Playing A Game Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall PC

Not having played Dishonored in ... wow, a year and a half?, I've forgotten a great deal about the core game's extensive and somewhat meticulous lore. The Knife of Dunwall DLC, taking place in parallel to the main campaign, unfortunately did little to meaningfully refresh my memory. To be more precise: what's unfortunate is that, although this is technically a side-story, it is steeped deeply enough in Dishonored's world that its characters and world design fail to resonate without that context clearly in mind. After that, all that's left to the story is a fairly obvious teaser for the next DLC.

Fortunately, the absence of a compelling story doesn't bring Dishonored's excellent gameplay formulae down one bit. Although Knife of Dunwall is a pretty small slice of the game's design - with just a handful of levels and only a few collectible upgrades - there is still plenty of opportunity in here to sneak, fight, and assassinate. It certainly looks like the DLC's missions preserve the game's core strength of tackling objectives in multiple ways, although I can personally only vouch for the same sneak-and-neck-stab approach I took in the original. And that remains unbelievably fun, so, I'm pretty satisfied with it.

Knife of Dunwall fails to distinguish itself from the original game's story, but is still a fun mini-campaign thanks to Dishonored's fantastic gameplay.

Better than: BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 1
Not as good as: BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2
And though he starts to phone in his performance near the end: Michael Madsen plays a convincingly gruff mercenary kingpin while he's at it.

Progress: Finished with high chaos.

Rating: Good