Of all the curious artifacts left in the wake of the Void, the most profound might be silence. For an entity born of a sacrificial ritual, a being who had witnessed millennia of human ambition, cruelty, and supplication from his otherworldly throne, the end was not a cataclysm but a cessation. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, the standalone capstone to Arkane Studios’ revered series, concludes not with a climactic battle of god-like proportions, but with a quiet, deeply personal choice. Its epilogue, and the musical score that carries it, achieves a rare quality in video game storytelling: a profound, melancholic, and ultimately hopeful resolution that recontextualizes the entire mythology it concludes. The score, a masterful collaboration between Daniel Licht and his protégé, Emily Schooley, does not merely accompany this finale; it is the very medium through which its complex emotions are translated and its philosophical weight is felt.
To understand the genius of the epilogue's music, one must first appreciate the journey to its threshold. Billie Lurk, a character reforged by loss and regret, is tasked with the ultimate assassination: not of a person, but of a concept. The Outsider, the enigmatic mark-bearer of power and observer of chaos, is revealed to be a trapped youth, a victim of ancient aristocrats who sacrificed him to create a conduit to the Void. This revelation shatters the foundational mythos of the series. He is not a capricious god but a prisoner, and his "death" is potentially an act of liberation. The score throughout the game reflects this duality, weaving Licht’s established motifs—the haunting whale calls, the industrial grit of Dunwall, the eerie music box melodies—with Schooley’s fresh, more intimate and sorrowful compositions. The music for the final mission, "The Ritual Hold," is a tense, pulsating piece, full of dread and determination. It builds the anticipation for a violent end.
But Arkane subverts this expectation. Confronting the Outsider in the crumbling, memory-laden shrine of his original sacrifice, the player is given a choice: use the ancient knife to end his existence, or use the twin-bladed weapon to free him, severing his connection to the Void and returning him to a mortal life, albeit one 4000 years removed from his own time. This moment of decision is stark, quiet, and devoid of manipulative musical cues. The ambient sounds of the Void—the whispering echoes, the distant, distorted groans—take precedence, emphasizing the gravity of a choice made in solitude.
The true power of the score reveals itself in the epilogue, a sequence that is almost entirely driven by its music. As Billie stands in the now-quiet Void, the instrument that once defined her arm—the sliver of the Outsider’s power—crumbles to dust. What follows is a montage, narrated by Billie, showing the consequences of her action.
If the player chooses to kill the Outsider, the epilogue music, "A Void in the Void," is a monument to absence. Licht and Schooley craft a piece that is funereal and vast. The familiar melodic lines associated with the Outsider are present but fragmented, decaying, and echoing into nothingness. The iconic whale song, once a symbol of the Void's mysterious life, now sounds like a lament, a dying call fading into eternal silence. The music doesn’t scream in agony; it breathes a heavy, world-weary sigh. It tells us that something immense is gone, and the universe is colder, emptier, and quieter for it. The Void remains, but it is now truly void of its consciousness, a neutral plane stripped of its enigmatic heart. The score makes us feel the weight of that cosmic loss, the solemnity of being the one who turned out the last light in a boundless room.
However, it is the "good" ending—freeing the Outsider—where the score achieves its most breathtaking quality. The track "A Future in the Sun" is arguably one of the finest pieces in the entire series' soundtrack. It begins with the same melancholic tones as its counterpart, acknowledging the end of an era. But then, a transformation occurs. A single, clear piano melody emerges, tender and hesitant yet unmistakably warm. It is a human melody. The industrial dissonance and eerie distortions that characterized the Void’s music for three games slowly recede, making way for strings that swell not with tragedy, but with a fragile, burgeoning hope.
This musical shift is a narrative revelation. We see the freed Outsider—now just a young man named Lonnie—standing on a sunny beach, feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin for the first time in millennia. He blinks, disoriented, free. The music here does not celebrate; it empathizes. It captures the overwhelming, terrifying, and beautiful sensation of a new beginning after an eternity of stagnation. The piano’s melody is simple, almost naive, reflecting the innocence that was stolen from him and now, impossibly, returned. The score connects his personal liberation to the world at large; with the Outsider's power dispersed, the age of marked assassins ends. Magic fades from the world, not with a bang, but with a gentle exhale.
The quality of this epilogue score is its profound understanding of nuance. It refuses to judge either choice as purely good or evil. One ending offers a somber, respectful closure; the other offers a bittersweet and hopeful new dawn. The music is the bridge that allows the player to feel the full emotional and philosophical depth of their decision. It translates the unspeakable—the death of a god, the birth of a man, the silencing of an ancient power—into a language of emotion that resonates long after the screen fades to black.
In the end, Death of the Outsider posits that the greatest power is not domination over the Void, but the agency to choose one’s own path and the paths of others. Daniel Licht’s final contribution to the series (a fitting epitaph for the late composer) and Emily Schooley’s exquisite work elevate this theme into an auditory experience. They prove that a score’s highest purpose is not just to set a mood, but to breathe soul into silence and meaning into resolution. The epilogue doesn’t just conclude Billie Lurk’s story or the tale of the Outsider; it provides a final, elegant key to understanding the entire Dishonored saga—a world where even in the darkest corners of empire and Void, redemption, and a future, are always possible, and always worth a beautiful song.
