where ours are! (Though we must never find out what's behind them.) And rooms with entirely different colour schemes that perfectly show, down to the smallest detail, who lives there? These are the details I expect when I walk into a family home, not the unrealistic detritus you see in most so-called 'true to life' portrayals: mouldy pizza boxes stuffed down the side of a bed, embarrassing Star Trek tie-in novels in people's book collections, dad's copy of Band of Brothers on Blu-ray. As if we're not going to notice that the family dome is missing from that picture? Props to Edith Finch for getting it right. —Samuel Roberts

Wait, a Survival Game Left Early Access? 

Winner: The Long Ark

Wait, what? A survival game left Early Access this year? Wait, again! And what, again? Two of them? Ark: Survival Evolved and The Long Dark both left Early Access? Holy crap. I didn't know that was a thing that could happen. I thought maybe Steam forgot to make a 'Leave Early Access' button for survival game developers to click on, or maybe that they had to cut down a real tree using an axe made from a stick, a stone, and 'plant fiber' before they were allowed to leave Early Access and no one could actually do it. Well, good for Ark 'n Dark! May your stomach meters be full and your supply of firewood be plentiful. —Chris Livingston

Saddest Child

Winner: Little Nightmares

It's never been a better and worse time to be a sad child in a game, what with Inside and Rime showing that kids have it tough in service of entertaining players. Little Nightmares, though, offers the saddest child of 2017, as grotesque people regularly attempt to eat your character on a horror show of a boat while your character slowly starves to death. If it's not that, you have to avoid giant toy men who want to mess you up real bad. Will 2018 be another banner year for sad videogame children? I would expect so. This sub-genre is flourishing right now. —Samuel Roberts

Saddest Robots

Winner: Nier Automata

Have you met the member of the resistance group who reprograms a Yorha android because he's desperate to start a family? And then did you read the email afterwards that explains in cold detail how he and his new robot relations were killed? Nier features some deeply sad robots, all trying to figure themselves out in a box-y world where people no longer reside, but human feelings live on in their creations. Everyone's having a bad time. Except the robots having an orgy—they're loving it. —Samuel Roberts

Corporate Good Guy of the Year

Winner: Yosuke Matsuda, Square-Enix

It's rare to see major publishers behave with magnanimity when the big bucks are involved, so I was moved if not to tears, at least to substantial surprise when Square-Enix decided not to be jerks about the whole not wanting to make more Hitman games thing, and instead let IO Interactive walk away with the rights to their slap-headed, murderous creation. Credit for that has to go to big boss Yosuke Matsuda, who explained: "I believe it wouldn't be Hitman unless it was Hitman made by IO… I love the game, and I believe the fans of Hitman think it's only Hitman if it's made by IO. So I thought that was the best way for the game to continue, and that's why we were supportive of the MBO and of course didn't mind if they continued to use the IP." Imagine, Bobby Kotick at Activision saying something like that. You can't. Because he's buried under that pile of loot boxes. Shhh, Bobby. Let the darkness come. You're safe now. —Tim Clark

Corporate Bad Guy of the Year

Winner: Also Yosuke Matsuda, Square-Enix

Goddamnit. No sooner had I hung the garland on Matsuda-san than I realised he was also responsible for this year's greatest single moment of villainy: Ignoring the noble and righteous campaign led by our own Wesley Fenlon to have Final Fantasy Tactics finally ported to PC. I mean, I can't be sure this is entirely Matsuda's fault, but I also can't be certain he isn't to blame. So here we are. I mean, c'mon Square. You've jammed every other Fantasy onto Steam except that one about the hot boys riding around chasing chocobo tail in a black cadillac, why the hell can't we have Tactics? It's literally one of the best turn-based strategy games ever made, and would be an absolute delight to play with mouse and keyboard. To be honest, if it was between this and letting the Hitman devs families' starve… —Tim Clark

Also, you can literally fight him in Nier: Automata, which makes him a true (but extremely cool, dammit) bad guy. —Wes Fenlon

Dishonored 2 was easily my favourite game of last year, and so it's little surprise that I enjoyed this standalone expansion so much. In many ways it's a similar prospect—a bunch of new Dishonored 2-style levels (and even a returning old one), offering more opportunities to stalk through Karnaca, offing jerks. Good, but not revelatory. And yet, it goes further, switching up exactly the right things to make the action feel meaningfully different. It's a great example of an efficient expansion: more of the same, but also something new.

Billie Lurk is the perfect character to lead this epilogue. The main Dishonored games centre around fundamentally sheltered people coming into the squalor of common life—experiencing it in some cases for the first time. Focusing on the murkier characters of Dishonored's story—primarily Daud and Billie—gives the expansion stories a new context, making them an important tool for fleshing out the world. To Emily, for instance, the witches are a threat—an enemy to overcome. But Billie has history with the faction, which lets Arkane reframe your sympathies as more insidious forces take control.

My play style in Death of the Outsider was more lethal than in any previous Dishonored game, and for what I perceived as justifiable story reasons. The expansion facilitated that switch by doing away with the Chaos system. It made sense to do: Billie's influence in the world is less obvious than Corvo or Emily, and her personality has already been forged in betrayal and bloodshed. Again: a small systemic tweak, but one that's rooted in the story being told, that encourages you to try something different.

