Dishonored (the 8th or 9th play through?)

If you have talked to me at all in the last decade you probably know that some of my favorite games other than JRPGs are Immersive Sims. These kinds of of first person decision based RPGs among the likes of System Shock, Bioshock, Deus Ex, Prey and Dishonored. It's hard to talk about exactly what makes these games work because when you tell someone "oh yeah you don't really fully appreciate this game until you've played it at least 4 times" it comes off as really pretentious. But it's partially true. Your first play through with a game like this will be extremely different from your second and so on. So most of these games I have played SEVERAL times even as recently as last year I replayed Dishonored and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and had started another playthough of Prey 2017. 

Recently, my wife and our two best friends have been doing a regular game night and it has been an absolute treat for us to share our favorite games with each other. It's been a real bonding experience. We had finished Final Fantasy X and had started another RPG but wanted a break to play a shorter game. So I decided to take them through Dishonored. It's a game that is unmistakably associated with me since I have artwork and collectors editions all over my house, the mark of the outsider on the back of my car and did a cosplay of Corvo back in 2014. I also think it's a good introduction to the immersive sim genre with one of the most compelling stories and settings for spectators. Since all runs of this game are different as is the case with most Immersive sims, lots of unique things happened in this particular run. So I figured I would chronicle how it went here with another text review. 

High Overseer Campbell:

So right away I told everyone watching that our decision of weather or not we were going to kill anyone was going to impact the story and the ending we get. We made a compromise, that we would be okay with killing random guards so we could show off combat and all of the cool tools used in the game. But if a non lethal option was more interesting for dealing with one of our targets, we would go for that instead. A very non committal, ambiguous run and one I thought for sure would end in high chaos. When we start exploring the streets getting ready to deal with the High Overseer, we visit Granny Rags who the viewers took quite a liking to. I was reading all of the books in the game out loud and I really enjoyed reading the book describing her legend as well as Daud's. We help Granny Rags deal with the Bottle Street thugs and pick up the rune, establishing the animosity between Granny Rags and Slackjaw for later in the game. In terms of dealing with the High Overseer, we sneak into the Abbey relatively undetected (although there was a very funny moment where I ended up getting surrounded by 3 guards because I was distracted looking at a wanted poster of myself) Once we're in position to deal with Campbell, the viewers elected to go with the method of switching the poison, it's a unique way of killing him that gives us some interesting dialogue with him and Curnow. As many times as I've played this game I don't think I've ever not saved Curnow...I wonder what implications that will have on Calista later in the game as we see them reunited in the good ending. I told the girls about the non lethal option of branding him a heretic but that one can be very dangerous and time consuming. I learned recently that if you do this, you find him as a weeper in the flooded district later in the game. I must have just never noticed that on my non lethal playthroughs. The irony is that since he becomes a weeper he is very much still dead...so? did we really avoid killing him? 

House Of Pleasure:

Next up is the Golden Cat where we will rescue Emily and eliminate both of Lord Pendleton's brothers. We elected to go for the non lethal route in this mission since it's most certainly a crueler fate than death, it allows us to explore the entire level and see all of it's content and it doesn't require us to actually locate the Pendletons at all. This first requires gaining the favor of Slackjaw by locating the fate of one of his men in a nearby mansion containing a doctor's lab who's been experimenting with plague cures. This doctor is a very minor character but we can hear a bit about him from the people guarding that building, including a guard and a maid who appear to be in a relationship with one another? Thing is...we've already been here in the previous mission, as we stole the doctor's rat viscera to poison the Bottle Street Distillery with the plague. Now, this is an interesting decision where the game designers decided not to prohibit your options too heavily based on decisions you made earlier. So for instance, if they wanted to be more cruel, they could have it to where if you poisoned the bottle street gang, Slackjaw or enough of his goons would already be dead by the second mission and you would't be able to gain their favor when dealing with the Pendletons. But instead, even with the plague infected distillery, the only thing that changes is a few of the gang members are weepers but Slackjaw is unaware it was you that screwed them over and is still welcome to help you assuming you help him first. He's also one of the only characters in the game outside of the loyalists who knows that the "masked man" and Corvo are the same person. I wasn't sure how the girls were going to feel about us torturing the art dealer to gain access to his apartment. Not because it's cruel, but because of the sexually suggestive angle of the Golden Cat, I had to tell them up front that this guy's kink is to roll play being interrogated/tortured. But luckily the game overall doesn't really feature much of any sexually explicit material. Especially if you avert your eyes from the scantily clad "staff" of the Golden Cat. We rescue Emily and head back, at this point because we have given access to the art dealer's apartment to the Bottle Street gang but we can go loot it anyway, taking any valuable items from the gang in spite of our promise to help them. I am curious if we do not accept the Bottle Street side quest and access the Art Dealer's apartment through alternate means if there will be more loot and no gang members inside when we do. Anyways that pretty much wraps up mission 2. At this point, Michelle was already becoming incredibly suspicious that Emily was Corvo's daughter, she picked up on a lot of things, such as how the Empress is speaking longingly about how much she misses him in the game's opening dialogue and how Emily treats us. 

