Committing Rat Sins in Dishonored (Story Explained)
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- On this episode of What's the Plot I explain the story of Arkane Studios' 2012 action stealth game Dishonored. And since this is a multiple choice game we're mostly covering the high chaos version of things.
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CHAPTERS
0:00 - Intro
01:55 - How It Started
08:40 - The Distillery District
09:51 - High Overseer Campbell
10:47 - What Are Weepers?
11:28 - Finding Emily
13:38 - The Golden Cat Tangent
15:09 - The Pendleton Twins & Sokolov
17:15 - Lady Boyle's Last Party
18:31 - The Lord Regent
21:22 - Celeberations
22:32 - Meeting Daud
23:23 - Granny Rags
23:47 - High Chaos Endgame
25:13 - Outro
#dishonored
#arkanestudios - Hry
I always save slackjaw, and as such he has one of the best quotes in the game after you save him: "wanna know somethin funny? When we were kids we all thought granny rags was a mean old witch. We grew up, and figured she was just a sad old lady. We were right the FIRST time, now isn't that funny?"
To the part about a developer making the world seem so misogynistic, I'd say it'd make sense(if such a phrase can be used) in a world of rats and grime so closely tied to the actual era the fiction was drawn from. It's one of those things that's evidently supposed to make you feel disgust and discomfort; making it more difficult to *not* stab. Just playing devil's advocate. Great video btw! Deserves more views for sure
thats pretty much the setting, yes
My turn on the devil's advocate.
Change is not instant nor is it always done universally. Just because there is a woman on the throne doesn't mean that any level of misogyny will or even can get cured with it; As you said, history has examples of this happening. So when a story has a female in a position of power but misogyny is still very commonplace, that's not a contradiction or bad writing, thats logical world building. Just as a real world example: Queen Victoria was extremely well loved by the -british- English people *But* misogyny was rife in the empire and no one would publicly allow something like a female CEO or women's suffrage despite their ruler being both female and populer.
I still like the video BTW.
“what do I look like, some kind of heartless monster?!” 😭😂
*player is casually made to carry around heart of murdered empress* UM OKAY THEN
The first game had a real thing of "If you want the nice ending, do not do any of these very cool things with these awesome murder tools that we've lovingly animated gory deaths from. None of that!", yeah.
One of my favorite things about the sequel was the introduction of more non-lethal options for incapacitating guards, and specifically COOLER non-lethal options (you can even knock them out in a fight if your timing's good). Also more nuance about how much chaos is caused by which non-target deaths. Smash all the automatons you like, for instance, without any chaos increase.
High chaos resulting in trying to keep the chaos low harder feels weirdly upside down to me. Sure, it makes achieving a "pacifist" ending harder, but I'd have implemented it as a balance between order and chaos. In a high order playthorugh, the empire would go full autocratic dystopia, with additional watchtowers and locked doors making sneaking around and non-violent takedowns harder while in a high chaos run, riots, rampant plague and the guards going full Mad Max would make fighting your way through all that violence harder. The difficulty curve would adjust to your playstyle.
That... Would be a sick mod
I love the way the heart describes Grany Rags as the most desirable while she keeps saying garbage in the background
I'm in love with your "What's The Plot?" series! Not only is your commentary absolutely wonderful, but I really like that you know when to let a bit of gameplay or a cutscene play out and speak for itself before/after adding your two cents. It really conveys the vibe of the game.
Great vid!
Thank you! :D
The Dishonored games are truly a treat what's not to love about it? Great atmospheric setting, fantastic story intruiging gameplay. I especially like the murder shrubs just because they are so out-of-place from everything in the game, though they are probably an extension of the oceanic theme the world. Wished there were more things like the murder shrubs, like killer crabs or something.
The sequel and sequel dlc also amazing, you should pick it em up too! I enjoyed your take about your playthrough. I actually didn't realizes who is in the heart and who is Emily's dad until I found a secret room in the castle/fortress.
I think your channel is very underrated. I've been watching some of your content over the past couple of days, and it's really high quality. I hope you keep up the great work!
