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neptunee123 · 3 days ago

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So I'm replaying Dishonored, but I'm taking it so slowly that it took me 2 hours to complete Returning Home because I had a journal at my side and I was writing down everything that happens and every quote or detail that felt important to me for whatever reason, and it really got me thinking about just how much detail has been put into these games. (REALLY long post so I'm putting a cut here lol)

It's very cool to go through these games slowly and just take them in. The first time I played Dh2, Heart Whispers was one of the first achievements I ever got because the moment I got the heart, I was using that thing on EVERYONE, as many times as it'd let me. And now, going through Dh1 again, I'm still taking in everything they're offering me. I talk to every character until they run out of dialogue and explore everything I can.

And honestly? Would recommend. The Dishonored games were made with so much attention to detail that you really never run out of new things to discover or take notice of. Even just standing still and listening to the ambience of an area can reveal a lot about the scene and its setting.

I've never actually kept a notebook for a piece of media I've consumed before. I've annotated books before, sure, but I've never been inspired to keep detailed notes on anything but literature until I played Dishonored. There's just so much lore packed into these games, and even beyond that, there's clearly a lot of attention to detail put into things like the character design and the level design, so it's very rewarding to sit with these games and just take in everything they're showing you.

The moment you meet Emily, you see her dressed in (almost) all white- a symbol of her innocence, perhaps. She mentions that "mother is busy talking to that nasty old Spymaster", and already, you're clued in onto the kind of person the Spymaster might be. You know that this child dislikes him, and that he may not be a very nice person. You can see High Overseer Campbell, too, and he's wearing this striking red coat that makes him stand out. He's being painted by Sokolov, who's in a more modest dark green jacket. Talking to Sokolov reveals that he resents having to paint Campbell's picture and that he seems to dislike Campbell, while talking to Campbell reveals that he thinks the rat plague is caused by a "corrupt society", and that everyone must "strengthen [their] faith". You're already starting to get an idea of who these people are and what they think of each other.

After playing hide-and-seek with Emily, you go up to meet Jessamine. You walk in on what seems to be the end of an argument between her and Royal Spymaster Hiram Burrows. Jessamine wants to save all of her citizens from the plague if she can, and Burrows disagrees with this idea. When Jess dismisses him, he walks away and speaks to you on his way out, commenting about how Corvo is back two days earlier than expected and that he's "full of surprises, as always". These characters obviously have a history with each other (see "as always" comment), and Burrows, judging by his tone, seems to have a sense of disdain for Corvo, and he sounds almost displeased by the fact that Corvo is back early. This is your first subtle sign that something is about to go down- something that they didn't want Corvo to be present for.

After he's finished speaking to you, he'll tell Geoff Curnow that they should leave and give Corvo and Jess a moment alone- he's sending the guards away. This is your next clue that something is about to happen, and that Burrows planned it out. If you follow him, you'll see that he goes down to join Sokolov and Campbell. They're standing across the courtyard (? Is that what you'd call it? Not sure), facing each other. I thought this was interesting because it made me imagine them looking at each other as they wait for Daud and his Whalers to execute Jessamine and kidnap Emily. The tension, the shared knowledge of the plot they’re both involved in, staring at each other and waiting for one of the last pieces of their plan to fall into place.

Talking to Burrows here prompts this dialogue from him: "I've heard the other Isles won't aid us. Why did I even bother convincing her to send you, you might ask?". This reveals that it was Burrows who convinced Jessamine to send away her own bodyguard for a couple months (which is mentioned by one of the men you arrive on the boat with at the start of this mission as being "unusual"). When you pair this with his comment about Corvo being back two days early and the fact that he seems annoyed by Corvo's unexpected return, you get another clue (which you can easily miss by just going straight to Jessamine without talking to Burrows first) that Burrows has something planned today that he didn't want Corvo present for. You already know that Corvo is Jessamine’s bodyguard, so you can probably guess that whatever is about to happen will put Jessamine in some kind of danger, which explains why Burrows wouldn't want Corvo there for it.

And THAT is a huge part of why I love Dishonored. Those subtle clues about what's going on, all the easily missed lines of dialogue that give you info about the characters, the world they're in, and the events that take place.

You don't have to talk to these characters beyond what the game requires of you, and you can still enjoy the game without exhausting every line of dialogue from Sokolov or Campbell or Burrows. But the fact that you can get this extra info at all plays a very important part in my love for these games. I appreciate how much detail went into them, and the more you stop and listen to conversations or ambient noise, or talk to characters, or use the Heart, the more you realize just how much love and soul was poured into these games to make them feel alive and fleshed-out. Did they have to include random snippets of books that exist in this universe, or letters from citizens you'll never meet to other citizens you'll never meet? No. Did they have to write hundreds of lines for the Heart and pay to have them all recorded? No. Did they have to let you follow Burrows and speak with him after Jessamine dismisses him? No, they could've just put up an invisible wall, or locked you into a cutscene, or not given him extra dialogue.

But they did.

In my opinion, this is a game that's largely about the choices you decide to make. See: chaos system, non-lethal vs lethal elimination methods, the fact that you can spare all your main targets and still get High Chaos if you killed guards, citizens, etc., the juxtaposition between the two quotes written on the wall in Corvo's cell, Havelock's dialogue about how he believes "sometimes good men have to do bad things to make the world right" (which I need to discuss in a whole other post eventually), the contrast between Daud and Corvo + Daud's line about how low chaos + spare all targets Corvo chose a path that Daud could've taken, but did not, Daud's entire DLC, etc. You can play the game and make your choices while only speaking with the characters you're forced to speak to, never reading extra journals/books/letters that you find, never using the Heart on someone, and never doing any of the optional side objectives. It'll still be a fun game with an enjoyable story. But the more that you choose to immerse yourself in the world and take in every detail that's available to you, the more information you'll have. This extra information has the potential to influence the decisions that you make in the game.