The Royal Physician:

This mission isn't particularly interesting as it just has us crossing Kaldwin's bridge to abduct Sokolov. We need to interrogate him since we have knowledge that he painted a portrait for the Lord Regent's mistress and would be able to give us her identity. To discuss gameplay a little, I've been developing Corvo's powers over the previous levels. We have acquired Shadow Kill, Possession, Devouring Swarm and Bend Time. We used Possession a LOT up to this point and had coined the repeated phrase "become rat" or we just simply yelled RAT in a goofy voice one after the other. I didn't care to get every single rune in the game but I knew I wanted to get Bend Time 2 before the next mission and I wanted to at least see all of the Outsider shrines. In this run more so than any of my previous runs, I just didn't care to min/max the best bone charms for my setup. I had a realization where I felt like a VERY small portion of them are remotely useful and most of them provide negligible bonuses and it really wasn't worth the time spent dragging out the game longer for the girls spectating and we would be well off enough without adjusting our setup. The Definitive Edition just gives us a huge pile of bone charms very early, I assume this was a DLC thing in the original game that I just don't remember, so we made our initial setup using those and barely pursued bone charms after that unless they were directly in our path. One of the interesting things in this level is the minor character Pratchett, an aristocratic businessman who owns some of Dunwall's industry. We can raid his apartment and loot his safe and we ended up killing him the process. There is a really fun riddle for figuring out the combination of his safe. It's pretty intuitive but you definitely have to pay attention to figure it out. Speaking of safes, in the prologue mission of the game, there is a safe not far from where you get your equipment drop. Being the first "thing" with a combination in an immersive sim game, you can take a guess what the combination was. I quizzed my one friend since she had pointed out a particular book I had when we were sorting my books a few weeks prior. I said "now you know this one, it's related to a book you brought up from my collection the other day" and she correctly guessed 451. So I guess this is going to be a reoccurring thing in every immersive sim we play now. I'm going to be like "alright (friend) what's the password?" and she's most likely going to remember 451 or 0451 depending on the game. The Mad Survivor is also an interesting character with an interesting story to read through in his many journals. We knock him out and take the rune from his outsider shrine. It's moments like this where I realized in my previous play through that The Outsider's influence is much more of a curse than a blessing and it has this addictive, toxic property to it that drives people mad. Or perhaps they are doomed all along in a city ravaged by death, unable to help them, they turn to this blind god to help and he cares not for their fate. Anyways, the rest of the level goes pretty normal. I do colossally fuck up and forget to deactivate the spotlights on the water so I had to backtrack to make sure Samual would come pick us up. But we abduct Sokolov without a hitch. 

Lady Boyle's Last Party:

This has got to be most people's favorite mission in the game and is definitely one of the most interesting. We need to wait for nightfall for Lady Boyle's party so before we head out there's a few scenes we can get.  We find Piero spying on Callista taking a bath. I never noticed this scene until my previous play through of the game and it definitely soured my impression of Piero and gave him this unmistakably creepy vibe. I, however, being a tall, mysterious, handsome man (who no doubt smells like death at this point) can walk in on her and flirt with her, which the viewers got a laugh out of. Especially because Callista's response is basically "yeah dude you're hot and all but maybe another time when we're not all dying out there" Afterwards, Pendleton gives us a note to give to someone named Lord Shaw at the party. He goes through a phase of being uncertain how he feels about the fact that we killed his brothers only to find out later that we spared them and he gives us a thank you gift. I wonder if he would have done so had he found out how cruel their non-lethal fate actually was. We head off to the Boyle manor for the party and right away I want to find the remaining runes to unlock Bend Time 2. It's quite overpowered but I wanted to demonstrate a really cheeky way of dealing with a Tallboy where you stop time, fire a crossbow bolt and then strap a Springrazor to it. It worked, but it didn't fully kill the Tallboy, I guess I needed to hit him at a different angle. But it was a nice demonstration of some of the crazy combinations of tools and powers that you can pull off that the game doesn't overtly tell you about in case the girls wanted to replay the game on their own time (which I heavily encouraged). We infiltrate Lady Boyle's party using the invitation that one of the guests looses outside the front gate. If you somehow missed this scene but you looted the Art Dealer's apartment earlier, you can use his invitation to get in as well. The viewers definitely appreciated the dynamics of the party, all of the NPCs you can interact with and how clever it is that you can just walk around in your mask and no one expects a thing. We sneak through the upstairs of the mansion and read all of the notes and journals that identify Waverly Boyle as the Lord Regent's mistress. We talk to Lord Brisby who confesses that he is in love with Lady Boyle and that if we bring her to him unharmed, Dunwall will never see either of them again. The girls found this offer to be extremely creepy and unsettling and we unfortunately came to the unanimous decision that killing her was a better fate that whatever the hell Brisby had in store for her. We carried this out through the same means as the non lethal method, gathering all of the clues and luring her to the basement by telling her she's in danger. Only except for knocking her out and delivering her to Brisby once were down there. We kill her instead. Something I noticed on this play through as well is Corvo's unique body language in his animation for taking out Lady Boyle. Most of his other kill animations are quick and efficient, not overly brutal but not delicate either. Here with Boyle, he runs her through and holds her close until she's gone, almost as if he takes a distinct displeasure in having to kill a woman. I wanted to see what happens when we deliver Waverly's dead body to Brisby and sure enough he's like "You monster! I can't believe you killed her!" afterwords I slung her body onto the boat and the body clipped through the boat ever so slightly as to trigger the water splash sound effect from the water beneath the boat. The absurdity of this sight got quite a morbid laugh out of the audience who both shocked and amused by it. I made a safety save and experimented in what would happen if I tried to kill Brisby as well. Sure enough the game lets you do it and he's got 100 coins on him. I said, meh, hell with it and took his money and left the level. 

Return to the Tower:

At long last it was time to return to Dunwall Tower and eliminate the Lord Regent Hiram Burrows. We have to climb up the water lock gate that makes up the entrance to the tower, this was foreshadowed in the prologue for the game. The courtyard can easily turn into a bloodbath on high chaos as there are numerous guards, a few Tallboys and a guard watchtower. If you use a rewire tool on the watchtower you have basically already killed everyone. We actually made it through the courtyard entirely on stealth which I normally have a hard time doing, but apparently if you can prevent an alarm being triggered in the courtyard, the inside of the tower will become much easier. We get inside and the Lord Regent is unaware that we are here. Normally I am use to having to gruelingly crawl our way through this heavily guarded level to get to it's most interior rooms, either to find Hiram himself or to carry out the non lethal option of locating the audio recording of him detailing his conspiracy to overthrow the throne and that he brought the rat plague to Dunwall. Instead, on this play through, he walks right into his own bedroom while we are inside, hiding above his bed. In shock, I was like "well...okay then!" and just lobbed a grenade at him and blew his ass up. I remarked to the girls how this was MUCH easier than it normally is and not at all how this level usually goes for me. Not seeing a reason to stay and drag this mission out anymore, we leave the way we came in making for probably the shortest and most effortless version of this level I've had in a run through the game yet. We return to the Hound Pit's and are welcomed with applause and celebration by the loyalists. Emily is the one who greets us at the door and she has different dialogue depending on if you're on low or high chaos. I was VERY shocked to see that surprisingly, we were on track for low chaos at this point. Very strange considering we've been doing a lot of killing, but one of the other factors that impacts chaos is how often you are detected and so I'm sure going through the entirety of the Dunwall tower level barely being seen at all or getting into any fights resulted in a much lower chaos rating than if I had turned that level into a bloodbath. Some of the other indications that we are on low chaos from Emily are the drawings she does. They will be nightmare fuel on high chaos but are more pleasant and peaceful on low chaos. She drew a portrait of us that I had to quickly look away from because it had the word "DADDY" written in big letters on it but apparently the girls didn't notice it before I looked away. At this point only Michelle was suspicious that Emily was his daughter. After accepting the drink from Havlock and Pendleton, our vision starts to blur and I remark that we must not feel very good and need to lay down for a nap. One of the friends initially suspects that it's something strange acting up with our powers but quickly everyone realizes the truth. We had been poisoned by our allies. They were going to use us as the fall guy all along. Samual being the only true bro and making an effort to make sure we don't die. 

