About Burrows -- it's interesting that the game puts some effort to make him sympathetic. With other enemies it's typically the opposite. With Campbell or the Pendletons, by getting to know them we just get more reasons to kill them. But with Burrows, pretty much everything we can learn is just sad. And one of those things is that he feels remorse. If you spy on him while he is in the room with the Empress’ portrait, you can hear reminiscing about how she was listening to his reports, in a manner suggesting it’s “good old times” for him. And if you visit a shrine after killing him, Outsider claims that Burrows didn’t struggle harder because he thought he deserved to die for what he did.
There was nothing that made me feel any sympathy for Burrows but he did end up being not as bad as the others but to me that doesn't mean anything or change my opinion of him
This has become my new favorite UA-cam series And lorerunner might be the best notherfucker on UA-cam. Celebrates games With positivity but fair criticism. But ultimately about the love of games. You rock lorerunner!!
I think having your tongue ripped out and spending the remainder of your life slaving in a mine is a far worst fate than being kidnapped by an infatuated stalker..
On the topic of innocence -- there's a graffiti inside Corvo's cell, stating that "We all start with innocence, but the world lead us to guilt" (_innocence_ and _guilt_ being underscored).
About the overseer church - I think the word you were looking for is atheistic, or rather antitheistic. The only god they believe in is the one they oppose. Which is different from hammerites (and mechanists) from _Thief_, who oppose the Trickster, but praise the Builder.
Or, more accurately, non-theistic. You do have some real religions that aren't strictly theistic, including basic Buddhism (the varieties that didn't incorporate minor deities or folkloric beliefs, that is - it's a flexible faith in that regard).
I realised the closest thing with a concept of 'evil god' is gnosticism. Atheism (or non-theism) is not about opposing the God. It's denial of God's existence. In Dishonoured's universe existence of god (Outsider, or Void) is a concrete fact. Oversees do not believe in the Void, they know!
Enjoyable as always, sir. One bit worth mentioning, is the Outsider would wash his - if such a qualification even applies - hands of those he gave tremendous power too, which is highly unusual for this type of setting and story. One is given the impression that he is simply board and gives power to those whom he feels would make things interesting. Notably, this does not contradict your point concerning his desire to introduce chaos into a setting but only redefines his motives. Perhaps his is not a desire to see things made better for humanity but simply to see things made less predictable.
To me, the choice of lethal or nor lethal ways of disposing of targets is a way to reinforce how dark and bleak the setting of Dunwall is. That the "good" option is giving these people, as you said, a fate worse than death. On the subject of the Outsider I have heard some suggest that he is the devil of the Dishonored universe, because he tempts you to act violently and wrongly by giving you powers enabling and making violence easy. To me though, the Outsider seems a bit bored. He gives Corvo powers because he sees a man who will play a large role in Dunwalls near future and he's curious of what Corvo will do. In essence the Outsider is apathetic to the world and giving Daud and Corvo powers is his idea of fun.
I think a better explanation of its linearity would be something like- You start at point A and your end goal is point Z. To get to Z you can use any of the paths from B-Y, most paths will eventually lead to Z or shortcuts to get to (Start at A, continue along to B but you find C before reaching D which can take you to X leading to Z, but made much better and less confusing than my bad attempt at giving an example). Obviously there's not that many ways to do it or paths to use (especially in 1 which has maybe 2-3 different paths, 2 has alot more variety) to reach your goal but it's not as super simple as going from A-B unless you're rushing through it. Anyways, great video so far, I haven't watched it all yet but I'm going to sub.
I would love a lorerun of Dishonored 1 and 2! I felt slight Half life vibes on some bits also, I guess it makes sense considering Arkane was working on a HL DLC back in 2009.
CJ Ware Arkane has become one of my favorite studios recently. I love the style of game they make. They are bringing the half-life, bioshock, Deus Ex style of game into the modern era. I loved prey. And dishonored is incredible. 2 was my fave game of 2016. But I think 1 stands slightly above it overall because it has a more cohesive story.
"I was so startled by that conversation and laughed so hard, I actually got caught." Haha, I can just imagine that your in-game character started laughing his ass off and was caught because of it.
When you explained the external area of daud's mission, and your new found appreciation of timestop, it took me right back to the exact same experience! I hate to sound sycophantic but I love your video's, found you about a month back and I'm slowly working through your back cataloge. Similar tastes (minus the star trek), adored the undertale, the witcher 3 and LOTR rumies.
