"They stood in a circle around the candles, and cut their hands to form their alliance. The blood hissed as it touched the flames."
Here's my piece, Second Thoughts, that I did for the Dunwall Days portion of the @10yearsofdishonoredzine! Leftover sales are ongoing until August 30th—grab it while it's hot!
I hate how imperialism is so indoctrinated in DH1 that there is no option to destroy the Empire and have your happy ever after.
"Oh but Emily could do that and be a great leader of post-imperialistic society!" Yeah but we already have DH2 and we see that Emily isn't really interested in ruling her people at all. She acts only if it's becoming personal.
Besides neither DH2 nor DotO never tries to address her changes in the Empire or give us some real examples. In DotO she just "tries to renovate" the Empire instead of trying to understand why she has to do that and if it's even a good foreign policy to maintain.
"Oh but you can destroy the empire in DH1! You just have to go high chaos and let Emily die!" Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. No one is addressing high chaos as a "good option".
Not to mention the fact that DH1 tries to push you to decide between a chance for colonies to finally get free and death of a royal child. The game simply does not believe in fact that you may hate Dunwall for everything it did to other nations or to your protagonist; it does not believe that you will [at least try to] perceive Corvo as a character with a great inferiority complex because of his nationality, and his story as an example of self-reflection. And therefore it gives you this choice instead of an opportunity to leave the decaying city behind and flee somewhere with only one good person who was ever close to you - Emily.
You *have* to play "a bad route" to do what you think would be the best option and the game's narrative will do its best to make you aware of "how bad" you are.
What am I trying to achieve here? I'm trying to give you [my reader] a different perspective to play this game or to make any fanworks or just a thing to think about. And maybe to give you a chance to listen to the Outsider’s monologue after the game with slightly more understanding of a problem the next time you play.
"It's just as well. The Empire was dying already. Completely rotten. All that was needed was the right man to send it over the edge."