The Flooded District: 

This particular play session took us through the Boyle Estate and Dunwall tower pretty quickly, but the start of the flooded district was a good stopping point. So the audience got to see us get picked up in the river, introduced to Daud and captured with our gear discarded. I mentioned as we wrapped up how interesting Daud is as a character and how I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks of him. Michelle regarded that she was too busy being furious that we got betrayed to even really notice or pay attention to him. When we resumed with our next and final session of the game, the girls actually took quite an interest in Daud to where we ended up sparing him. We all came to the conclusion that he was a hired gun and even though he was the person who committed the physical act of murdering the empress, murdering him in return does nothing to bring her back. We had already killed The Lord Regent and Daud expresses lots of guilt, regret and inner conflict over having committed that act. We get our gear back and read a bunch of the books that go into detail about Dunwall's whaling industry. At some point I unlocked Blink 2 during this level because we pretty much had all of the abilities we wanted and Blink 2 makes getting around in this level MUCH easier. Next we head for Daud's hideout where we eavesdrop on his monologue to himself about Hiram Burrows, how he wish he could give the money back he got from killing the empress and how he wishes he could have been the one to kill him instead of us. We avoid Daud's other assassins by "becoming rat" and sneaking through their training grounds. Somewhere in this level we read a note between Daud and one of his assassins that explains how they are able to use powers without having the mark of the outsider themselves. It's Daud's powers but he's able to share them with his team through some kind of link they share. We decide to confront Daud directly in a straight man to man duel. (which can be very difficult to do without abusing some of your more broken powers) After he is defeated we spare him and walk away. On my previous run which was a high chaos run, I executed him here and interestingly enough when you execute him we don't see his body, it teleports away. Which I feel like lets a little bit of ambiguity to weather or not he survives regardless of your decision. Which makes his return in Death of the Outsider and the novel Return of Daud easier to buy into. We escape through the waterways to make our way back to the Hound Pit's in hopes of catching up with the Loyalists and saving Emily. The decision earlier regarding the rivalry between Granny Rags and Slackjaw comes full circle here. Even though we helped Granny Rags by killing a few of the Bottle Street thugs and poisoning the distillery, the decision was easy here. The viewers unanimously agreed to save Slackjaw and kill Granny Rags. Both of which are interesting characters but it really goes to show the context that our character is put into when the characters who are regarded as thugs and criminals (Slackjaw and Daud) ended up being our favorite characters and much more likable compared to the out of touch aristocrats that make up the majority of the rest of the cast. 

The Light At The End:

We return to the Hound Pit's and save Callista, Piero and Sokolov from the invasion of city watch officers raiding the pub. I took a lot more time on this run to listen to Callista's dialogue she gives us when we talk to her in Emily's room. She has a lot more to say than I originally thought. After using the super powered arc pylon to disable all of the guards, I use all of my remaining money to get as many upgrades as we can afford. I got the explosive pistol upgrade and I believe a few capacity upgrades for it. We could also hold an absurd amount of grenades and spring razors at this point. We head off to Kingsparrow island, the low chaos version. After sneaking our way through the east gate and into the courtyard, I manage to skip a TON of guards by using my final runes to unlock Possession 2 and "become....a human person?" we possess a guard and use him to sneak all the way to the elevator that takes us up to the top of the tower where Havelock awaits. He has already killed Pendleton and Martin with poison. Which is interesting considering we can spare Havelock with non lethal means but regardless of our chaos rating, Pendleton will die. On high chaos I suppose we could just ignore Martin as he and Pendleton will be having a back and forth firefight with each other and Pendleton will get caught in the crossfire regardless. We eavesdrop a bit on Havelock and listen to his regrets for letting the situation get so out of hand. We notice he's probably a bit thrown off as he's been drinking. I initially wanted to confront him in a duel again just as we did with Daud to get a unique animation for executing him. But I asked the girls how they wanted him to die and they unanimously agreed with RAT. So I used Devouring Swarm and he died in fear and agony not knowing for sure if we were even there. But I feel like deep down, he knew it was us even though he couldn't see us. Before rescuing Emily I located Havelocks Journal and read through each of the entries in chronological order which is a great way to recap the game. After I finally got to the line where he contemplates "Is she really his daughter?" I look over at our two friends and ask them "did y'all see this coming?" neither of them suspected it. So it was a nice subtle reveal that I feel they appreciated. We rescue Emily and get the good ending. My one friend I noticed had a smile on her face and said "good game" which was all of the confirmation I needed to hear to know they enjoyed it. I told them that I highly encouraged them to play the game again on their own and that I would even gift it to them on Steam if they wanted. We talked for a bit about some story stuff and about certain events that played out differently on high chaos. I talked about how the DLC adds much needed tools to the non lethal sandbox and finally revealed to them that this game has a sequel. I mentioned that it takes place 15 years later and you play as Emily and they looked very intrigued. So I showed them the summer 2016 gameplay trailer and they looked HYPED. So maybe some day in the near future Dishonored 2 will be a game for our regular game nights. But in the meantime, we will take a break from this series to play something else. 

I'm very grateful once again to my wife and our best friends for taking the time to share with me some pieces of media that I am extremely passionate about and I'm happy we could all go on this journey together.