I'm a consumer of single-player DLC, especially when it's story-driven. And I must say, I've been disappointed with a lof of recent SP DLC for a lot of games. DmC comes to mind with Vergil's Downfall, Dead Space 3 too, and recently MGRising with Jetstream Sam's chapter. All of these DLC's cost about 10$ and roughly takes an hour or two to beat, with a lot of re-used environments. Even though playing around with Vergil and Sam was cool, you visit mostly re-hashed levels with the same old stuff. And in the end, I didn't felt very satisfied with either. Same for Dead Space 3.

When Knife of Dunwall was announced, I almost decided to skip it. Almost. And glad was I wrong to give it a chance. Not only do you get three fully-fledged missions, two of which are huge and open-ended, you also get new powers and much-needed stun traps and grenades. Daud comes fully voiced and fully loaded with his own back-stab animations. The whale factory is such a gorgeous level, if a bit gruesome. You'll get the same kind of objectives you've had before, tons of different paths, hidden stuff and of course, alternate decisions on how to proceed.

I'm roughly 4 hours in, and I'll probably beat it in two hours. If you like to plan, to stealth around and whatnot, you'll definitely get your money's worth. This DLC really, really ties to the main campaign and nothing feels out of place. I can't say enough how happy I am to visit new environments, especially when most developers prefer to re-use the same levels for their DLC content.

To those in doubt; don't. It's almost a small expansion pack. Almost. And for ten bucks, you'll get a great set of levels. Alongside Alan Wake's DLC, this has to be the better piece of DLC I've payed for in a long time.

Hmm... does the gameplay and the story still clash? And by that I mean "does the story still encourage no-kill runs while the gameplay still centers around coming up with fancy ways to kill dudes"?

I know you said there are some new ways to stun people but is that just one or two things or is there something equivalent in awesomeness to stop time-dodge bullet-possess dude-put him in front of missile?

No thanks, I'm good.

The story and gameplay still encourage you to be stealthy, yeah. I get what you mean. There new powers revolve around summoning assassins and a revamped blink. Beefing up your assassin can be quite fun to watch, especially at higher levels. Unfortunately, other than the new gadgetry and the powers I mentioned, there isn't anything more awesome than the time-stop and bullet in the face.

@believer258: They've added stun mines, which give you another avenue for doing non-lethal runs; you could do everything you could with the shrapnel mines from the original, such as attaching them to rats or laying one down in front a purposefully placed dead body. You've also got a sort of flashbang/smoke grenade which gives you another tactic when escaping from guards.

I agree it's quite good. I still haven't beaten it but they did a good job of crafting completely new environments and story. Since you only get a handful of new areas to play in (which still take quite a while to get through) the DLC packs each of these areas with a lot more side objectives than the core game ever did. It's nice because it feels like the game is a lot less linear, even though you still probably want to be a stealth ninja rather than a bloodthirsty brawler.

What I didn't quite like was the fact that you start out bare with no upgrades. It's DLC after all and after beating the main campaign it's a bit jarring being forced back into level 1 Blink and basically nothing else. From the storyline perspective it also hardly makes any sense as Daud has been an assassin imbued with the powers of the Outsider for much longer than Corvo so it would make perfect sense to grant the player all his abilities from the start of the DLC.

The powers are also a bit of a miss. You lose a few very useful ones that Corvo had without any similar replacements - no rat plague, no windblast and worst of all no possession. In turn you get a few powers that don't seem especially useful. The ability to summon an assassin is neat but at level 1 even if directed at an unsuspecting guard the assassin will engage him in a sword duel rather than quietly slitting his throat which would have been extremely useful for taking out two guards at the same time. Maybe the higher level master assassin upgrade does it but I haven't invested the points to find out. Although all that can be forgiven because the new blink will freeze time when you initiate it. This is something I wished the original game had as it now makes daring blink jumps a calculated move rather than a frenzy of loading up saves after failed attempts.

Like I said I haven't finished it yet, but I've been playing in brand new environments for 5.5 hours according to Steam and thats just the first two missions. For $10 that is some great value - similar to how good the Missing Link DLC was for Deus Ex.