That's also achieved through Billie's powers. She has fewer options than Corvo or Emily, but her power recharges without the need for vials of blue magic juice. The resource management element is clearly something Arkane felt was important for the main game. But for this shorter, more focused story, it's nice to be set free. To see a space and have the freedom to attempt whatever tactic your toolset allows, without the worry of its consequences down the road.

It's not all clever tweaks, though. Death of the Outsider also features some brilliant environments—missions that, in some instances, rival Dishonored 2's. The bank heist is a standout. After spending a huge chunk of time in the surrounding environment during the day, you return at night to break into Karnaca's most secure bank. It's a brilliant sequence, full of ingenious infiltration methods and different options depending on what strands of the space you pick away at. It's easily my favourite level from anything this year.

It was a toss up whether my personal pick this year would be Death of the Outsider or Prey. Each offered a different take on the immersive sim concept—Prey taking the System Shock approach, while Death of the Outsider built from Dishonored's more Thief-style systems. And each had some significant problems—for Outsider, the last mission's new enemy type made working through that space a chore. But, in both cases, the positives outweigh the negatives. I think Death of the Outsider is marginally my favourite, right here, right now. But Prey is the one I'm more likely to replay—and will doubtless enjoy more on a second go through. In a year when pure singleplayer experiences have struggled commercially, both deserve your attention and time.

Disclaimer: One of the writers for Death of the Outsider, Hazel Monforton, is a contributor to PC Gamer.

It's worth taking your time in Death of the Outsider, the recently-released expansion for Dishonored 2. Its world is dripping in atmosphere, full of detail and side stories that will take you the best part of 10 hours to fully explore.

But, naturally, that hasn't stopped an army of speedrunners using every exploit possible to zoom through the game. The best of the bunch is streamer Bjurnie, who has just achieved a new world record by zipping through the expansion in nine and a half minutes flat. 

If you recognise the name it's probably because Bjurnie also holds the record for speedrunning Dishonored 2, which he completed in a lick under 23 minutes, and is third all-time in the list of runs for the original Dishonored. Something of an expert in the series, then.

There's a few techniques at play in the run, shown at the top of this article, but the most noticeable is known as the 'leap glitch'. Basically, you have to rebind jump to the mouse wheel, preferably on a free-scrolling mouse. Then you jump into a vault and cancel the animation, and if you get the timing right you'll fly miles. It's easier said than done.

Needless to say the run is incredibly impressive, especially considering Death of the Outsider has only been out a matter of weeks. Bjurnie barely puts a foot wrong.

Thanks to Destructoid for flagging the run.

Bethesda has released a new trailer to mark tomorrow's release of Dishonored: Death of the Outsider that features Billie Lurk, the one-time right-hand of the master assassin Daud, demonstrating her considerable talent for killing things. 

"In her effort to rid the world of the Outsider—the mysterious godlike figure looming over the Dishonored games—Billie has some of the coolest powers, weapons and gadgets we’ve ever designed," Bethesda said. "And the missions she embarks upon will take you deep into Karnaca, hunting for Billie’s old mentor, the underworld legend Daud, then beyond Karnaca to the blackest reaches of the Void." 

I like Dishonored a lot, but the trailer highlights the one thing about the series that really bugs me: The series is "all about ultra-powerful supernatural assassins navigating a corrupt, decaying steampunk empire," but you'll be penalized for overindulging in it. Billie in the trailer is clearly on a path to a high-chaos ending, and some players are going to be perfectly fine with. But as much as Dishonored ever offers a happy ending, you need to keep all the supernatural assassinating to a relative minimum if you want to get it. 

That said, punching people out is a-okay, and a quiet approach can be fun—especially since both Emily and Corvo are handy enough in a fight that botching it doesn't necessarily force a quickload. Bethesda recommended giving stealth a chance in its list of hints and tips for Dishonored newcomers: 

• Don’t feel constrained to stick to one particular playstyle. We encourage you to experiment during your first playthrough!
• Always look around for alternate pathways: side alleys, back doors, unlocked windows, overhead balconies, rooftops, and waterways. And be sure to look up! Go vertical when you can, along ledges, rooftops, pipes, etc. You can often sneak past an encounter that way or find an alternate entry or path.
• Give the stealth approach a shot. Sneaking, playing nonlethally, or even ghosting the missions adds even more tension and drama to situations.
• Our stealth model is mostly based on enemy view cones and occlusion. Darkness only matters at a distance, making you more hidden. Up close, enemy facing and field of view matters most so remember to stay behind them or something that blocks their line of sight. And don’t forget to lean! If your body is behind something like a wall, you can lean out to peek ahead.
• You can play the entire game without killing if you choose. For almost all the combat moves, there are nonlethal versions such as combat choke, drop attack and slide takedown.
• Distract enemies with sound by throwing a bottle or setting an alarm clock.   Eavesdrop on unaware enemies to absorb more information related to the world and the events unfolding around you. Similarly, read posted signs. Often characters have follow-up lines if you hang out and listen to them (or click on them further). You’ll absorb more about the world this way.
• Seek out Black Market shops to upgrade gear and buy more ammo.
• Use Foresight to locate more Bonecharms. Don’t forget to assign them and review your Bonecharm loadout periodically. Upgrade the number you can carry at Black Market shops.
• Change difficulty whenever you want. If you're an advanced player or really into stealth, we suggest you try playing on Hard.
• Be sure to check out the tutorial videos to learn more about the game mechanics.
• Quicksave is your friend.
• You can turn off the HUD UI, including goal markers. If you’re a minimalist, experiment with that.
• You can check out the calibration options screen to set your brightness so that black is really black for the best visual experience.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is available for pre-purchase for $30/£20/€30 on Steam.   

