Dishonored - The Knife of Dunwall Review Roundup #2

Here are a few more reviews of The Knife of Dunwall.

FrontTowardGamer, 8.5

As someone who loved the original Dishonored, I was mildly disappointed in The Knife of Dunwall DLC, much like an honor student would be mad at only getting a B+ on a test.  Not because The Knife of Dunwall was bad in any way; in fact, I wanted more.  If you enjoyed the original Dishonored, this is certainly a great excuse to jump back into Dunwall to sneak around looking for hidden loot and secluded pathways.  I could have gone through another 10 or so missions as Daud in his search for redemption for murdering the Empress.  But the way the game tells its limited story hurt the experience badly and the ending comes at you like a Mack truck.  You’re expecting there to be another chapter or two explaining  the new character that Daud meets along the way, but instead, the game just ends with a final cutscene after a mission where it seems that the story is just hitting its stride and rolls credits.

IncGamers, 9

So here’s your takeaway: if you liked Dishonored, then this is three more levels in which you can ply your stealthy trade, and all the usual disclaimers to that apply. If you just race through lopping off heads, you’ll probably be done in an hour or two and will likely wonder what all the fuss is about. But if you go through it twice, for Low Chaos and High Chaos (with multiple endings and an unlockable Master Assassin difficulty to sweeten your second time through); if you take the time to explore and bask in the world-building; if you go back and redo particular bits again and again to try them in different ways, then you’re likely talking somewhere between six to eight hours, and every single one of those hours is just as good as the base game. Knife of Dunwall is a brutal and bloody playground, and how happy you are to just play around with the mechanics and setpieces dictates how long you’ll spend in it.

Forbes, 8

Like the original game, Knife of Dunwall feels truncated. It’s the first half of a two-part story, and clips along too quickly for its own good before culminating in an entirely predictable and ultimately uninteresting plot twist. For all the joy of another visit to the grimy pseudo-Victorian mess that is Dunwall, I couldn’t help feeling a little lost and confused as the game rushed towards its conclusion. Taken on the strength of the first two levels, I’d call this a pitch-perfect pack of DLC, but it’s held back by the short-change in the third act and awkward plotting. When you’re promised three missions and you really only get two, you feel it.

Rock Paper Shotgun

I thought about spending half this piece talking about what Dishonored gets right compared to BioShock Infinite, but screw it. Whatever metatextuality the apologists want to use to excuse Binfinite’s unliving world and however much the absolutists want to dismiss the entire thing because they don’t like its focus on violence, it is a game based on shooting whereas Dishonored is a game based on navigation. They aren’t trying to do the same thing, so the comparison is inherently an artificial one. What I will say instead is that, going back to Dunwall after Columbia, Dishonored’s technical compromises on PC really show. Far too many low-res, blurry textures, a couple too many invisible barriers, no native support for anisotropic filtering or proper anti-aliasing… O, tragedy! I love the art approach as much as I ever did, but ultimately the game does look more dated than a 2012/13 PC game should. It’s a shame, because in concept and in art alike, this is a game that deserved the fanciest PC version possible, but once again those damnable consoles won out.