Dishonored DLC – Knife of Dunwall EP6: The Friendliest of Fire

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 10, 2017

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 48 comments


Link (YouTube)

Even if you’ve been skipping this series, you might want to watch the first ten minutes or so to see the friendly fire incident. It’s one of those wonderful, idiotic moments we couldn’t possibly plan for.

I’m actually surprised at just how much of this game I’ve forgotten. I haven’t really thought about Dishonored since I played it in 2012, and apparently it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I remember liking it at the time, but I’ve forgotten most of the characters, the missions, most of the locations, and a lot of the powers.

In any case, that was pretty fun. Next week we’ll be covering the final DLC, Brigmore Witches.

 


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48 thoughts on “Dishonored DLC – Knife of Dunwall EP6: The Friendliest of Fire

  1. guy says:

    I don’t think the sharing of the powers was ever meant to be a central thematic thing; the impression I got even in the base game was that the Outsider picked out a set of powers to hand out to people, and one of the powers people could get was giving lesser versions to other people. Daud and Delilah got that power, Granny Rags maybe got that power (she’s got some connection with the executioner, but might not be his power source) and no other characters are known to have it.

    That friendly fire incident is hilarious. It’s weirdly common in general, but I’ve never seen a mission target get shot like that before. I did have one incident where a guy killed the guy he was linked to with Emily’s power, though.

    Uh, Josh, you do remember that Overseer masks are bulletproof and dartproof, right?

  2. Christopher says:

    I’m amazed at that friendly fire incident. I figure somehow the assassin he freed must have attacked, right? Or did those guys literally just shoot one another down? There were a lot of dead bodies.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px_mOn_VQkI

    For the record, this is the high chaos boss. I’m normally personally peeved by how western AAA gaming have basically abandoned boss fights, but I think it fits in this context. If you’re going high chaos, you’re eager for a fight. If you’re sneaking around, killing as few people as possible? A boss fight probably is the last thing you’d want.

    1. Thomas says:

      I agree, it’s a nice solution.
      (EDIT: Do you get the opportunity to spare Billie even if you use violence against her? It looked like she went into a special animation at the end of the video)

      My guess is that they threw one of those bomb things?

      1. Benjamin Hilton says:

        As Campster said, it’s possible to take her out with tranq darts, but it takes like 8 of them.

        1. Thomas says:

          But even when you attack her lethally (like in the video), after her health hits a point she falls onto her knees and starts talking (but the player stabs her before she can finish). I’m curious if that’s meant to lead to a non-lethal option.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      In one of the earlier episodes,you can see that two people started fighting each other after one of them accidentally shot the other.I guess thats what happened here as well,only on a larger scale

      1. Christopher says:

        Schottlander on youtube said

        Um actually Billy Lurk spawns into that room to assist you in your assault on the Overseers. So yea good Job Billy.

        Makes sense to me, though it’s not as funny as all of them shooting each other by accident.

    3. Andy_Panthro says:

      I’d argue there’s still tons of boss fights in games, AAA or otherwise. A lot of the games I’ve played recently have had them: Deus Ex: MD, Dark Souls/Bloodborne, Resident Evil 7, XCOM2, MGSV,

      I still (generally speaking) hate them though, and I’d be much happier if more games had ways to avoid a boss. (obviously this wouldn’t work for certain games though!).

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Its not always necessary to avoid the boss fight though.In dark souls boss fights are there for a reason,and you picking the order you fight them in means that theres no need to avoid them.On the other hand,bosses in xcom dont really make sense.

        1. Mersadeon says:

          Wait, why do boss fights in Xcom make no sense? Xcom’s enemy structuring is very videogame-y, so I don’t think bosses stick out badly.

          (I do think they really screwed up with the ACTUAL boss fights they have, though, to be fair.)

      2. Christopher says:

        I can’t speak too much about those I haven’t played, but I feel like I remember Deus Ex MD having a single one(the final boss) and then nothing. I have no idea what XCOM has. The rest of those games are not western, so that checks out.

