Dead by Daylight Chapter XVIII: A Binding of Kin Review (DLC, 2020)
The new Dead by Daylight DLC Chapter XVIII: A Binding of Kin had a rocky start. Last Tuesday, 1 December 2020, the DLC released with a laundry list of bugs and “known issues.” These included five out of the six new perks being broken in some way and the new killer having game breaking errors. Naturally, fans of the series (myself included) were not happy. Bugs are one thing; the vast majority of new features you pay for being unusable is another.
The reason this review is more delayed than usual is because I wanted to give Behaviour Interactive the opportunity to correct some of these mistakes before evaluating it. For me, I saw so much potential in the new DLC content that I did not want to be responsible for adding more negative stigma against the new characters. The game reached big with this chapter in an effort to change the meta in a positive way.
The new patch, unfortunately, did not fix everything. I didn’t expect it to. It did fix enough to be able to fairly evaluate the new killer and some of the perks. I’ll say it right now: do not buy this DLC unless you are interested in playing the Twins. Elodie, the new survivor, still has mostly broken perks. So do the Twins, but at least their core gameplay mechanics no longer result in being stuck in the map unable to move or play the game.
Let’s start with The Twins. Charlotte and Victor are conjoined twins from 17th Century France. Their mother was murdered by an angry mob who insisted they could only be the product of witchcraft. They spent the rest of their short lives hiding from society, narrowly escaping numerous attempts to murder them. Victor actually died from asphyxiation in a fire after one of these attacks, but not before they both had to murder for the first time. Charlotte had to survive by murdering anyone who attempted to take her life. One day, the fog of the Entity rolled in. Victor came back to life and ran in. Charlotte followed her brother and they became killers in the Entity’s realm.
The Twins are the first killer in Dead by Daylight that come with two simultaneously playable characters. As Charlotte, you are an M1 killer with average killer movement speed a (115%) and a nasty harvesting hook in your hand. Your special ability is to unleash Victor from your chest. As Victor, you are significantly faster (150% movement speed) and lunge at survivors. If you hit them when they’re healthy, you jump onto their back, limiting their actions unless they choose to remove Victor from their back; you default back to Charlotte to track them and put them in the dying state. If you hit them as Victor while they’re injured, they go into the dying state and you can keep tracking other survivors or choose to switch to Charlotte. Once you release Victor, you are free to switch back and forth between the Twins until you recall Victor, Victor automatically returns to you, or the survivors kick Victor and send him back to Charlotte.
There are more features to the power. Charlotte has a terror radius and benefits from the perks; Victor does not have a terror radius but doesn’t get to use the perks. Charlotte can see scratch marks; Victor sees bright puddles of blood. When Victor is released and you control Charlotte, you can see any survivors in Victor’s line of sight with Killer Instinct (that flashing red effect introduced with Legion). If Victor is on a survivor’s back, they cannot leave through the exit gate; if they remove Victor or Charlotte downs them, a short Blood Warden-like effect occurs and they cannot just crawl out. Victor can also trap a survivor in a locker for 10 seconds, giving Charlotte a short window to grab them from the locker.
If you’ve followed me here, on Twitch, or on YouTube, you know the kind of killer I like to play. I like being able to set up the map for my needs so I can get where I need to. I like Hag, Demogorgon, Trapper, and Plague; I also like Pig and get the same effect by strategically using her traps. The Twins are going to be one of my main killers in the game. I find them incredibly fun and the patch that came out this week fixed the broken core gameplay mechanics.
This is how I play them. I leave Charlotte at a central structure that survivors tend to be drawn to. This decreases the distance she needs to travel once I hop onto a survivor as Victor. I’ll then go track survivors down as Victor. He moves quickly enough that I don’t miss (or even use) a traditional tracking perk like Stridor, Whispers, Surveillance, or Tinkerer. I go for the lunge right away, then track down the survivor (or nearby survivor) as Charlotte to get as many people injured or in the dying state as I can at once. I repeat until the game is over.
There is a more toxic gameplay style that’s become the meta for this killer and I hate it. When you hook a survivor, Charlotte cannot be left standing right underneath the hook. However, once you clear that range, you can switch back to Victor and leave him directly under the hook. When someone goes for the save, you switch back to Victor and either trap the new survivor or tunnel the one who got saved. It’s awful, toxic, and Behaviour needs to address it sooner rather than later. There are no consequences for leaving Victor under the hook.
With all of that said, two of the three Twins’ perks are still broken.