It's a pretty great piece of DLC, though it is only 3 missions. I think my favorite part, aside from blink freezing time, is the execution animation that happens if you have the wristbow equipped.

I already did. Gonna play it tomorrow.

Dishonored was one of the best games last year, fuck the haters. I hope the next DLC comes in a timely fashion, since this one seems to end on a cliffhanger.

Yeah Daud overall seems to be a much cooler character than Corvo. Everyone knows you're the Master Assassin. Somehow being Royal Protector didn't seem as cool, especially as you completely fail in that duty while Daud succeeds in his.

@humanity: I need a copy of the original to play this right? I sold mine last year, but might buy it back for this.

@leebmx: Quite right, you need the original to play. I was actually in quite a fix recently as Steam wasn't recognizing my copy and in turn wouldn't let me purchase the DLC. Well I sent them an e-mail, to which they never replied, but I was eventually able to buy the DLC so maybe someone did something.

It got me thinking that more DLC should be stand alone as opposed to requiring the base game. I suppose they require the original to keep people from selling the game after beating it - but as evidenced by yourself that isn't working out quite as well.

Yes I was super skint then whereas now I have a job (first pay on thurs - hurray!) so I would probably not have sold it but it was autumn and there were loads of new releases I wanted to try and play with hardly any money. Its hard for a single player game to keep itself out of the 2nd hand store just through DLC alone especially when you never know what is coming or how good it is going to be. If more games concentrated on putting out 2 or maybe even 1 large size releases rather than 4 or 5 smaller ones I would be much more inclined to look out for them and keep my games. I don't mind paying more for the DLC I just like larger, more ambitious experiences to get engrossed in.

I'd be down for more Dishonored, but I traded it in last year :(

@klei: Should I finish playing through the main game before I play this DLC? I am only a few hours into the main story right now.

It's a paralleled story. You can play it right now if you want.

That means I would have to purchase Dishonored first and I don't think that's going to happen.

I liked this particular DLC quite a lot. Took me about 4-5 hours to play through it. Quite looking forward to part 2 of the story (upcoming DLC) where Dauds story comes to its conclusion.

Played again as a low chaos character. Killed only one person in my playthrough.

@jewunit: Cool! Thanks for the clarification. I may pick this DLC up with Fire Pro Wrestling Returns this week.

Wait, I beat Dishonored and started the DLC, you're saying Corvo and Daud's paths don't come together at the end of this DLC? That is really disappointing.

I literally just beat Dishonored, I thought it was a great game. I was really kind of surprised it ended so abruptly. I wanted more. I will definitely check this DLC out next weekend when I have some free time. I just hope I won't feel bad killing people. The only part of Dishonored that I didn't enjoy was the feeling of guilt when I killed someone. The game really seemed to want to me use stealth and non-lethal take downs, but the death animations and incineration were just too cool to pass up. :)

I stopped playing Dishonored about halfway through, RL intruded and I forgot. When this DLC came out I got excited for it again, and yes, it's pretty awesome (esp. the first two levels).

The ending is completely different depending on what level of chaos you finished at — I killed no one, and got a different ending than I'd seen online. Since then I started the main story over and am almost finished with it.

Oh, OH. That's high praise because I loved Alan Wake's DLC (they're pretty much required) even if they reused a few assets.

I still need to finish the main campaign, so thanks for the recommendation.

I don't know... I feel like I got my fill of Dishonored after finishing the game. It doesn't matter how good the DLC is when I don't really want to go back into that world.

Pausing the game to Blink sounds awesome, and I've heard good things about the story, but I found the stealth in Dishonored to be frustrating and not great at giving you good feedback on when you get seen, which led to me not getting the achievement for not being detected because I didn't know I had been until the status screen at the end.

The combat was also pretty annoying, not bad, but something about it didn't feel right.

Only part about the combat I didn't like was when you were in the middle of a sword fight and someone pulled out a gun because there was no way to "block" that apart from slowing or stopping time. The actual sword fighting was done pretty well I thought.

I really do want to play this DLC but haven't had the time lately with other games. Dishonored was my favorite game of last year and one of my favorites from this gen and I will certainly be buying it. But I think by the time I have time to play it, it'll be on sale.