        I adore boss fights, but after I went from Nintendo consoles to Xbox 360, good bosses sort of dried up. You get a lot of games like Tomb Raider 2011, Saints Row 3 and 4, Half-Life 2, Assassin’s Creed 2 or Alan Wake 2: Games that either have zero or one boss fights, or very dull, QTE-like boss fights. Or alternatively they’re universally bad, like the Batman Arkham Asylum Bosses, Just Cause 2 or Deus Ex Human Revolution bosses. Bioware hasn’t made a single good boss fight I’ve played yet, the closest being something like the Shadow Broker. Were there even any bosses in the Fallout seasons? It’s no wonder they get a bad rep if the implementation of them is so sucky.

        It annoys me, because it’s not like they’ve been replaced with something equally as fun as a good, unique enemy. They just make a lot of action games where you shoot tons of mooks in waves. So there’s a lot of action-oriented gameplay and rising tension, but there’s no climax where all your skills are put to the test in a dramatic way, or an odd situation where you meet some weird unique thing, just throwing more dudes at you.

        The Souls series and Bloodborne are shining exceptions in that landscape, as are games like Dragon’s Dogma, Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, Tales of Vesperia or even Undertale, though that’s indie and western. They don’t always get it right, but sometimes they make Grigori.

        But yeah honestly, fuck the rock men in Metal Gear Solid V. That game phoned in its boss fights compared to earlier ones in the series and I only liked the final one. The open world nature of it is nice, though. There’s a bit where you’re assaulted by three snipers in a forest, but I just brought a tank with me and they couldn’t even touch me.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Play hollow knight .It will satisfy your hunger for nice boss battles.

          1. Christopher says:

            I’m very much looking forward to it still, but I’m gonna wait for the PS4 port they’ve hinted at.

        2. Andy_Panthro says:

          The reason I hate boss fights is exactly because they are sometimes shoe-horned in to games that don’t need them (like Deus Ex: HR for example).

          For games where they are appropriate, then by all means have a big bullet sponge enemy at the end of a level or whatever. But there are so many bad examples (or boring examples) that I’m always glad when a game does something different.

          XCOM and Shadowrun: Dragonfall have certain missions and end of game events which are the equivalent of boss fights, but they make it more thematically interesting and not just a “hit the weak spot” challenge.

          The Shinobi, Sonic, Streets of Rage era of boss fights is mostly gone because the types and genres of games that are popular have changed now. I don’t particularly miss that, but I can understand those who do.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            The dlc for human revolution had an appropriate boss fight.The guy wasnt a bullet sponge,but he had an impressive arsenal,was in a well defended spot,and had some mooks to assist him.Still,you could sneak around and take him out just like any other enemy,there were turrets around that you could hack to your side,or you could just rush in and fight as you please.Thats how boss battles should work in games like human revolution.

            1. Andy_Panthro says:

              Yeah, that’s how the main game should’ve been. I think the updated version changes things a bit, but I got through the boss fights in DX:HR with liberal use of the typhoon, which was almost a auto-win button.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                The only weapon I was constantly carrying with me was the rocket launcher for the boss fights.I never took the typhoon(until the very end,when I had everything else maxed out) because praxis is a more precious resource than money.

          2. Christopher says:

            I think there’s room for cool bosses in open-ended stealth games, mostly because that’s how the Metal Gear series has been playing it since forever. Some of the world’s most famous boss fights are in there, from Psycho Mantis to The End. And most of them work because you do have such a large variety of ways to deal with them. Not just lethally or non-lethally, but being able to kill them while they’re passive long before the boss fight, poisoning them with food, sabotage their weapons, do something meta or subversive or beat them at their own game. There’s a shootout where you destroy lights or parts of the environment to get a shot in or hide. Metal Gear Solid 4 is very inspiring when it comes to cyborg boss fights in particular, like the hide and seek boss who will camouflage herself as part of the environment or the sniper cyborg who’ll track you by your scent in the wind. And in addition to that, MGS3 and 4 added in “event” style bosses with way different gameplay that still felt good to play and looked cool(Shagohod, Ocelot’s final battle, the Metal Gear on Metal Gear fight).

            I realize this is the difference in our perspectives, though. For me, abandoning interesting scenarios like that and replacing them with a cutscene, a wave of mooks, a QTE or a dialogue that makes them shoot themselves in the head if you’ve got enough Paragon points is just a cop-out, cheating me out of fun gameplay in my game. I’d rather they improved on their bosses instead of dropping them. I know it’snot just me that’s a disappointment for.

