Dishonored 2's Death of the Outsider expansion could've focused on Whaler captain Daud, but the decision to instead go with protege Billie Lurk seems like a good one. Her arsenal of ultra-cool abilities and high tech weaponry has impressed so far—and Bethesda has now launched a "Powers, Gadgets and Gear" trailer which hones in on what Lurk brings to battle.

Expect Void Strikes, melee stabbings, her own spin on the game's signature Blink ability, and Hook Mines, among other things. As the headline above probably suggests, the latter are my favourite.

Game director Harvey Smith reckons Hook Mines are designed to be non-lethal, however can be used in certain very fatal manner. Here's Bethesda, as per this blog post: 

"Place this on a wall or floor or ceiling, and it’ll draw an enemy to it. The Hook Mine can be used non-lethally to subdue a person or hide an unconscious body. But if you place enough Hook Mines in an area, you’ll eviscerate anyone caught in the competing magnetic forces." 

Smith adds in the footage above: "It can be quite gory. It’s one of our favorite toys across the Dishonored games."

After chatting with Dinga Bakaba and Christophe Carrier at Gamescom, I had the chance to go hands-on with Death of the Outsider. At the time, I didn't realise Hook Mines could be used to tear my enemies apart, however did revel in planting traps upon rooftops and balconies, luring foes into their magnetic pull radius, and watching them shoot skyward—knocking themselves unconscious en route, in something that echoed The Phantom Pain's Fulton system.   

Much like its forerunners, Death of the Outsider weighs heavily on this sort of idiosyncratic mix-and-matching, and I'm now looking forward to throwing lethal mines into that mix. Dishonored 2's Death of the Outsider DLC is due September 15, however you can read Ian Birmbaum's early impressions here.  

When Dishonored 2's Death of the Outsider was revealed at E3, its launch trailer (featured above) showcased Billie Lurk slaughtering five baddies before rescuing her mentor Daud. With that, the star of the forthcoming DLC's show was immediately clear—however Daud was once considered as the standalone expansion's central protagonist.   

That's according to the game's lead designer Dinga Bakaba, who I sat down with alongside lead level designer Christophe Carrier at Gamescom. 

"We spoke to Harvey and we knew we wanted to explore this part of the universe, which is like the underground," Bakaba tells me. "The powerful are the focus of the main games and DLC was the underground, the assassins, the shady figures, and so we wanted to come back to that. We weren't sure at first, but Billie became more and more interesting as we worked on Dishonored 2. There was an option where we could have just told this story through the eyes of Daud, by the way, but I think that would have been the easy road because his powers are known, it would mean less mechanical exploration. 

"In the end it was cool to choose Billie because she's intriguing… she went through several interesting stages in her life—particularly in Dishonored 2, her main redemption arc is pretty much done, she's paid her debts in a way. And we're focusing on a more personal quest which is where she wants to find her mentor who now has a crazy agenda. Out of loyalty, she will carry on with his ambitions."

Speaking to Billie's mentor, I suggest to Bakaba and Carrier that Michael Madsen's voice feels made for the role. The pair tell me that securing his services in the first Dishonored game was somewhat of a surprise—particularly given both Bakaka and Carrier are fans of his work. But despite Madsen's professionalism and suitability, Bakaba suggests that working with celebrities, while nice, can be more complicated than working with lesser known actors.

"They may have they own personality and world and sometimes it just doesn't match with yours," says Bakaba. Carrier interjects: "Actually in Dishonored we had to change a character because the acting of the celebrity was not matching the character. I'm not going to say who. It was a very cool actor and very cool acting, but it just didn't match the character."

As for the Dishonored timeline post-Death of the Outsider, it doesn't appear Arkane is quite done with Dunwall and beyond just yet. 

"The Outsider is very central to Dishonored of course, but, for example, in this last game, he's not the one giving the power to Billie in the same way that he did with the other ones," says Carrier. "Maybe this marks the end for the Outsider but that doesn't mean it's the end of The Void. It's the end of this Void, but the Outsider is representative of his Void. The Void as a whole will however always exist. 

"People tend to think that the Outside is god and if you kill god then everything ends. That's not the case. We're very attached to the IP, we love it, and the end of the Outsider is more like the end of this era. It's more like they are attached to him in a way and ending his storyline is ending this period. We don't know what we're going to do after that, but it doesn't mean that it's the end." 

Dishonored 2's Death of the Outisder is due September 15. In the meantime, check out Ian Birnbaum's hands-on at QuakeCon which includes words from Arkane's Harvey Smith.

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.

Games are very good at satisfying fantasy violence and elaborate, gory executions are commonplace. These animations are partly there to shock and illicit that wincing "oof" when you watch your character dismember some unfortunate guard, but they are also there to make your moments of victory in a combat encounter stand out from the rest of the melee. A satisfying, decisive takedown is a release valve that gives you a moment to regroup before the fight resumes.

They are also useful for establishing character. Fight choreography can be used to say a lot about your avatar's mindset. Jackie in the Darkness 2 is sadistic, and worryingly inventive with his demon arms, as though he has spent far too much time thinking about how to use them. In Shadow of Mordor, Talion is quick and decisive with his deathblows—the technique of a warrior used to fighting many enemies at once. Agent 47 is efficient and wastes no energy on flair, as you would expect from a seasoned professional.