Queen Elizabeth I is a great example of a beloved female ruler who rose to prominence while never marrying. Even despite the highly misogynistic outlook of the time. Also not a lot of people actually liked the Empress, which is probably how Hiram Burrows was able to take power with little to no resistance.
I love the sass you give to spymaster in the beginning, had me laughing
24:00 you went with the Middle Way path. it's probably the rarest ending chaos level, It was the first one I got so all the videos saying the game sucked for just having a good and bad ending always confused me. I see this ending as canon, as there is mention of Corvo killing "massacaring the boyle party and Hound Pits Club" but it's also clear the dark high chaos ending isn't canonical nor are some of his more iredeemable actions, so logically he got this ending in canon. But at the end of the day idk what the game creators were thinking regarding canonicity but this is my opionon on the matter.
my personal experience with dishonored was rather simple, i liked "Drunken Whaler" and i played their 2017 game Prey (which i also liked alot)
so when i heard of Dishonored i immediately got all the games and went through all of them, but sticking to D1:
the game paints a rather dark fantasy setting mixing the salem trials, the black plague and the victorian era all together into a canvas painting of a brutal and dishonorable (haha) world
where the rich thrive, the poor die, and those in the middle get caught in the crossfire of everything happening around them be it the purges, the plague or gangsters
but what reeled me in BESIDES the setting and everything else was the whole 'Void' aesthetic the game had going, these supernatural abilities giving to you by a man who you saw in your dreams which pretty much make you a super-soldier (StealthGamerBR kinda proves that point via gameplay and that one Dishonored 2: DOTO moment where Daud kills everyone in the room), the way Arkane portrayed the void in dishonored 1 is probably my most favorite iteration of it in all of media, its using fractured islands that represent the future, the past and the present, showing you what you've been through, what you'll go through and what has already happened
the Outsider in 1 seemingly controls what happens there, and being chosen by him is both a blessing and a curse. Daud blames the Outsider for these abilities and what he's done in the past with them, but if you think about it, he just marks important people and lets them go do whatever they want which makes me question his intentions, why does the Outsider do that?
overall, i believe Dishonored is Arkanes Mona Lisa because the world it has created is nothing i had seen before, there are only close comparisons but even then Dishonored is one-of-a-kind game
PS: on my newest replay i simply upgraded some abilities (Dark Vision, Bend Time, Blink, Agility to be specific) and ran past most enemies via the usage of Bend Time and Blink, making non-lethal + ghost possible, sometimes i simply knocked out people by choking them out and hiding their bodies in a room no guard patrols, to me Dishonored really lets you play how you want since my first ever playthrough was more about knocking everyone out on the level and using all my darts on those people just so i could pass safely
all in all, its a good game and it got me into the immersive sim genre of games (Deus Ex, Bioshock, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, S.T.A.L.K.E.R)
Honestly, I think the empress being "beloved" could be passed off as propaganda, at least in my own head cannon. If she's so beloved, why would someone want to assassinate her? Clearly someone wasn't satisfied with her rule, and judging by our initial peek into the city streets... She wasn't exactly managing her role very well.
...You may not have explored the game enough. You find out in the third act that the High Overseer was sabotaging her rule in the first place, introducing the rat plague to Dunwall, seeking to 'eradicate the lower classes'.
Yeah, no, it wasn’t like a random civilian wanted her assassinated: it was a conspiracy by power-hungry, corrupt officials, led by the one who caused the plague in the first place because he's a classist psychopath
i love this game i always kill everyone full stealth it's perfect i love this series
See, usually when i play dishonored, i play it as non lethal as possible. Mostly because i like the idea of playing the game more as a kidnapping sim
immediate sub
Random question, the quest to handle the sisters, are they actually randomized? Every time I’ve played the quest it's been the sister in white.
I always play as stealthily as possible as I like the challenge of it.
You can get the clean hands achievement if you only kill targets.
I only take the low chaos route because I don’t want to disappoint Samuel…
Designer exploded 😅
Who else finished this game without being spotted or killing anyone? I know I did.