Coup de Grâce gives you a token each time a generator is complete. This allows you to increase your next lunge attack by 40/50/60%. Right now, there is no visual feedback to indicate how far that lunge actually is, making it a pure guessing game. I have massive depth perception issues. I miss lunge attacks just because I cannot determine on some maps (or even with some killers) how far the default M1 attack or lunge is. I cannot use a perk that modifies that without the graphics actually matching what that looks like.
Hoarder could be a great tracking perk; too bad it’s still broken. Hoarder spawns two extra chests on the map. When survivors interact with any chest, you are supposed to receive a loud noise notification for four seconds. That’s not working at all. You’re also supposed to get one when survivors pick up an item within 32/48/64 meters of your location; that’s also not working at all. The perk is so broken that Behaviour decided to nerf one of the effects—decreasing the rarity of items found in chests—rather than patch it to match what the power was supposed to be on release day. It’s hard to believe they released a perk that couldn’t even function as described in the game.
The only working killer perk is the one I was most interested in anyway. Oppression is a generator regression perk and a tracking perk by chance. When you kick one generator, up to three other random generators also start regressing. If a survivor is working on one of those generators, they automatically receive a difficult skill check. If they fail the skill check, the generator blows up like it typically does. Considering Oppression will start launching a new skill check even if the survivors already have one on their UI, there’s a very good chance you’ll find out where someone is every 120/100/80 seconds you use the perk with its cooldown. I love this perk so much and want to use it on any high mobility killer from now on.
Elodie is the new survivor. Her backstory is connected to Felix, the survivor from the previous chapter. She was another one of the teens visiting Dyer Island during her parents’ business trip. While her, Felix, and the rest of the Pariahs explored the ruins on the island, she came across some strange marks in the wall. She felt compelled to touch them by a strange whisper, resulting in something entering this world and taking all of their parents away.
When Elodie grew up, she became obsessed with recovering the fractured memories she had of her childhood travelling around the world. She began hunting down artefacts for the mysterious Collector who said he’d give her access to money and resources that would help her on her quest to find her past. She successfully tracked down the remains of these infamous conjoined twins from the 17th century France, putting her in the sights of a mysterious cult called the Black Veil. She spent the rest of her time in our world avoiding their pursuit until she finally found the same force that took her parents 14 years before.
Elodie potentially has some great perks. All three of them were broken when the DLC launched.
Deception is still broken. This perk should allow you to interact with a Locker while sprinting to create a loud noise notification. You do not actually enter the locker. You are able to run for three seconds without leaving any scratch marks every 60/50/40 seconds. Right now, the UI does not work, the animation can impact the rushed locker animation, and the perk may not work at all if there is high latency to the server.
Power Struggle is also still broken. This is heartbreaking to me as it’s the perk I want to add to my survivor build so badly. Basically, when you’re picked up as survivor, you can throw a pallet on the killer so you can escape. You just need to wiggle to 35/30/25% and hope the killer goes through a pallet. Just imagine the joy of freeing yourself with a pallet drop, then resetting that pallet in the killer’s face with Any Means Necessary. That will be my new survivor win condition when it works.
Right now, you cannot use the perk if you are actively wiggling. You cannot use the perk if you stop wiggling at the threshold. Dropping the pallet on the killer may teleport them to the same side of the pallet as you, rendering this pretty worthless. And you can become stuck in the pallet if you use this power. It’s actually more harmful to run this perk than it is to not run it at this time and that’s a problem. You thought Hoarder was broken? Power Struggle actually puts you at a disadvantage with no benefits.
Appraisal has been fixed in the new patch, and the broken elements were inconveniences instead of disadvantages. You start the game with three tokens. When you arrive at an already opened chest, you can use a token to search for a new item. You also search 40/60/80% faster. There was an issue with the search mechanic lasting longer than it should, but now that it’s fixed, you are free to be the loot goblin you always dreamed of in Dead by Daylight.
I’ll reiterate what I said at the top of this review. If you’re interested in playing The Twins, pick up the DLC. Their gameplay is fixed now and they can be a lot of fun. If you’re not interested in the Twins, don’t bother. Four of the six new perks are still completely broken. If you don’t play killer, don’t bother buying this one at all. Looting an extra item from chests is not worth the cost of a full DLC.
Chapter XVIII: A Binding of Kin is available on PC, Xbox One/Series X/S, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch. If you still want to buy the DLC, you can get it for 10% off using my Humble Bundle link. Save some money on the broken merchandise.