For example, during my first playthrough of Dh1, I kind of rushed things out of excitement to just play and get through the main story. When I got to the Flooded District mission, and I reached Daud, I had no idea that you could go down and fight him without having to kill him, and I was doing non-lethal elimination methods (except Lady Boyle), so I just stole his key and left. Never used the Heart on him. Never fought him and heard his speech. Therefore, when I finished the main story and played his DLC, all I knew of Daud was that he was an assassin paid to kill the Empress. I decided to play The Knife of Dunwall in high chaos because I thought it made sense that Daud would be a man who'd just cut down anyone in his way and get to his objective as quickly and efficiently as possible, caring little for who he had to kill along the way. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I found out that low chaos is canon for Daud's DLC because he's feeling guilt/regret over killing the Empress and helping to plunge Dunwall into chaos, and he's sick of killing. And yes, of course you can play however you want, but if I had learned more about Daud in the main story, I am absolutely certain that I would've played Knife of Dunwall in low chaos. If I had used the heart on him and heard the "his hands do violence. But in his heart is a different dream" line, it would've given me pause, at the very least. I probably would've assumed him to be a man who doesn't glorify his violence and bloodshed, even if he continues to do it. But if I had fought him and listened to his speech, that definitely would have changed my opinion of him and influenced me to play his DLC in low chaos. If I had listened to his audiograph and heard him say (about Burrows), "How many people did I kill for you? None like the last. None like her. I'd give back all the coin if I could. No one should have to kill an Empress", I would have played his DLC in low chaos.

But all I saw of him was the moment when he killed the Empress, and that was basically all I knew about him when going into Knife of Dunwall. I made my choices in accordance with the information I had and the way I interpreted it.

And, for some (shorter) examples:

-Paolo in Dh2 has a heart line about how he helped a blind person cross the street the same day that he killed a barrister, and another line about how the Howlers are his family, and he's done terrible things to protect them. Hearing these changed my view of him from "generic gang leader and terrible person" to "gang leader who actually cares for his gang members and for some other people, though he still isn't a good person by any means". In an instant, his character went from 1-dimensional to 3-dimensional.

-In DotO, you can find a letter in the bank during The Bank Job from Lucia Pastor to the bank's director (Dolores Michaels), and another from a woman named Bea to the Michaels Bank. Lucia Pastor's letter is about how her charity's resources have been stretched thin because there's been a sudden influx of people begging for aid after the Michaels Bank took advantage of the citizens and manipulated laws to suit their purposes, leaving the citizens penniless. The letter from Bea is about how her and "Sammy" have 5 children to feed, one of whom is a baby that's sick with croup, and they're living in the sewers, which is making their baby's cough worse. She writes that "far as [she] can make out from that fancy letter [the bank] sent", they lost their home because the bank claimed they didn't pay their loan fast enough. She claims that this is a lie, and that her and Sammy put as much coin as they could from the market each week towards the loan, and they never missed their coin drop. "Michaels Bank" is spelled as "Mikels Bank", and Bea specifically writes, "as far as [she] could make out from that fancy letter [the bank] sent". Both of these details imply that Bea is educated enough to read and write, but not enough to spell the name of their bank correctly, and not enough to complately comprehend what was said in the letter the bank sent them. This, combined with the fact that Lucia Pastor calls the citizens "simple souls" and says that they don't understand how the bank has manipulated the law to take advantage of them, shows you that the bank is taking advantage of underprivileged, poorly educated citizens. Reading both of these letters heavily influenced the decisions I made during The Bank Job.

The choices you make determine the outcome you get at the end of the game, and the information you have influences those choices. Part of why the Dishonored series works so well because there's so much information available to you. Each choice hits harder when you have a better understanding of its potential consequences. That's the main reason behind my love for Dishonored.

Alright, I've yapped for entirely too long, and I'm certain no one is going to read this far LOL. I really struggle to be concise, and I'm back on ADHD meds now, so this is like, months of scattered thoughts about the Dishonored series that I was finally able to put into one big-ass post. But yeah. I just love these games. I know I usually make silly posts about them, and even my more serious takes are mostly just stream-of-consciousness ramblings written in like 10 minutes while I follow my dad around a Home Depot or wait for my food to cook, so they're not really proof-read or researched or anything. This is the first time I've really committed to getting all my thoughts out with more detailed explanations. After 5 years of being obsessed with Dishonored but having no one to talk to about it, this is what you get now that I can hold a thought for longer than 5 minutes 🤲 I'm super grateful for this community and how welcoming it has been, and I'd love to start posting some of my actual character analysis and such on this blog now that I can focus again. Even if no one reads it, I'm just glad I have somewhere for it to go!!

Anyway. Yap over. I'm gonna go back to playing Dishonored at a snail's pace.

#this!!#I did the same with the heart #I love the fact that no matter how many times I replay the games I always find something that I didn't know about earlier #same with the heart it's such an unique item #honestly I can't remember how much time Ive spent on the wiki reading all of the hearts whispers that I didnt hear when I was playing

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