It's quite a rare occurrence for myself to abandon a challenge on the grounds of it being too difficult, but this is exactly what this first piece of DLC for Dishonored did to me.I initially attempted this around the middle of 2019, and got into a decent rhythm of working out how to achieve 3 star ratings within these trials. Then I hit a wall. The challenges got harder, I couldn't seem to work out how to collect 3 stars in some of them.
I then moved onto some of the miscellaneous trophies within the list, to then also find them too hard and that was it. I just stuck the game on the back burner and practically forgot about it.
My increasing pressure from within to clear my PS3 backlog has bought me back round, and whilst the experience of finishing this list wasn't actually as bad as I remember it being, there are strong caveats to that which will be explained, and this is still a great challenge for a variety of different reasons.
The Dunwall City Trials adds a series of 16 challenges, which are categorised into 4 groups; Combat, Stealth, Puzzle and Movement. There are 10 individual "Normal" trials, of which 6 contain an enhanced "Expert" version, just tweaked slightly to add different mechanics into the levels that heighten the challenge.
These challenges are cleverly designed, fun (for the most part) and will test your ability, especially when it comes to the trophies. The goal within each trial is to accumulate a points score, and this is converted into a star rating upon completing each trial, ranging from 1-3 stars. It's a fairly simple concept that translates well to the various game mechanics of Dishonored.
The pack adds 10 trophies, and most of them are made up of very specific challenges to complete within the trials themselves, some of which are going to be detailed shortly. Some of them are quite easy, and the others are much more challenging, leading to a very rollercoaster experience on the whole. There is also a small collectible venture to accomplish, along with a requirement to strive for perfection through obtaining 3 stars within every level;
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Void Star - You completed all Normal and Expert challenges with a 3-Stars rating.
By My Hand Alone - You made it to Wave 13 in Back Alley Brawl killing all combatants personally.
Headhunter - You completed Assassin's Run with 100% accuracy using only head shots.
Daredevil - In Bonfires, you performed all the special combination jumps in 1 round. |
The "Void Star" trophy, is the main goal within this pack, requiring you to beat all challenges with a 3-Stars rating. This includes the 10 "Normal" base challenges, as well as the 6 "Expert" variety challenges on top. Some of these challenges are easy to obtain 3 stars in, and some are much more challenging. The biggest nuance I had with this trophy is the fact that crucial elements of scoring are often left out from the scoring explanations within the trial briefing, and are just left down to the player to figure out themselves, or possibly just not mentioned.That might seem like an unreasonable gripe, but, to use an example;
The "Burglar" challenge, which has a "Normal" and "Expert" variant, requires you to gain access to a mansion and loot it without being caught. The primary objective is to steal 6 golden eggs across the 4 floors of the mansion, with the secondary objective to collect as much extra loot as possible in order to boost your score. This is explained well within the briefing, however, I reached a point where I could collect everything, never be spotted and reach the exit point and yet still not achieve the 3 star threshold of 30,000 points, and I never knew why. It didn't make any sense, until I discovered that, the golden eggs actually act as a multiplier, and you're meant to sweep through the whole house first to collect all 6 eggs, and then scour the house again to collect the loot because having all 6 eggs in possession gives greater multipliers for when you gather the extra loot.
Each floor contains 2 eggs, and will also contain a handful of loot, so it naturally made sense to sweep everything up 1 floor at a time, but apparently this isn't the case, and the briefing fails to point out the fact that you'll score better multipliers on additional loot by grabbing all 6 eggs first, which was a hugely frustrating revelation. I understand that I could have read up on that and saved alot of hassle, but I always like to give things an honest try before I turn to guides for assistance, and I feel like important details that could influence the scoring should be mentioned to the player if it means the difference between 2 and 3 stars on a trial.
Just to throw out another example, the "Bonfires" trial, which also has a "Normal" and "Expert" variant, requires you to move around a map at speed, using beams of light as checkpoints in order to earn points and extend the time, as explained within the scoring section. However, I always seemed to fall short of the required 30,000 points and was always left scratching my head as to how I could achieve the points threshold.
I read up and discovered that you can do "tricky jumps", which are certain combination jumps you can perform by moving through certain checkpoints in specific ways which will grant you more points in return, which is also left unexplained by the scoring brief.
They're not what I could consider minor complaints when these finer details become the difference between 2 and 3 stars, and even after knowing the key strategies within the examples provided, it was still tough to hit 30,000 points in certain trials, especially the "Expert" varieties.
Once, or even during, your quest for all 48 stars, you'll tackle the miscellaneous trophies, which are about as gruelling as a collection of miscellaneous trophies I've personally encountered from a piece of DLC ever.
The "By My Hand Alone" trophy, awarded for making it to Wave 13 in Back Alley Brawl killing all combatants personally, is the pick of these trophies. This requires you to kill 12 waves, totalling 53 enemies, and you have to be responsible for dealing the killing blow on all of them. It might not seem tough on face value, but the element of luck plays a huge role in this trophy. Each wave consists of 3 to 5 enemies, randomly selected from the games vast array of factions, but the catch to this trophy is, they will fight each other whilst you're trying to get through each wave.
There are around 6 factions that will all react to each other differently, and it's important to know the mechanics behind this because the spawning patterns are random, and not-predetermined, so the combination of enemies spawned for each round is never the same. There are certain consistencies, for example, round 8 will always contain all soliders who won't attack each other, and round 9 will always spawn a torturer, who is extremely powerful and will take out non-soldiers very quickly.