            Even guys like Rutskarn or Shamus, who aren’t exactly boss fight affectionados as far as I know weren’t that stoked when Alduin just fizzed out at the end of Skyrim. Without the actions to back it up, words like “World-eater” means nothing, and it limits the story when what’s written doesn’t reflect how the game portrays it. A Saren who goes down from a single marksman volley isn’t exactly a riveting confrontation. It’s more like the Mysterio joke fight in Spider-Man 2.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Bypassing a boss by doing something tough early on is not a bad thing though.For example,finding out the proper lore that allowed you to bypass a fight with the master in fallout or to merge in the end of planescape were not that easy to find,so it is satisfying to see that exploration pay off like that.

            2. guy says:

              I agree that a well-handled bossfight can be really fun and would like more, but it’s dissatisfying when the devs just say “we need a bossfight here because this is a video game” and stick one in in the wrong context. Not every villain needs to be defeated in a bossfight; manipulators likely lack personal combat prowess and if they do have a bossfight it should involve lots of mooks and tricky abilities rather than turning into Bowser. And I find bypassing bossfights in dialogue, especially by calling on prior events, really satisfying.

              My personal pick for most egregious forced bossfight is the end of DA2, where you have a bossfight against Orsino and then against Meredith, and on the Mages path there’s no clear reason why Orsino does something desperate and stupid when you’re on his side and are winning. Meredith on the Templar side does just go completely and totally insane and the plot works, but structurally it feels like you should only get the bossfight against the leader of the opposite faction. Or maybe have Meredith for both and swap in a Templar for Orsino on the mages path.

              1. Christopher says:

                Tricky manipulators are really good hirers of mooks that are all muscle. One of the improvements from Asylum to City was that at least Penguin and Joker didn’t try to fight you themselves, they had hired more physically-oriented supervillains as bodyguards. That was a relief after Titaned-up Joker.

                I agree that there are contexts that are wrong for bosses, but I think a game should pay off its gameplay. If it’s all about talking and shooting, then there should be both a good action boss and a good conversational “boss”. I don’t personally agree that “I’m pretty nice, so I can just tell you you’re being controlled and you’ll shoot yourself” is satisfying. If we’re comparing that to an action boss, it would be a boss that’s instantly defeated if you’ve leveled up enough. But whatever, I can support the philosophy behind it, and I’m sure there are better games for that than ME1.

              2. Sleeping Dragon says:

                DA2 was overall abysmal with how they threw content at the player no matter what path the player was on and the endgame bosses were.

                I played DX:HR with commentary and in the Missing Link they actually discussed how the final encounter was a bossfight without the usual trappings. Like, they didn’t give the boss any special abilities, it was just a room with enemies you’ve encountered before just positioned in a sequence that made it more difficult to traverse.

                Edit: Ah, I see Daemian commented on Missing Link above.

          3. Viktor says:

            If you think gameplay should follow a classic narrative structure(introduction, rising action, climax, conclusion)*, which is common in games and seems to work well, then boss encounters make perfect sense. For the climax you need a serious threat, preferably with new elements to make it stand out, but building off the skills you’ve been using. Narratively, the climax should involve the villain that the game has been making you hate and either wrecking his goals or achieving yours. None of that says “fight”, but given how combat-oriented most games are, it’s hard not to use a fight to fulfill that role.

            *This holds true for individual levels, entire games, game series, or even just play sessions IMO. You shouldn’t shoehorn elements to make the story fit, but it’s a structure to keep in mind.

            1. Thomas says:

              Boss fights rarely climax the gameplay though. Typically your gameplay will be focussed on managing crowds of mooks, using the environment and your skills to dispatch them efficiently with your given set of tools.

              So a boss fight is a “Lol, now fight a single mook with a bunch of HP and special powers” non-sequitor. They’re rarely manage to capture the gameplay of playing through a normal level, so they’re not part of that narrative. They’re just stuck on.

