Bringing in Michael Madsen to voice the assassin Daud was a stroke of genius from developer Arkane Studios for their Dishonored DLC story wrap-ups. His deep, raspy voice delivers a lifetime of treachery and deceit; of countless life or death confrontations and of decisions directed by necessity over honour or pride. Daud’s journey has been an interesting one from a story perspective and this final chapter delivers another breakthrough in narrative for post-release content and stands as a solid reason the DLC model should be respected as one that can deliver on expanded experiences like this.

If you thoroughly enjoyed the story in Dishonored, it’s well worth your investment to look at these content packs. If you haven’t done so yet, don’t worry because there are no spoilers here. Rather, I’m going to give you a sense of what to expect -- from a gameplay level -- with the last pack: The Brigmore Witches, which while still being utterly familiar for seasoned Dishonored players, offers enough new content to continue to immerse yourself in the city of Dunwall.



One area The Brigmore Witches feels more expansive is in the exploratory area. At one point you’re going to be infiltrating a prison with every cell locked. Within each cell, however, is the potential for goodies such as new blueprints to upgrade your equipment, or runes, bone charms and more. There’s also just the exciting idea of actually getting into areas you’re not supposed to while remaining out-of-sight. If you’re not careful though other inmates will alert guards to your presence and I’m not too proud to say I had to fend for my life on a number of different occasions. There was something about this particular DLC early on that felt a bit more challenging than what we’ve come to expect -- whether that’s a result of tweaked AI or new areas switching up playstyles though is something I couldn’t really discern in my two-odd hours with the content.

The game still looks amazing as well, and with each new slice of content the art team seems to liven the dank world or Dunwall just that little bit more. I was playing the game on PC, so it looked that little bit better, but Dishonored is a game that’s not necessarily about raw power, but about art-direction and with The Brigmore Witches, I feel they’ve really outdone themselves. It’ll be interesting to see what can be done with the Dishonored universe now that this series of DLC is done and, presumably, the full tale of Dishonored has come full circle. There’s a lot of potential here and news of a sequel is nice, but I’d be looking at transmedia if I were Bethesda -- comics, books, even TV... it’s just so ripe.

I only checked out about a third of the overall campaign, which should last around four hours of game time for completionists or the average gamer. There’s obviously a lot to explore here, so I was happy to put the content down and wait for a review code proper, which you’ll be seeing not too long after release. But as a primer, let me tell you that this last slice of content is bittersweet for its rich expansion of the game-world, that ultimately serves as the game’s full stop.

We’ll have a full review of Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches soon. You’ll be able to pick it up Tuesday night for around $10 on all platforms it releases on, also check out a host of screens for the content via the thumbnails below.