The spawn points within the map are all random, but it's so easy to become victim of really bad luck and have 2 enemies spawn directly next to each other who will instantly start fighting, and 1 of them will die before you even notice it because you were pre-occupied cleaning up the enemies on another part of the map.
There are other really cheap scenarios that can work against you that I encountered, such as having slow-motion kill animations interrupted by another enemy dealing a killing blow, enemies standing in the way of gunshots from soliders or bolts from asssassins, causing them to die and when the tallboys come into the fray from rounds 10-12, their missile projectile is devastating and will kill smaller enemies within seconds, which is simply just too quick to react to. It feels like you're really up against it, and this easily took me over 100 attempts at anywhere between 1-8 minutes per run.
Once you reach round 6, you will unlock the Bend Time ability, which will allow you to freeze the landscape at the beginning of each round and make it much easier to accumulate these kills at a fast enough rate to ensure better success in latter rounds when there are more enemies to dispose of. The Griff will also appear 3 times, in order to drop health and mana vials, both of which are critical to replenish yourself on, especially given the fact you'll need the mana to still use the Bend Time ability for when the tallboys show up.
You can persist and eventually get the luck you need to get through this challenge, but it'll more than likely require alot of perseverance. Being able to learn the intricate details of the map, such as spawning locations and the way factions interact with each other, does go a long way to help, and I did feel like I was progressing and getting closer each time, even if that did mean getting painfully close on a couple of occasions and still failing. This was the final trophy to seal this pack though, and I haven't felt this level of relief for a bronze DLC trophy in some time.
The "Headhunter" trophy, awarded for completing Assassin's Run with 100% accuracy using only head shots, isn't as bad as "By My hand Alone", but still caused similar frustrations through seemingly helpless circumstances.
You have to negotiate your way through a map, killing every enemy within a single head shot, of which there are 17 in total (Just to quickly note, that 17 total is up to the final room, which contains another 3 enemies, but you can glitch your way through this room to the exit point without needing to kill them and earn the trophy, which I shamelessly took advantage of).
Every enemy is an assassin, so it's important to make sure you take your time and remain unseen. Once they become aware of your presence, they're incredibly tough to put down with a single shot because they teleport, move at speed and their attack animations are incredibly hard to track. The moment you waste a single shot, the challenge is over and you'll have to restart.
There's a very specific segment where there are 2 enemies you have to shoot through a window at reasonable distance using free-aim. One of these enemies is patrolling around a circular staircase as a continuously moving target, where you also have to account for arrow drop when lining up your shot. This is where you'll mostly struggle for consistency, and I think I only ever nailed this shot twice. It's frustrating because the segment appears quite late on in the level, so you risk resetting a decent amount of progress if you fail.
There are other niggly elements to this level, such as getting spotted when clearing out a few of the early rooms with a small handful of assassins present and having to desperately fire out a shot before they kill you, and some questionable hit detection whilst lining up almost certainly guaranteed head shots which didn't turn out to be the case for some reason. It didn't take me over 100 attempts at least, but the runs here are generally a bit longer, which is the offset to the fact it didn't require as many attempts for this trophy.
The "Daredevil" trophy, awarded for performing all the special combination jumps in 1 round in Bonfires, is also equipped with it's own barriers to fulfilment. This was used as an above example to outline my nuances with the "Void Star" trophy, and I may have worked out an effective scoring strategy for this level had I attempted this trophy sooner, but naturally, the miscellaneous trophies come last when clearing up a DLC list, so what can you do?
Regardless, there are 6 combination jumps and they all award more points than traditional means of going through checkpoints. Whether you'll get the opportunity to perform all 6 jumps in 1 round again just comes down to mostly luck.
You'll need to have 6 specific beam of light spawn locations in order to fulfil each jump at least once, and this isn't always guaranteed. This is also probably the one trophy that requires a solid element of skill too, because you'll need to use the Blink ability accurately and move across the map very quickly. There were a handful of times where I managed to get the spawn of light I needed, but would then fail the jump, and if you're not flawless, you generally won't succeed. Luck does still play a massive part here because you need the spawns to be kind, and this is completely outside your control, but still having to properly execute the jumps is down to your own ability.
It does help that the first 2 beams of light are pre-determined, and this will give you 2 opportunities to begin with, because they're both in locations you need for 2 of the 6 jumps, but there's still potentially alot of trial and error here, and I would also estimate I took well over 100 attempts for this trophy too.
Overall, I'm extremely glad to finally have this one in the bag. It makes Dishonored a very credible 100% completion to have in the collection, though this doesn't technically take me to 100% just yet, but I don't forsee any issues with the other 2 DLC packs for this game, so I'm happy enough to make this declaration.
I can't really put a time estimate on this pack. This isn't tracked anywhere within the game's menus, but I spent enough time on it, both in terms of my first and second spell with the DLC, to suggest it isn't just a simple matter of a handful of hours. The patience levels required are as high as anything I've experienced with any game, and the desire to not give up will be incredibly important if you're looking to finish this game fully.
It does also make you raise the bar of your own skill levels, purely for the reason that you'll be completing these challenges in manners which Dishonored hasn't made you play through before. The main game is very much focused on stealth and critical thinking, and the Dunwall City Trials shift this dramatically, including challenges that require explosive actions, sleight of hand and fast reactions. It's a fine combination of perseverance and skill, and makes this DLC pack a worthy addition to the collection.
Once I'd finally finished up the Annihilation Map Pack back in January 2021, I felt like I was practically over the hill and Black Ops was, at last, merely a formality - A judgement I don't think I could have gotten more wrong.