              Stealth games are often about using a wide variety of tools in a creative fashion and hack ‘n slashes often focus on a couple of hard mooks, so those genres lends themselves better to bosses and tend to still have them.

              Plus, having rising to climax gameplay is only one form of narrative you can use nowadays. Titanfall 2’s “A different theme for every level” is something else and a lot of games care more about the context and atmosphere they’re creating. In those cases, boss fights can seem hokey and trite, taking you out of the world because they’re so artificial in gameplay tropes. Suddenly you’re not a happy go lucky treasure hunter, you a guy playing a bossfight in a game.

              I love good boss fights – Metal Gear Solid is one of my favourite franchises – but I’ve had plenty of gaming sessions ruined by a game that has boss fights it doesn’t need.

            2. Daemian Lucifer says:

              The climax doesnt have to be a single boss,it could be the whole last level.The boss battle does not have to be a single creature,it can be well placed mooks,or a tough puzzle,or an interesting conversation,etc.

        3. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Bioware hasn't made a single good boss fight I've played yet, the closest being something like the Shadow Broker.

          Awww,that means that you havent played hordes of the underdark.Thats a shame.Fighting that end devil was pretty rough.Especially if you pissed off your allies before getting into it.And there were so many ways to approach that one too,as well as the “skip it through dialogue” option.

          1. Andy_Panthro says:

            Your party turning on you is really annoying though (haven’t played HotU so can’t comment on that specifically).

            The worst example being NWN2, in which a bunch of terrible people tag along even if you don’t want them to, and then they turn on you in the final fight if you haven’t been nice enough to them.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              It makes sense in the underdark because you are the one who chooses who will follow you.So if they betray you in the end,its because you screwed up along the line.And there are multiple ways to prevent it.You can simply talk with them to bond,or you can build up your stats to persuade them through a skill check,or you can simply pour money into learning their true name and forcing them to obey you.

          2. Christopher says:

            I haven’t played any of their games before Jade Empire, I’m afraid.

            Thinking about it some more, the first dragon in Dragon Age Inquisition is a decent boss. They give it a really impressive arena, it looks quite good, and it spawns some unique mooks that haven’t been seen until then. Shame that they repeat it sans the area and the mooks several times later on, including for the semifinal and final boss fight. There are probably ten dragons in that game, and the first is the only one I especially liked fighting. But that’s mostly an issue with the combat system, at its core. If it was fun and deep, I would love ten more dragons. Instead I basically cheated my way through 6 of them with the Knight Enchantress barrier regeneration/sword-abilities and decided I’d had enough.

        4. Sleeping Dragon says:

          Basically the boss (or more specifically the climax) should be appropriate to the game’s theme and scale. When I play Fallout or DX I want a boss that is limited by the setting, maybe an encounter with a ton of mooks, or someone very heavily augmented. When I play Dark Souls, God of War or DMC I want over the top bosses with crazy moves and monsters the size of buildings, and I will fully admit I play this kind of games precisely for the fun of these fights.

          The problem is when the devs (or someone making decisions and ordering the devs around) mistake “the big boss” for the only way a game can have a climax.

  3. Benjamin Hilton says:

    I don’t think a lack of Daud in the sequel is about expensive voice actors. It’s simply that he could be dead. It would be hard to write him in as a major character, then also have an entire version of the story where he is not there. That being said I think it would have made for a really interesting story if a major part of it was Corvo or Emily having to work with the guy who killed the person they love. Especially if Daud is still looking for redemption.

    1. guy says:

      No, that’s definitely not why. Dishonored 2 continues from the Low Chaos endings of both the base game and the DLC; there’s quite a few characters who can die who show up in Dishonored 2.

      1. Benjamin Hilton says:

        Hmm. That is odd then.

      2. IFS says:

        I’ve read that the chaos level of Dishonored 1 is actually set to the chaos level you are at in Dishonored 2, since some comments and background stuff changes depending on that. For example high chaos Emily will remark that Corvo taught her to be so ruthless and leave no witnesses (I believe she also had different remarks regarding Sokolov’s past). I’m not sure how exactly it works though since I’ve still heard the same comments about the High Overseer being branded on High and Low chaos runs, but those are in an early mission so maybe it hadn’t taken effect yet.

