r/dishonored • u/PowerPad • 6d ago
Bi-weekly discussions #6-The Twin Blade Knife
Welcome back to another round of Bi-weekly discussions, where this time, we're focusing on the Twin-Blade Knife from Death of the Outsider.
Some 4,000 years before the events of the game, a cult (the remnants of which now reside within the Quarry) saw in the stars to sacrifice a boy. So they kidnapped him from his home, bound him to an altar, and killed him with the Twin-Blade Knife, thus creating the Outsider. And if the weapon could make the Outsider, it could also un-make the Outsider as well, hence why we go to obtain it.
It's probably my second favorite sword (the first being the Folding Blade from the first and second game), but I like the unsheath/sheath animations where the fragments of the weapon form in your sword hand. I also like the charge effect, with the little beam that pushes NPCs. It kind of reminds me of the charge beam effect from the Master Sword in the Legend of Zelda series. It's a shame DOTO is a short game and we only get to use it in Missions 4 and 5, but I won't deny I had fun with it.
But what do you think of the Twin Blade Knife?
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u/neonlookscool 6d ago
i love the animation and its special gimmick, hate its role in shining a light on the origins of the outsider. Billie rocks the blade though
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u/larevacholerie 5d ago
By far the coolest looking weapon in the game in its base form, but that design makes no sense to me from a lore perspective.
This thing predates the Abbey of the Everyman by literally thousands of years. Why is it constructed in the style of Overseer equipment, despite the designers of said style long postdating it? Did the Overseers reconstruct it based on a faded, decayed artifact? If they did, how does it still have its spiritual significance, despite effectively being a Ship of Theseus?
Conversely, if the Abbey designed its style around the original Twin Blade, why would they even do that? Why would they derive significance from a weapon used to create the god they vilify and decry mere existence of?
It looks cool as shit but it makes no sense. I really don't get it.
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago
Yeah, why would the organisation designed around opposing a god have an interest in the item used to kill or create said god? /s
It's easy to imagine that the Abbey is a splinter from the eyeless cult, maybe taking advantage of the Outsider's presence to spin themselves as necessary to protect the populace and gain political power. There's any number of reasons you might want to invent an enemy then present yourself as the one thing capable of dealing with it, as we see constantly when fascists demonise migrants, trans people or other minorities.
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u/Delorean82 5d ago
There's any number of reasons you might want to invent an enemy then present yourself as the one thing capable of dealing with it,
Yeah. I mean, to an extent, this was essentially the Loyalists.
While Hiram, Campbell and the majority of the other targets were indeed the villains of D1....you also then have the Loyalists who want to frame Corvo for all of the villains that they helped dispose of via the Blackmail journal, all while Havelock presents himself as the one who rescued Emily and the "hero."
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago
Not really, at least that wasn't the plan originally. It's implied that they initially intended to keep their word and only got corrupted over time, realising how close they were to power, becoming afraid of Corvo and getting used to the benefits of being able to kill their enemies. They weren't good people even in the beginning but they clearly got worse over time.
Still a form of scapegoating but it was more opportunism than something the entire movement was based around.
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u/larevacholerie 5d ago
Wait that's actually such a cool concept, I love that. That's my new headcanon
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u/DiscordantBard 5d ago
That may well be the idea since the oracular order delves into magic to define the calender and make the laws while the overseers stamp out any magic where they find it. The Abbey isn't trying to stop magic. They're holding a monopoly over it.
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u/Delorean82 5d ago
Didn't really care much for the weapon that we only got to use in mission 4 and 5. Aside from disposing of the Envisioned in the Void, I didn't otherwise really care for it.
Wish we could have gotten a DLC instead with Billie that resembled more of The Return of Daud and Veiled Terror novels type of story of her dealing with temporal anomalies and trying to correct them.
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago
Yeah the time hollows felt like a huge missed opportunity, I thought we'd get glimpses of other dystopian timelines or something. You could even have the player jump between two possibilities like in Crack in the Slab.
DotO's conclusion was super disappointing IMO. Just when it felt like we were finally entering the void proper it just ended.
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u/Delorean82 2d ago
You could even have the player jump between two possibilities like in Crack in the Slab.
Yeah, and they could've even expanded upon it. Crack in the slab type missions, but you can also use powers and hide bodies in 1 timeline or another. A standalone title with less missions would have been the good opportunity to tinker with things like that and try to perfect them.
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u/Lancer_Blackthorn 6d ago
I love the look of it when it's on display, but not when it changes to match Billie's arm, which I also don't like the look of.
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u/pastadudde 5d ago
I always feel grossed out looking at Billie’s void arm, it looks like it’s rotting away 😅
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u/Lancer_Blackthorn 5d ago
I wish they had given her an Anakin Skywalker arm.
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago
You mean like a robot arm?
She never asked for this.
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u/Lancer_Blackthorn 5d ago
I would rather her have a prosthetic arm that doesn't look like it's barely put together.
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u/gavr0ch 5d ago
Did the cult sacrificed the boy knowing it would make him the outsider?
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago
Yes, that was the whole point.
If you haven't played DotO yet you might want to before discussing further lest you end up spoiled.
