Billie's 'displace' ability sounds awesome in Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider

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"She both is in one state and in another at the same time."

If any one character of the Dishonored series deserved a standalone expansion, it's the uber-cool ex-Whalers lieutenant Billie Lurk. Revealed during Bethesda's E3 conference on Sunday, Death of the Outsider sees Lurk partner with former comrade-in-chief Daud—"The Knife of Dunwall"—as they plot to assassinate the titular black-eyed supernatural being. 

Naturally, this means new weapons, gadgets and, most interestingly, new extraordinary powers. In conversation with IGN, Arkane's Harvey Smith discussed Billie's so-called 'displace' ability, which appears to be her idiosyncratic take on the game's iconic blink maneuver, as a move that lets her move between and through walls. 

"It's interesting strategically, these games are stealth games or high in combat games but of course you can approach everything in many different ways. Billie's main mobility power is called 'displace'," says Smith. "If you read the comics there's a hint that what happens in Dishonored 2 does something around her in time. Like, she both is in one state and in another at the same time, which causes kind of a distortion around her. 

"Displace is a power where she can imagine being where she's at now or somewhere else and then choose to go there. What that means as a player is that you leave a marker in the world and then you can go about your business and do whatever you want and at any point switch with that marker."

Smith then explains that's exactly what Billie is up to in the trailer below, where she's placed a marker in the hallway, awaits her foe to turn around and then displaces to that location.

Interestingly, Smith also says Billie hasn't been marked by The Outsider and that her powers come courtesy of artefacts, an eye-mounted Eye of the Dead God contraption, a "void-esque" arm that's made up of pieces of the void, and the knife that was originally used to sacrifice The Outsider. 

What's more, Smith says that upon completing Death of the Outsider players stand to enter something called "original game plus" whereby Billie is equipped with Emily and Corvo's skillset from the base game. 

Here's IGN's interview with Harvey Smith in full:

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Joe Donnelly
Deputy Editor, PC Gaming Show