We started discussing memorable melee attack and takedowns that work particularly well in the context of the game world in which they feature. Violence in games rarely analysed. It is discussed in terms of 'is this bad?' rather than 'how did they make this so satisfying?' Here is a collection of games that do it well. Warning: if you don't want to see lots of pretend polygonal NPCs get beaten up, shot, and stabbed (a lot) look away now.

Kicking guards in Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic delighted in the Source engine's ragdoll physics systems, and integrated them into its combat system with the excellent kick move. Booted foes fly through the air, taking out destructible terrain and getting stuck on spikes. Might & Magic's levels find many contrived ways for you to finish fights using this signature melee attack. Those spiky panels are everywhere.

Hammer takedowns in Hitman: Blood Money

Hitman is, of course, all about killing people in horrible ways, but there is something especially mean about the hammer attack in Hitman: Blood Money. Perhaps its the directness of the attack, combined with the use of such an ordinary everyday tool, that makes it so effective. Agent 47's animations all express a psychopathic nonchalance that well befits a contract killer.

Video via Ubermants.

Transhuman takedowns in Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Jensen's melee attacks demand so much energy that you might not see all of his takedown animations. They are remarkably elaborate and inventive. The developers had to create a fighting style for a guy who can shoot blades out of his wrists and elbows—a futuristic martial art. Some of the moves are comedic—the double headbutt is great—but the one where Jensen unhinges his hand and spins it to throw his enemy is so crazy and alien it sells Jensen as the terrifying futuristic commando he's supposed to be.

Video via HomiesOfMars.

Teamwork takedowns in Batman: Arkham Knight

There is an outstanding level in Arkham Knight when Batman teams up with Robin to infiltrate a hideout. You can switch between characters, order each other about and join forces to beat up the Joker's goons. The Arkham games use Batman's brutish takedown animations to sell his powerful, direct method of fighting. The co-op takedowns take this to another level, contrasting Batman and Robin's styles in moments of superheroic teamwork. The Arkham games use slow motion to create snapshot moments that look like living comic book panels.

Video via Shad Karim.

Everything Ezio does in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Every weapon type in Brotherhood has its own set of complex multi-foe takedowns that Ezio executes with dazzling, horrifying efficiency. The Assassin's Creed games always feature spectacular choreography but Brotherhood's takedowns are particularly elegant, often using aggressor's momentum and weapons against other enemies. Ezio is skilled, but he is only human, so Brotherhood's combat relies on technical martial prowess rather than absurd feats of strength (see Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the Batman Arkham games for that). There is obviously a lot of martial arts expertise on the development team, and the resulting takedowns really sell the idea of the assassin as a master of all weapons. 

Video via YouNicIce.

Knife assassinations in Dishonored 2

Violence is a form of catharsis in a revenge fantasy, and Dishonored 2's gory knife finishers are a grisly vector for Corvo and Emily's fury. Dishonored's art style produces guards with of an almost caricature appearance. Their features are exaggerated and they are unusually expressive. This, combined with the close first-person perspective, makes these executions uncomfortably intimate. They are pretty graphic, but the violence of Dishonored 2's executions add extra weight to the lethal/nonlethal decisions at the heart of the game. 

Video via SwiftyLovesYou.

Decapitation in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Being and Orc in Shadow of Mordor has to be one of the worst jobs going in PC gaming. Talion is absolutely merciless. Shadow of Mordor's take on the Arkham knight combat system benefits from the addition of a very sharp sword and a dismemberment system. The flash of a blade, backed up by some excellent slashy sword noises, sells the execution. There are no Legolas-style flourishes here, only the straightforward aggression of a trained soldier looking for the fastest killing blow possible.

Video via YouNicIce.

Billie Lurk has played a prominent role throughout the mythos of Dishonored: She was present at the assassination of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, aided Daud throughout the Knife of Dunwall expansion, and even gets some work in Dishonored 2. For that game's expansion, the upcoming Death of the Outsider, she finally becomes the star, and so fittingly Bethesda has put out a new teaser revealing more about who she is and what she brings to the table. 

Spoilers ahead—Billie could quite easily end up dead at the end of Knife of Dunwall, but in the Dishonored canon she slips away to start a new, presumably quieter life. Obviously that doesn't go quite as planned, and she ends up rejoining her mentor-turned-adversary Daud for one last job. 

"When we find her in Death of the Outsider she's sort of getting it back together. She's finding purpose in her life again, and she's taking action," Arkane creative director Harvey Smith says in the video. "She's going to change things for the better."

In Death of the Outsider, Billie wields powers and gadgets that haven't previously been seen, including the Sliver of the Eye, a sort of supernatural monocle that presumably gives her special visual abilities. (It may also be a cool callback to a malevolent gem in Thief: The Dark Project called The Eye, although that's strictly speculation on my part.) Her arm is made of chunks of the Void—I'm sure that's an interesting story all by itself—and she packs a "Voltaic Gun," a sort of electrified wrist-bow. 

Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider comes out on September 15.