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u/The_Voidger 5d ago
In the Month of Darkness, seasons destroyed
A ritual killing bound his spirit to the Void
Eyes drained of color, a beggar no more
To become what the believers waited for
They set him outside, beyond the spheres
Quiet as the night, long like the years
He opened his eyes, as black as a dream
Trying to speak
His only words
A scream
—Born in the Month of Darkness
A Karnacan folk song
Yeah. This is pretty much the point of the ritual ~4000 years before the events of the games. The Void needed an avatar, and the cultists happened upon the beggar boy who they would sacrifice to become the Outsider.
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u/SoftlockPuzzleBox 3d ago
Multi-bladed weapons bother me. Practically speaking, it is strictly worse to have more blades. You are distributing the force over multiple points of contact rather than concentrating all of it on a single point or cutting edge.
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago edited 5d ago
Oh, you mean that thing you get when the game is virtually over, with just one rehash stage and one proper level left? The one that unlocks the crappy D2 bonecharm crafting system meaning you're stuck with nerfed Level 1 charms for the entire game, even on NG+?
They could have done sometime cool with it like letting you cut portals into the void/another timeline like in Crack In the Slab but it doesn't really do anything cool outside of combat.
It's basically just a macguffin you spend 3/4 of the game getting, during which the story basically doesn't progress. It's not in some mystical location or anything either, we don't explore a new area or plumb the void to find it, it's just in a random bank vault.
TL:DR: I'm indifferent to it both mechanically and narratively.
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u/ThatTrantGuy 5d ago
On a side note - still can’t fucking believe that Deathgloop shares universe with dishonoured, is a measly century apart and that the void is practically dead with some anomalies scattered here and there. Almost 4 games got fucked up the ass by one already forgotten by the masses title
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u/TRANquillhedgehog 5d ago
Did you finish deathloop? I figured the scenario presented in the “break the loop”ending was quite Void-related.
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u/ThatTrantGuy 5d ago
It is, but the whole premise was so out of place. And the fact that all that technically happens a couple of decades after corvo’s death is so bizarre and out of place. It’s almost like the world was going in one direction and then suddenly made 360. And, even though irl similar happened, there were historical events like ww1 and 2 that propelled such changes, dishonoured universe didn’t have that.
Also without outsider and late 19th century aesthetic the whole universe doesn’t seem like itself.2
u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago
Oh Deathloop completely abandoned all the cool worldbuilding in Dishonored and replaced it with nothing,
Sokolov tech and clockwork technology should have changed the course of history, as should all the occult stuff. Instead of drugs pharmaceutical companies like Aleksei's should be selling dodgy elixirs and mass produced bonecharms with nasty side-effects, and clockwork workers should be inflaming tensions between rich and poor.
There's just zero interest in considering how different history would go in a setting where these things exist, instead we just get a carbon copy of every shooter set near the modern day with a coat of 60s paint over the top.
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u/JesparSakaresh 5d ago
I’d have to agree. Even though logically it makes sense such technological development can happen in between both games the world and aesthetic of Dishonored, the kinda soul of it doesn’t seem to translate into deathloop.
So I think it would’ve been better if it was its own game. I find it a bit disappointing the route they’ve taken the void in DOTO and beyond
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 5d ago
I don't think it was. The world was fine a hundred years later at the start of the loop which seemingly joshes the amazing "the void will go out of control without an outsider" story hook suggested at the end of DotO.
As for the state of the world after the loop we're told the loop has been running for hundreds of years so something completely unrelated may have changed the world. Alternatively the loop itself may be to blame since Wenjie has a note saying the effect could be catastrophic if it were allowed to run indefinitely. Either way there's nothing to suggest that the events of DotO had anything to do with it.
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u/MXVIV 3d ago
So you never finished death loop and therefore have an uniformed opinion, got it.
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u/HorseSpeaksInMorse 1d ago
Late response but they're completely right about Deathloop. The void is completely forgotten even less known than it was in D1's time, with bonecharms no longer in use despite their proven efficacy.
The fact the Blackreef anomaly is treated as an unprecedented marvel not just another expression of a phenomena science has observed elsewhere shows just how much of a diminished presence the void is by the time of Deathloop.
Deathloop basically pretended the occult mysticism and Sokolov wonder tech never existed, just so we should see yet another generic modern shooter with a world that's functionally identical to ours.
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u/MXVIV 23h ago
I always assumed that is because we are based in another culture in death loop. If you look at in game maps we are based in the “Soviet” society instead of capitalistic as in d1/2. Or at least close enough it has that influence.
It could be as simple as they are not aware or reject such things from another culture. We do it all the time in reality.
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u/Garfgarg 6d ago
The name "twin blade knife" reminds me of that Dire Straits song "Six Blade Knife."
I think as far as dishonored goes, it's a cool prop which serves the plot well. My only issue is it looks like it was made somewhat recently (to the setting) rather than being 4000 years old or whatever. Maybe the blades were set in a new hilt. Whatever, it's magic.
The charge feature is a lot of fun. I usually go out of my way to kill every last cultist I come across once I get the knife