Overall I could not agree with you more. And when I experienced the game the first time I started noticing how playing as the "good guy" makes the game more difficult puts you in front of interesting choices time and time again. Very good Rumination Analysis, I am very much looking forward to the one of Dishonored 2. Keep up the good work ! :-)
About choosing the easy or the hard way, Dishonored partly failed here, because sometimes the non-lethal option can actually be easier. For example, if Burrows fortifies himself in his safe room, exposing him is much easier then killing. It works much better in the sequel, I think.
I think to myself, given my options as the man, what would I rather do with Lady Boyle? The things you can do to your targets, although nonlethal, are enough to destroy their reputation or send a strong enough message that turns people against them. Such as physically branding the high overseer a heretic, and I was surprised he showed no emotional reaction as he was knocked out at the time, I thought ironing the man would wake him up. However, you can come back from most of the nonlethal "takedowns" if they were performed on you. You can exile yourself, overcome your shame, accept sentence, etc. and come out alive, a better person, or you consign yourself to obscurity. Worst case scenario, they kill themselves, which is them left to their own devices if they don't seek help. None of it is legit torture. None of that is on Corvo after the fact, and I mostly chose the nonlethal options not for the moral high ground, but to show the people I'm not some cutthroat asshole. But I wouldn't send a woman off to be some creep's prisoner. I weighed my options in the present moment, and found simply killing her to be preferable to the possibility that she would be made helpless and used in such a despicable manner. Retrospectively, if she had simply manipulated the fool and walked away...where does that leave her and Corvo and the Empress in the future? She was kidnapped and she escaped and she is stronger for it. She remains a threat. I only killed two people in my playthrough of Dishonored, and one of them was Lady Boyle. The other was Havelock. I simply did not trust him not to attack me at the end of his speech. No spoilers for game 2, please.
This video is so well made I love this game just finished my first play through with clean hands Also you can stay in low chaos even with killing the targets
That was a great video, but I would counter two points: playing a slaughterhouse playthough on the hardest difficulty with high chaos is tricky as time goes by, and the difficulty is hard to balance in such an apples and oranges scenario. Also, as far as "you can steal more if you kill people", you can get as much loot on a non-lethal playthrough as a lethal one, a fact highlighted by the "Enough Coin to Dissappear" achievement in the DLC. Still, that being said it's great to see someone with their own takes on the lore and the setting who can talk at length from bullet points instead of needing to write and recite. Nothing wrong with the latter, but it's nice to hear some emotion in a voice reviewing something for once.
I wish to call out the poison. With the delayed onset and the fact it introduced that ambient anti-magic sound, I actually spent several minutes walking around thinking "Why the hell isn't anyone reacting to whatever the hell is going on out in the city right now?". Wonderfully done.
so i have an almost perfect run of dishonored i do my stealth the old fashioned way so doing a level can take me 3 or so hours to play. so it was on the High Overseer Campbell mission and and i got one death just one death in the whole game and it was because the physics engine spasmed out, so my normal method of hiding the guards was a trash bin towards the back of the level (there was like 30 people in there by the time i have finished) but for this 1 guard i had to hide him on the piping that ran through the building i didnt have time to backtrack as there was 3 other guards pathing here, so i blinked up put him down and checked to make sure he wasn't moving (i have seen body's slide befor if they aren't put down right) so i go about removing the other guards and as im passing back through on my way to finish the level i see this Guard on the floor and think that's odd but as he was fine when i hide him and he didnt fall far i didnt think anything of it, i i deal with the overseer in the ""non violent"" way and grab the guard and hide him with his 30 or so friends in that bin, i finish the level save that one guard that was going to commit suicide (which for some reason would also count as me killing him? go fighter) and i find that i have 1 death on the level, i raged a bit as that level was 4 hours work (im heating up now thinking of it) i was not happy in the least i will have to go back at some point and get the clean hands achievement.
