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presiding · 4 months

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a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

#are you a dh1 enjoyer but less so a dh2 enjoyer?#have you ever wondered why you don't love dh2 as much?#here's 1.8k words that might articulate some of that.#light reading.i guess #this essay wasn't meant to cover everything - just the core of the plot and why its important to integrate story & gameplay #and to compare dh1 & 2 #dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonored 2 spoilers #emily kaldwin #daud #corvo attano #this week i'm cracking things out of my drafts!#<333 don't get me started on doto.#some of this might be contentious. idk i try to live in a bubble #the meme version was easier to read i know i know #this essay would have been a lot longer had i integrated more references from the game #i know a few others have said this but imagine if they went a different way with emily #like she realises shes not fit for the job and maybe no one is and says fuck the system cause shes got a rebellious streak #and does a kickflip on the monarchy and institutes something else. i dont even care what. make it funny #and then for the sake of continuing the trend we spend dishonored 3 undoing the horrible leadership emily instates <3 #i think they really loved emily as a character. i FEEL the love i believe its there.but didn't think enough bout how she would be perceived #there's a good couple comments from baldur's gate 3 devs about how much work goes into writing women to account for sexism #there's more that i could have added to this essay but for brevity's (ha.ha) sake i'll leave it there #other textposts about this game that i see around tend to romanticise dishonoreds story a little more

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icedjuiceboxes · 6 months

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New dishonored au bc I'm insane okay:

Billie being DH1!Emily royal protector

So.

While heirs to the throne get to choose their royal protector at the age 11, Jessamine and Corvo decides to let Emily choose her a year early. Especially with Corvo about to take his trip across with the Isles to find aid for the plague.

Hiram Burrows overhears this. He drags Billie lurk into the Tower and fabricates all the documents that says shes been with the watch for some time. Well accomplished- even saved the high overseer Campbell's life at some point. It's perfect- bring in Daud's right hand man to do recon right at the source in plain sight.

Corvo and Jess are none the wiser- Corvo double checks Billie's background, but finds little to argue with when he has testimonials from Burrows and Campbell. She's not a bad match, young, full of energy. can keep up with Emily.

Emily was tempted to argue with the choice, especially since she didn't get to choose, and worse of all Burrows picked Billie- a man Emily hates with all the fury a ten y/o could muster. She was tempted- but excitement won over being petty. And it did helped Billie mindlessly made a comment about Burrows, throwing him under the bus in favor to win Emily over.

So that was it. Billie joined Emily's side, and by extension, the empress' side as well while Corvo traveled the isles.

Emily showed Billie all the best hiding spots in the Tower, and all the ways she sneaks away to get away from lessons. When Billie wasn't needed, she reported back to Daud, every little detail the young empress was so kind to share.

At some point Delilah meets with Billie, knowing what she plans to do. They can all get what they want. Billie just needs to bring Emily to her after the assassination.

Despite learning to enjoy Emily's company and the life the Tower brought, Billie went through with it.

That day. Corvo came back early. It didn't stop them though. It was going to happened. Billie stood with the three in the gazebo, watching the waterlock. Emily was the first to point out the approaching whalers.

When they appeared, Corvo was quick to draw his sword. Billie simply stood in front of Jess and Emily, it wasn't time to drop the facade. Corvo was a force to be reckoned with, he didn't need Billie's help regardless.

When Daud showed up though. It was over. Time to drop the act. Thomas held Corvo in the air. Daud came face to face with her, the Empress behind her and Emily hugging her legs.

She stepped aside, taking Emily with her. As Daud took Jess by her neck, Billie was just barely quick enough to cover Emily's eyes, she being frozen in a state of fear and shock. As Jessamine's body fell to the floor, Billie's hand slipped off Emily's face. Emily stared up at her, emotionless and barely just choked out "You lied." Emily was spared the sight, but she wasn't oblivious to the sounds to put together what conspired.

Billie barely just managed to transverse in time with Thomas and Daud as Emily said those words.

Billie was still in charge of Emily after she and the whalers returned to HQ. Emily fought Billie, and had punch hard enough to leave bruises, before breaking down and screaming and crying and pleading for answers on Billie's betrayal. And then she fell asleep, exhausted. Billie had a choice. She could hand over Emily to the Pendletons, and follow Burrows plan. Or hand her over to Delilah, who powers Billie been borrowing over the last few months.

In the dead of the night. Billie left with Emily for the Brigmore Manor.

Long story short Delilah was insane, and Billie had to get Emily out. She regretted choosing Delilah, not that the Pendletons was a much better choice. She was stuck in between a rock and a hard place.

So there was Billie Lurk alone with Emily. Ally to no one. Burned every bridge she had. The whalers. The coven. The royal family.

Emily had no choice but to go wherever Billie took her, up against the whole entire city of dunwal.

#dishonored #emily kaldwin #billie lurk #BET YOUR ASS THIS WILL BE A COMIC #JUST GIVE ME SOME TIME #I AM NORMAL. ABOUT THIS. AU.#PLEASE SOMEONE SCREAM ABOUT THIS AU WITH ME #GET IN MY DMS #PLEASE #My ramblings #rambles #my dh rambles

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no-light-left-on · 3 months

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So the Death of the Outsider lacks a chaos system and it makes perfect sense

(I recommend reading my other post on how chaos works in the DH universe first but it is not mandatory.)

The point of the chaos system is, at its core, a reflection of how a world already at its tipping point reacts to the player's actions: Dunwall ridden by the plague and oppressed by the Lord Regent’s rule, Karnaca bloodfly-bitten and slowly torn to shreds by the Duke with people scared after the recent coup.

Billie, however, simply exists as a person once the world has been tipped towards the better, Emily having reclaimed her throne and Karnaca slowly but surely steering towards better times. Her quest is not motivated by politics or by a falling empire. It is entirely personal to her, Daud, and the Outsider.

Billie is an ex-assassin. She puts the world on a tipping point, but she does not decide whether the world rights itself or comes crashing over the edge. She takes jobs from the black market, sometimes killing people for money, because that is all it is to her - a job. And while she may kill innocent people while at it, there is no more terror it can bring atop the cruel rule of the Duke and people dying in the mines. In the end, she will disappear into the shadows. It is just another mugging, another unfortunate murder of a father coming home in the evening. Nothing more, nothing less. No responsibility to take over it after.

She is dedicated to her quest, and that quest is not even hers - it is Daud's, and she is just going along with it out of maybe guilt, maybe old times' sake. She is not even that interested in killing the Outsider herself, has very little stakes in it, and decides to go through with it because it's what Daud wanted. There is no world that can react to her because she is the world that is reacting, in a sense, to Daud's wishes and the Outsider's subtle interventions.

Compared to, say, DH2 which takes place months before the events of DotO, Billie has very little to lose, no place to reclaim, no world to save. The results of her actions, no matter what they might be, won't change how the world is at the end of the game. Emily can choose whether a brilliant doctor lives so she can save lives, she decides whether the Howlers or the Overseers take over Batista, dictates who rules and with how much power, with what level of cruelty. Billie is killing a god, no matter what it takes, and there is little need for consideration of how this result is achieved.

The game does not even have targets, save for one, the Outsider himself. All the missions are about gathering intel and preparing for the job. The structure of the whole game is very different to serve the purpose of the plot and honestly it's a clever choice so that the focus remains on the one thing only - killing the Outsider.

One thing I did not mention in relation to chaos in my other post is that the chaos also influences the Outsider and his speeches at the shrines. Which, fair enough, it is just one more change in dialogue among many. But in the case of DotO, he is directly involved. He is not an observer anymore. He has real reason to be emotionally invested in what is happening and what Billie is doing. He needs to bait her into murder, or change her mind to spare him and free him from his eternal imprisonment. There can't be a change from interest to cynicism as Billie kills more people to get to him, because in the end, he is the target. He wants out of the Void by any means necessary, which means he has to be fully invested at all times. He has no reason to suddenly go soft and make subtle comments. He comes across as so much more malicious in this game, maiming Billie and being so incredibly cruel when he tells her that Daud has passed while she was away. All this because he can't risk her changing her mind, thinking to herself, “Hey, maybe he sucks but he’s not That Bad” and then turning on her heel to leave. He is trying to influence Billie instead, which he didn’t do with his Marked (unless you count his mentions of multiple possible outcomes as influencing, or him telling Daud about Delilah).

So no, the world won't change for you, the player. It won't change because you chose not to kill anyone, not even the contract targets, because if you don't do the dirty work, someone else will. And the Outsider cannot change either, because Billie is not changing the fate of an empire. She is changing the fate of Him, personally, and he cannot afford to let her choose the only bad choice - indifference. So there is no point in a chaos at all.

No matter what Billie does in the end, the outcome will be the same - the Void will change. sShe will change the universe as they know it, but no matter how she goes about it, the change will come. She is not faced with a question of what she wants the world to be. She was guided there by others, expected to do one thing - kill a god. The world has set her up, and now she has to react.

And so she comes to the Void and is met with the only choice that will matter: Is she going to show mercy, or remain the same?

#dishonored #doto #death of the outsider #daud #the outsider #billie lurk #another post on 'people dont understand chaos in these games and I am Upset about it'#while checking the wiki on the missions in doto so I wasnt actually forgetting anything I found out that someone got hired over doing #analysis of the game on twitter and harvey noticed #if this is all somehow correct and harvey sees it hi hello let me write dh3 I promise I wont make it into a dating sim #these are not tags I should be leaving under this post #anyways uh yeah there you go #dh #I should write that one post talking about how I interpret the chaos system in each game separately #also read the first essay. I am begging. its good #essays tag

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loveofdetail · 1 year

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in my feelings about the knife of dunwall and how from the perspective of his men daud must seem to be going off the fucking deep end. they all know he made a mistake when he killed jessamine and now the city is dying around them. they know corvo's escaped, corvo knows what he did, corvo's coming for him, maybe for all of them. and what is he doing? obsessing over some painter, wasting time investigating slaughterhouses based on the name of one ship, looking into barrister timsh's love affairs... he's caught flat-footed when the overseers come to slaughter them and only barely manages to rout them. no wonder billie decided enough was enough! no wonder the others stood back and watched them duel.

#dishonored #daud #shhhhh i know the duel is probably non-canon but it is canon to ME #dh

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goulloynes · 2 years

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i love you dishonored i love you corvo attano i love you emily kaldwin i love you jessamine kaldwin i love you daud my poor little meow meow i love you billie lurk i love you the outsider i love you arcane magic i love you whalers i love you daud's roofless bedroom i love you void i love you magical whales i love you rats i love you blink i love you the overseers trying to get rid of the outsider's influence through math i love you sewer tunnels i love you hound pits pub i love you honor for all i love you dishonored i love you i love you

#ten years.....#dishonored #happy 10 years to the game of all time

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trans-corvo · 1 year

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#just noticed i have polls on mobile and need to collect data #dishonored

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wrenhavenriver · 4 months

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Top 5 Dishonored missions (from all games including DLC)?

yeeeeees i'm always glad to answer dishonored asks!!! i've been asked this one a few times over the years and my answers shift slightly each time but there are a few common threads - basically any level that has a fuckton of ways to resolve things, any level featuring one of my Fave characters, or any level where the vibes/art design/dialogue/etc gives me the Shivers. off the top of my head right now i'm feeling:

high overseer campbell - the sheer variety of methods you can use to deal with campbell and/or save curnow is so fucking satisfying, my go-to is smashing the glasses in the meeting chamber, following campbell and curnow down to campbell's secret room, waiting for campbell to start sneaking up on curnow with blade in hand, then turning off the music that's playing so curnow is alerted and turns around and shoots campbell down himself. "now the rats can fight over your guts" is such a metal thing to casually say over the body of the guy who just tried to murder you? and speaking of great lines, this level also features one of my fave outsider shrine dialogues: "I'm older than the rocks this place is built on, and even I didn't see that coming."

lady boyle's last party - yeah we all knew this was coming, it's practically obligatory, right? the masquerade ball. the nobility being delighted that you're "dressed up" as the guy who's been killing them. the fireworks outside and that one weeper standing sadly staring at them through the gate. the sister you're targeting/their outfit colors changing with each playthrough. signing the guestbook. "drunkenly" confessing to the guard that you're an agent of the outsider. the "there's a hole in the world" graffiti which has become my singular defining personality trait/philosophy for the last ten years! that one guard getting pissed off at you for eating his apple. [stefon voice] this level has everything. will always regret the non-lethal approach was so fucken gross but even the devs acknowledge they fucked up on that one, so i guess that's some small comfort.

a captain of industry - the number of ways you can get into the slaughterhouse in the first place. billie's report about the man off the shore watching the place and her deeply sarcastic "if i weren't so young and pure of heart, i'd suggest he's up to no good." said man being reverently fearful of daud and very efficiently establishing that daud has a reputation as a fucking scary dude. abigail ames full stop - but especially her casually murdering rothwild with a screwdriver if you leave them alone. being able to mercy kill the poor whale - and blowing up the whole fucken place afterward to boot.

eminent domain - introducing thalia and roland, both of whomst i love. the beautiful genius of roland's revenge scheme, and the hilarity of the scene of timsh being arrested. the truly eerie speech thalia gives describing the séance. "i thought only the dead appeared at séances" is such an understated line but it inspires so much dread.

the good doctor - just feels like a massive level with all the floors and secret rooms and the partially flooded basement? and i'm a sucker for a good jekyll and hyde homage. most importantly tho: HYPATIA MY BELOVED. admittedly one major grievance: in the non-lethal route we literally just leave her sitting on the floor of her gore-stained laboratory in horrific shock, what the hell's up with that.

#askbox games

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