I remember when i encountered those i actually kinda jumped a bit mostly because it was just unexpected as zombies were not what i thought id find i thought it would be like supernatural stuff or like sea beings but that threw me off. 11:07
That beginning!!! IM 😱 SCREAMING
I need thi for Dishonored 2 and Death of the outsider
I honestly find it weird that the misogynistic nature of the golden cat is complained about in this video. I think it actually fits the city wonderfully, considering its the kind of nasty, disgusting place that the overly privileged and arrogant male nobles would frequent, particularly when their ruler is a woman.
PS: sorry, just my own perspective, sorry
A brothel isnt missoginistoc.
Its just very easily a very bad and slave like thing.
And well... the setting is outdated and conservative compaired to today.
But again, I wouldnt call that missoginistic...
It's not necessarily that the *presence* of a brothel in the setting is by itself misogynistic, I just used it to make a point about the worldbuilding overall, but you are free to disagree.
it is certainlly a harsh world for women, a misoginistic world, but through the game series I enjoyed how women also able to fight to power. Like, the two empress, a certain assassin, granny rags, and how the servant ladies on the hounds' pub have their own dignity and try to fight when the coalition decides to kill them all. The sequel allows you to pick a woman, and the last dlc that wrap up the story have female protagonist. I can say that they all don't feel like they are there cause marketing decide feminism is a 'trend' they gotta embrace.@@khanlusa
@@RoseDragonessI think there was a little bit of that in the second game. Just a little. The first game came out only 2 years before GG went down, the second came out 2 years after, meaning that it was being made during the height of contentious discourse about the treatment of women in games.
I recall there being a female guard officer at the beginning of D2 that felt distinctly out of place. The only real reason she existed was to show a woman in a position of power and trust, and then she immediately dies like a minute later. It just feels weird since it’s right at the beginning of the game and going from the last game with zero female guards to a trusted female captain who seems to be something of a secondary personal bodyguard to Emily is very jarring. Especially since all the rank and file Dunwall guards are still Male. I’m pretty sure it has been confirmed that representation was the reason for this characters existence, although I would have to hunt down that statement/quote.
Other than that, the second game does have a larger emphasis on female characters both Ally and enemy, but it doesn’t feel forced. Even if the decision was politically motivated from a dev perspective, the characters are written well and the jump from Dunwall to Carnacca comes with a cultural shift so it’s easy to simply accept female guards and the like from that point on. None of it feels out of place, and that’s the way to go if you want to do representation right.
@@SentientMeatloaf1 super late to this video, but that guard that you mentioned played a key role in the book that proceeds dh2. helped corvo and emily stop an attempted uprising. just thought I'd point that out, should have been mentioned in game or something, shouldn't have to get info from outside the medium.
@@IskandarTheConqueror yeah, I’ve never interacted with the outside materials. It’s a problem every show seems to have that tries to have a multimedia approach to storytelling, it’s not just a Dh2 thing.
Regardless, because of that all I can really put forward is my personal experience with the game (which is the same as most I presume), which is that coming right off Dh1 with an all male guard roster, the character does stand out like a sore thumb, partially due to her gender but also the familiarity with the main cast she seems to show that is not explained in game.
It makes the player feel out of the loop, which I think isn’t good when we are returning to a known setting like this. And it doesn’t do any favors for the drama of her death soon after.
As it is, it feels like the game wants you to care greatly for her loss, but the uninitiated player is just asking themselves “why does the game want me to care so much about this random guard? I haven’t even had time to learn her name.”
Even simply walking through a doorway flanked by a couple of low level guards, one male one female, would have eased the transition greatly imo, and made her presence feel way more natural.
Low Chaos was a better playthrough
ok
So, about misoginy... I realy, REALY dont see it.
The game is building a 19th century feel world.
Yea the World is misogynistic, because it tries to mirror Victorian England. But the Game is not.
The reason it took me soo many playthroughs to get the Clean Hands achievement was that effin duel. Yea. Yea i didnt connect that when you shoot a man in a duel... he technicly dies...
I am not a smart bunny all the time.
Also, i have a hard time playing the game... with powers... Somehow it just ruins the fun for me. So yea, i guess im weird like that..
“For the sake of a man’s character development.” (Don’t mind me I am totaling going to spam your comment section. To many quotable lines from your commentary!!!)
Understandable, thank you 😂