I'm late to the party but wonderful video! I remember discovering your channel a few years ago when I was going through a Bethesda phase, but I don't think I was old enough to appreciate the depth of your analyses, and I certainly didn't appreciate Dishonored back then. I wanted to mention that I fully agree with your take on Daud and I just wanted to add that I think the change that the empress had in him wasn't necessarily anything to do with the Empress herself, as much as the reaction from Corvo. In a way, I think the short moment when the two lock eyes is the most important in the game as a whole, DLCs included, as from Corvo's perspective, this hired killer has got past his own defenses as Lord Protector and snuffed out everything he cares for. And, in contrast, Daud sees Corvo's eyes as his world is shattered and realises his mistake. This Empress wasn't some corrupt official or just another cog in the endless cycle of replacable political machinery, she was loved, respected, and in seeing that look in Corvo, he sees for the first time in maybe his whole life what death and, in turn, what life really means. He knows Corvo will stop at nothing to get to him. It's about the consequences of his actions. I think the only thing that really confuses me about his character is the way he treats Corvo when they first meet, tossing his equipment and basically acting as if his life is in his hands. It seems like odd behaviour considering he knows what Corvo is capable of. My only thought is that perhaps he wanted Corvo to kill him, that he wanted to face the consequences of death, but then why beg to be spared? Anyway, great video, I'll be watching a lot more of your ruminations.
Your interpretation of why the non-lethal eliminations are considered morally good in-universe is interesting but I think there’s another valid interpretation that’s not quite as meta. While it’s true that most non-lethal routes result in a “fate worse than death” for the target with regard to their suffering, part of what makes killing morally reprehensible isn't necessarily the fact that it causes suffering but the fact that it’s irreversible. Though likely unintended on Corvo’s part, his non-lethal eliminations leave the door ajar for the target to claw their way back from rock-bottom to a better situation, much like Corvo himself does over the course of the game. What really drives this home is how we see different outcomes of this “last chance” in canon. Campbell fails to grasp the straw he was given. Lady Boyle improves her lot in life eventually. Daud buys himself 15 more years of living and manages to accomplish some meaningful feats after he was spared. I think that was the idea. "Dishonoring" someone by stripping them of their wealth and status is harsh, but it's not inescapable.
I kinda like your old format tho Where u take up more of the screen. Since there is nothing really going on in the background.... I like when you occupied that space. Or even if you had gameplay of the game you're ruminating over running in the background. That would be chill too. Also I'm sure you get this a lot. But your long hair Rocked. \m/
17:50 "The church is trying to oppose progress... please don't turn this into a political debate...." I have a particularly cold place in my heart for those who impose their bullshit on others, and on my non-pacifist playthroughs Overseers had a much lower chance of survival than other hostiles.
I know on the console version (unless it was parched) it was impossible to do no kill because of the section with granny and the gang leader. You had to freeze time and rush past that section for no kill. Any action toward granny registers as a kill. Really frustrating.
Not quite true, as you can also bypass that section by simply not interacting with Granny Rags during the High Overseer mission (sewer gate is not locked in that scenario).
Well duh, the fate worse than death is better in this universe... there's a Hell but no Heaven, so staying alive is the best case, especially if they're evil and would contribute to the Void.
I love how if you brand Overseer Campbell, he shows up as a weeper in the mission where you can go after Daud.
Which is amusing because normally it's killing people that results in additional weepers :)
"And I like that!"
I like you, man.
That simple phrase you repeat, sums up most everything I like about your channel. In a great way.
About Burrows -- it's interesting that the game puts some effort to make him sympathetic. With other enemies it's typically the opposite. With Campbell or the Pendletons, by getting to know them we just get more reasons to kill them. But with Burrows, pretty much everything we can learn is just sad. And one of those things is that he feels remorse. If you spy on him while he is in the room with the Empress’ portrait, you can hear reminiscing about how she was listening to his reports, in a manner suggesting it’s “good old times” for him. And if you visit a shrine after killing him, Outsider claims that Burrows didn’t struggle harder because he thought he deserved to die for what he did.
There was nothing that made me feel any sympathy for Burrows but he did end up being not as bad as the others but to me that doesn't mean anything or change my opinion of him
This has become my new favorite UA-cam series
And lorerunner might be the best notherfucker on UA-cam.
Celebrates games
With positivity but fair criticism.
But ultimately about the love of games.
You rock lorerunner!!
I think having your tongue ripped out and spending the remainder of your life slaving in a mine is a far worst fate than being kidnapped by an infatuated stalker..
At least with the stalker there's a higher chance of escape.
They deserved it , she really didn't.
On the topic of innocence -- there's a graffiti inside Corvo's cell, stating that "We all start with innocence, but the world lead us to guilt" (_innocence_ and _guilt_ being underscored).
