Dead by Daylight Chapter XXII Revealed: Portrait of a Murderer
Dead by Daylight has officially announced their next chapter for the popular 4v1 asymmetrical horror game. Chapter XXII: Portrait of a Murder will feature a new killer, a new survivor, and the first new map since RPD in the Resident Evil chapter.
I’m all in for the new killer based off what I saw on the PTB. Let me put it in perspective: it’s a rare day that Behaviour Interactive goes in within the first 48 hours and issues a hotfix to soften the effect of certain perks and powers in the game. It had to be done for The Artist.
The Artist is Carmina Mora, and she features the most tragic killer backstory since The Spirit. Essentially, Carmina was a Surrealist artist from Chile, known for her use of heavy black ink on large scale murals with political messages. She drew the attention of the wrong crowd and was punished Titus Andronicus-style. Her hands were cut off so she couldn’t paint, and her tongue was cut out so she couldn’t speak. A murder of crows that followed her throughout her life burst into the room and murdered her attackers and anyone else who had the misfortune of being trapped with her. When taken by the Entity, her hands were replaced with weapons made of ink and she gained the ability to call on the crows who saved her life.
The writing is exceptional on this chapter. It’s the best prose in the game since the All-Kill chapter and the best Gothic storytelling since The Binding of Kin. The writers outdid themselves on this lore and it should be celebrated.
The Artist fights with her crows. The power is called Birds of Torment. You press the power button to charge the ability, then use attack to summon Dire Crows. These ghostly crows float in place for a limited amount of time. When you activate the ability, they fly off in a straight line and travel through any obstacle. If they hit a survivor directly in their Flight Path (about 8 meters, so close range), the survivor is injured; if they come close to a survivor, they’re attacked by a Swarm. The Swarm reveals the aura of survivors until the survivors repel the crows or hop into a locker. Survivors also become injured if they run into a Dire Crow before it flies.
Do you see where this is going? The Artist can block loops with Dire Crows to guarantee a hit. Either the survivor has no choice but to run into the Crow or you launch the Crows while the survivor works through the loop. The Artist is a hard counter to Shack and that’s been a lot of fun to play with. I’m also all about trick shots, so I’m just wasting time in matches trying to snipe survivors from across the map like I used to try to jump over obstacles to attack with Victor.
The Artist brings in a new totem mechanic that Behaviour is still figuring out. Hex: Pentimento lets a killer create Rekindled Totems. These are totems that are rebuilt after a survivor cleansed them. It’s a cool mechanic that may be overtuned at the moment. Each Rekindled Totem creates a new effect, with the fifth totem actually blocking survivors from interacting with any totems. This is the perk that already got changed in the PTB to change which ability went with which number of Rekindled Totems. The abilities impact healing, repair, recovery, and gate opening speed in that order.
The new survivor is Jonah Vasquez. He’s a mathematical genius who has been tormented by a number puzzle his entire life. He winds up working for the CIA as a codebreaker, decoding secret messages in all sorts of forms. There are even hidden codes in horror podcasts (how did they find out?). Eventually, his life’s work brings him to a remote part of Chile where he discovers the true meaning of the code and is taken by the Entity.
His lore isn’t as strong as The Artist’s, but it is nice to see Behaviour try to dip into a bit of noire/thriller in a backstory. It reads like a treatment for a good spy film and that’s not a bad thing.
His Boon: Exponential perk is going to impact the meta of the game. This increases recovery speed and unlocks Self-Recovery. Slugging is a part of life in higher level play and Boon: Exponential is an Unbreakable you unlock for your entire team that can be used again and again. It’s No Mither’s greatest benefit without the permanently injured trade-off. This is huge. You’re going to see a lot of players that just won’t stay dead now and that’s going to be a lot of fun.
The new map is beautiful. It’s a Surrealist painting of a desert, with a graveyard and a staggering tower in the center. Books and crows fly overhead. Proportions are all wrong and the ground is filled with various elevation changes that just don’t make sense. It’s beautiful and terrifying and clearly meant to be one of The Artist’s own paintings brought to life by the Entity. The tower is one of the most impressive bits of map design we’ve ever seen in the game.
We do not have an exact release date for Chapter XXII: Portrait of a Murderer, but we do know that it is coming out this month. The PTB just started on PC Tuesday, 9 November, so there’s plenty of time to hop in and try out all the new mechanics for yourself before the DLC launches.
Dead by Daylight is available on PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch.