#first it was lady boyle getting kidnapped by lord brisby

[type40thiefoflight]

Wow Jindosh's non-lethal option is uh...not what I was expecting. Couldn't we have just zapped him a little for information like Bunting and Rothwild then knock him out and take him with us back to the boat?

Or maybe we could have put him on house arrest and ordered him work on a solution to the whale oil crisis as a punishment?

#dishonored #dishonored 2 #kirin jindosh #it seems like every dishonored game has to have one exceptionally messed up non-lethal solution #first it was lady boyle getting kidnapped by lord brisby #now it's jindosh getting his brain fried #does death of the outsider have something equally horrible?

[chesthighwater]

one thing i think video games as a medium are particularly well-suited for is forcing you to do some absolutely horrible shit without revealing what it is until the deed is already done. it causes much stronger emotions when you were the one to pull the trigger, rather than reading about a character accidentally making bad choices in a book or seeing them unknowingly stumble around in a movie.

(this is one of many things i loved about pathologic, by the way- the stories are so tightly intertwined and so complex that by the time you realise you've been set up, it's too late. burning the bull, butchering var's daughter.)

so, with that in mind. lady boyle's last party.

after talking to lord brisby on my first playthrough, i assumed he was lady boyle's secret lover (or one of them?). i don't know if this was intended- this is one of those occasions where i wonder if i'm not seeing something that's obvious to everyone else- but that's how i interpreted it. and i felt incredibly conflicted about it, too. why does she get to have a happy ending? so she'd get to live out some kind of cottagecore fantasy with her man (the outsider did say she'd live to old age!), zero repercussions, while i deal with her mess. she's bankrolling the guy who STARTED THE PLAGUE and had the empress killed and kidnapped her daughter and she gets off scot free??? potentially even being happier than she is now! getting away from the backstabby bourgeoisie of dunwall! that's deeply unfair.

but in the end, i thought- surely there's been enough suffering. i don't need her to die, i just need her (and her money) the fuck away from here. i made my peace with letting her live. maybe she repays the favour one day. love wins happy end!

can you imagine. Can You Imagine My Face when i realised that lord brisby is not in fact her consensual lover. but her weird nonconsensual stalker? the moment i realised how much i am NOT giving her the cottagecore love&light happy end i thought i was?

it's very rare for a game that isn't pathologic to evoke similar emotions for me, even occasionally, so this felt like a big deal at the time.

#99% of this blog is me writing long ass posts that no one will read #TL;DR video games good #j