        1. guy says:

          I do remember those comments, but the major events are all clearly from the low chaos run. There’s at least three highly critical NPCs in Dishonored 2 who can be killed in Dishonored 1 or its DLC, two of whom are mission targets.

          1. Sleeping Dragon says:

            I dunno. To me the difference with the mission targets always felt a bit empty whereas Daud feels like a more personal choice, I’d feel worse about that one being invalidated.

  4. Benjamin Hilton says:

    That looked like a headshot to me.

    I believe in the base game they set up that overseer’s masks protect them from sleep darts to the face.

    1. Decius says:

      Is that why he was targeting the other head?

  5. guy says:

    Regarding Delilah and the Overseers, they don’t get along in the slightest, but the Overseers are honestly kinda terrible at their job and Delilah can manipulate them into doing whatever. In High Chaos Emily Dishonored 2 The Abbey ultimately turns on Delilah and tries to storm the palace, and it goes humiliatingly badly and they don’t even make it into the courtyard. Which is way worse than an assault by people who should plausibly have the backing of the entire regular army and possess the ability to shut down their enemy’s magical powers should have gone.

    1. IFS says:

      iirc the reason the Overseer attack goes so badly is because the Witches also had a number of the Clockwork Soldiers with them which the Overseers music does not affect. I don’t think the regular army was on the side of the Overseers either, they’re just conspicuously absent in Dunwall after a point I guess, though given Delilah I would not be surprised if she had just dismissed the Guard or posted them elsewhere in favor of surrounding herself exclusively with her coven. Also the Overseers attack Delilah regardless of Chaos level.

      1. guy says:

        Given that post-Delilah Dunwall had gone more thoroughly to hell than it did during the Plague, I find it highly dubious that the Overseers couldn’t have rallied the army to their aid if they had realized that having firepower for storming a fortress would be a good idea. And the Clockworks are tough and all but they’re not really in mass production and a squad of regular soldiers can take one out, to say nothing of bringing the Tallboys out of storage.

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Chris,I think you have a hoarding problem when it comes to sleeping darts.

  7. SpammyV says:

    I still love Michael Madsen’s performance as Daud. Even if it’s probably another very flat reading, for me Madsen’s acting chops and gravelly voice elevate into being the voice of an older guy who has built his little shadow empire by cutting deals with boring-space-whale-Satan and killing a lot of people, realizing now that he’s just been slowly destroying his home while being blind to it, going so far as to personally be the one to send Dunwall collapsing in on itself. I always read Daud as being remorseful and fully aware that he deserved to die for what he’d done.

    Also I feel like someone mentioned this before in the comments, but I sorta wish now that the overlaying plot of Dishonored was the Outsider giving his powers to specific people to see those people fight for his amusement. He gave his mark to Daud, Delilah, and Corvo to set them on the path where they’d start fighting against each other. It would explain why this chaos trickster god apparently has enough caring for his chosen that he’d warn Daud about Delilah.

    1. guy says:

      I don’t think he was warning Daud against Delilah to actually protect Daud; as far as I can tell Delilah’s plan is mostly orthogonal to anything Daud is previously involved in. The Outsider is just smashing the two of them against each other for the hell of it. I’m pretty sure what he’s saying about time running out is actually alluding to Corvo.

      1. Thomas says:

        I was hoping the end of the DLC was going to tie Delilah (why, why why) into Corvo.

        That was what interested me about this LP. The Outsider was alluding to Delilah being involved with Daud’s death, but the audience already knows Corvo is the one who can kill him. I thought there was going to be a really neat twist explaining that

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          It’s pretty backwards actually. Basically if I remember correctly at the end of the DLC if Daud goes low chaos Corvo spares him, in high chaos he kills him. Which makes no sense causally and at best very little thematically.

      2. baseless_research says:

        It’s both. Time is running out as Corvo will have his reckoning with Daud, but Delilah’s scheme is also on a timer that Daud has to beat.

        But I figure that the outsider is mostly reminding Daud that a reckoning cannot be postponed indefinitely. Mostly.

        1. Ringwraith says:

          It also has the effect of saving Emily from being possessed by Delilah; maybe he didn’t want Corvo’s purpose to be all for naught either.

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