Death of the Outsider, the upcoming standalone expansion for Dishonored 2, put me back on the sunny streets of Karnaca with a knife in my hand and a mission. Daud, the bad guy behind the assassination way back at the beginning of Dishonored, is getting old, so he hands off his to-do list to his protege, Billie Lurk. Her mission: kill the god-like being, the Outsider.

I got to play about an hour of Death of the Outsider’s early missions at Quakecon this year, and frankly I’m in awe of Arkane’s ability to keep reinventing their worlds. Despite somewhat lackluster sales, the quality of the Dishonored series is not flagging. 

Getting to return to the stone parapets of Karnaca is fun on its own, but it’s Billie’s special powers that make the adventure feel like an entirely new challenge. For example, I spent a lot of time experimenting with Semblance. Semblance lets Billie knock out a character and steal their face, wearing their appearance like a disguise straight out of Hitman, another assassin fantasy. After bluffing my way into a gang’s social club, I managed to mug a gang member, steal her face, and use my magical disguise to stroll past guards protecting a private wing.

I can also teleport short distances using Displace—like Corvo’s Blink—but instead of pointing and teleporting, Displace jumps me to markers I can set moments or minutes before I need them. I got a lot of joy out of setting my teleportation marker in front of a heavily guarded door, then walking out into the open and giving the guards a little wave. When they rushed to arrest me, I teleported to my marker in front of the now unguarded door.

Both of these powers are great examples of how Arkane builds systems, then invites players to exploit or break those systems. These kinds of games (dubbed immersive sims by one of the creators of Deus Ex, the granddaddy of the genre) are some of the most intricate worlds in gaming right now, but as a group they’re also having a hard time. After the runaway success of Dishonored in 2012, Dishonored 2 limped through slow sales—a real shame, since we loved it enough to call it Game of the Year 2016. With Death of the Outsider, I feel a familiar worry. The expansion is beautiful and inventive, but I’m afraid that might not be enough.

The immersive sim genre has waned before, and weak sales for games like Prey, Dishonored 2, and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has us worried that they might be about to disappear again. Dishonored game director Harvey Smith tells me that he’s noticed the dip in sales, but thinks that there will always be enough of an audience to keep immersive sims in development.  

"And there's always the talent and the resources to make [immersive sims]," says Smith. "The question is, does one particular budget support the audience? What that means is, even if immersive sims speed up or slow down in terms of production, there's always the indie version of immersive sims like—this year you have Tacoma and next year you'll have something else. I think the demand will drive things."

Plus, there's a lot more to be done with the genre. Though he says he's "not the biggest fan" of the author, Smith muses about David Foster Wallace's idea that fiction's purpose is "to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it," and wonders what the purpose of games like Dishonored is. "Why do I like breaking and entering in games?" he asks. "Why do I like having the power of death? Why do I like being in a shitty situation?"

"The number of subjects that would be cool to tackle with games like this are endless," continues Smith. "First-person, very coherent world where you're looking for resources and combining things and inferring from environmental storytelling and you're free to do any one of several things. You can just imagine all the different settings and problems that could be approached that way. There are a hundred I'd love to see that don't have anything to do with space stations or cities during plagues or assassins or whatever."

As much potential as there is for the genre, Smith acknowledges that it’s frustrating when a game wins awards but the sales don't match that critical enthusiasm. He thinks it's partially down to the world we live in. In a great world, one with "endless food and power" where "your clothes are 3D printed," he imagines people would be more attracted to violent, simulated struggles, games that help us "feel human." As it is, though, what's popular in our turbulent world is not necessarily what's challenging from his perspective.

“What's that fucking show that everyone loves? Big Bang Theory, yeah,” Smith says. “I have this terrible reaction to seeing a clip of that show—I'm just angry. It doesn't work, it isn't funny, why is it so universally loved? It's upsetting because it might mean that what people really need at the end of the day is to eat in front of the TV, chill out … and just have something told to them that is soothing.”

If that’s true, we might be in for a long drought of immersive sims. But Smith believes that trying to predict the future of these things is a fool’s game, anyway. “One of the funny things about games is, if you stay around long enough, you hear everything,” he says. “I've had people say to me, if you're not making a free-to-play game, you won't have a job in five years—and that was ten years ago ... People who predict the future, man, I don't know. The roads of history are paved with the bones of prophets.”

Death of the Outsider releases September 15. We'll see if it paves over any prophets as it rolls out.