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That point in the Boyle mission in the first Dishonored where Corvo can just waltz into the party and sign the fucking guestbook in front of everyone like it’s nothing is one of the more quietly badass moments in a video game
It’s also an interesting moment of characterization if you’re doing a stealth-oriented run, because it’s this moment of absolute brazenness that indicates some desire on his part to let them all know who exactly is fucking them up even if he isn’t killing them.
Corvo doesn’t really become a *character* in a full sense until the second game when he actually appears in cutscenes and starts talking, but there are these little plot points that allow you to sort of build your own version of him that I really enjoy.
So I imagine him creeping through Dunwall trying to keep a super low profile and finally in this mission he can just walk into a party and not be stopped, and he stops and looks at the guestbook and is like “Fuck it. Fuck these people. Fuck all of this.”
So far he’s just been The Masked Felon. Lotta people think he’s just dead. Finally in this moment of stepping out into the open he decides he’s had enough and he’s mad and he wants to let them know who’s coming for them, let them know who they should be afraid of.
I’ve raved before about how much I love the way a relatively simple choice system and the story and the actual mechanics of Dishonored are extremely well meshed, and this is a great example of that in a larger sense.
Because what *motivates* Corvo as a character is so embedded in how you play, and that decision has multiple facets.
Play high chaos with no stealth and you’re just fucking out of your mind with rage and you want to tear everything apart and terrorize an entire city.
Play high chaos with no stealth and you’re just fucking out of your mind with rage and you want to tear everything apart and terrorize an entire city.
And you love your daughter but it’s really pretty much okay if you hand her an empire in bloody tatters. Maybe you’re even telling yourself that she’ll appreciate that—and the super high chaos ending in fact makes that appear to be the case.
If you play high chaos with stealth, you still want revenge more than anything else, but you’re also very cold and calculating about it. Your time in Coldridge has basically deadened all emotions except hatred. Even rage isn’t really present.
You ALSO—and this is what crosses from high to low chaos in a way I really like—don’t care all that much if your enemies don’t know who’s taking them out. You just want to make them die. Maybe you even enjoy the confusion mixed with the fear for them.
Low chaos stealth—which is really the only way to successfully get a low chaos state—involves controlling your own desire for revenge and focusing on actually, y’know, *saving an empire for your daughter* as well as modeling for her how to responsibly make use of power.
(This btw is what the Outsider actually wants. Not to see you go mad with vengeance and tear up a city. He’s not a trickster. He gives people power and watches how they use it, and the strong implication in how he responds is that he’s most surprised when they don’t abuse it.)
(And given who he is and the tragedy in how he became the Outsider the further implication is that deep down he wants to see people redeem themselves and not abuse the power he gives them ANYWAY I HAVE A LOT OF OUTSIDER FEELINGS)
Getting back to where this all started.
Regardless of how many people you’re killing, if you play stealthy, that means that for whatever reason Corvo is okay with them not knowing who’s taking them all out. That is the characterization you the player create in that case.
Regardless of how many people you’re killing, if you play stealthy, that means that for whatever reason Corvo is okay with them not knowing who’s taking them all out. That is the characterization you the player create in that case.
Except then you get to the Boyles’s party. And you sign the guestbook. Which is, like I said, what ends up being a subtle but really important character moment.
Enough hiding. They won’t know when you come for them but they’ll know who’s coming.
Enough hiding. They won’t know when you come for them but they’ll know who’s coming.
This gets reinforced when you finally get to Dunwall Tower and Burrows, when you have the chance to use the communication unit in the front hall to take off your mask and let him see your face. If you do that, it’s the final huge Fuck You.
Doing that makes stealth basically impossible, and that makes not killing people really hard, but it can be done.
And again, these are not Mass Effect style dialogue trees. These are just things you do in the process of running around the missions.
And again, these are not Mass Effect style dialogue trees. These are just things you do in the process of running around the missions.
And they take on different layers of meaning in the context of whether or not you decide you want to kill people.
Of course none of this matters if you just want to play a fucking game and not think about it, but if you *do* want to think about it, Arkane put it there.
Of course none of this matters if you just want to play a fucking game and not think about it, but if you *do* want to think about it, Arkane put it there.
It’s just remarkably deep for a game in this genre and I really really like it.
I always sign the guestbook.
I always sign the guestbook.
That ended up being much longer than I expected, thank you for coming to my Dishonored TED Talk