This analysis is fantastic! I can’t believe I only found this channel now. It deserves way more views.
About the overseer church - I think the word you were looking for is atheistic, or rather antitheistic. The only god they believe in is the one they oppose. Which is different from hammerites (and mechanists) from _Thief_, who oppose the Trickster, but praise the Builder.
Or, more accurately, non-theistic. You do have some real religions that aren't strictly theistic, including basic Buddhism (the varieties that didn't incorporate minor deities or folkloric beliefs, that is - it's a flexible faith in that regard).
I realised the closest thing with a concept of 'evil god' is gnosticism.
Atheism (or non-theism) is not about opposing the God. It's denial of God's existence. In Dishonoured's universe existence of god (Outsider, or Void) is a concrete fact. Oversees do not believe in the Void, they know!
Enjoyable as always, sir.
One bit worth mentioning, is the Outsider would wash his - if such a qualification even applies - hands of those he gave tremendous power too, which is highly unusual for this type of setting and story. One is given the impression that he is simply board and gives power to those whom he feels would make things interesting.
Notably, this does not contradict your point concerning his desire to introduce chaos into a setting but only redefines his motives. Perhaps his is not a desire to see things made better for humanity but simply to see things made less predictable.
To me, the choice of lethal or nor lethal ways of disposing of targets is a way to reinforce how dark and bleak the setting of Dunwall is. That the "good" option is giving these people, as you said, a fate worse than death. On the subject of the Outsider I have heard some suggest that he is the devil of the Dishonored universe, because he tempts you to act violently and wrongly by giving you powers enabling and making violence easy. To me though, the Outsider seems a bit bored. He gives Corvo powers because he sees a man who will play a large role in Dunwalls near future and he's curious of what Corvo will do. In essence the Outsider is apathetic to the world and giving Daud and Corvo powers is his idea of fun.
I think a better explanation of its linearity would be something like- You start at point A and your end goal is point Z. To get to Z you can use any of the paths from B-Y, most paths will eventually lead to Z or shortcuts to get to (Start at A, continue along to B but you find C before reaching D which can take you to X leading to Z, but made much better and less confusing than my bad attempt at giving an example). Obviously there's not that many ways to do it or paths to use (especially in 1 which has maybe 2-3 different paths, 2 has alot more variety) to reach your goal but it's not as super simple as going from A-B unless you're rushing through it.
Anyways, great video so far, I haven't watched it all yet but I'm going to sub.
I would love a lorerun of Dishonored 1 and 2! I felt slight Half life vibes on some bits also, I guess it makes sense considering Arkane was working on a HL DLC back in 2009.
CJ Ware Arkane has become one of my favorite studios recently. I love the style of game they make.
They are bringing the half-life, bioshock, Deus Ex style of game into the modern era. I loved prey. And dishonored is incredible. 2 was my fave game of 2016. But I think 1 stands slightly above it overall because it has a more cohesive story.
"I was so startled by that conversation and laughed so hard, I actually got caught." Haha, I can just imagine that your in-game character started laughing his ass off and was caught because of it.
When you explained the external area of daud's mission, and your new found appreciation of timestop, it took me right back to the exact same experience! I hate to sound sycophantic but I love your video's, found you about a month back and I'm slowly working through your back cataloge. Similar tastes (minus the star trek), adored the undertale, the witcher 3 and LOTR rumies.
No lethal no powers playthrough of this game took me forever, but it's immensly satisfying
Overall I could not agree with you more. And when I experienced the game the first time I started noticing how playing as the "good guy" makes the game more difficult puts you in front of interesting choices time and time again.
Very good Rumination Analysis, I am very much looking forward to the one of Dishonored 2. Keep up the good work ! :-)
I saw the betrayal coming from a mile away because your allies look totally "not evil'.
Maz345 I saw it coming mainly from reading Havelock's notes after every mission and seeing how his character progresses.
About choosing the easy or the hard way, Dishonored partly failed here, because sometimes the non-lethal option can actually be easier. For example, if Burrows fortifies himself in his safe room, exposing him is much easier then killing. It works much better in the sequel, I think.
Will you be doing a Rumination on Dishonored 2?
That line of the Outsider regarding innocence is my favorite of the game, right after the low chaos ending voiceover.
I noticed the sewer ads too.
I think to myself, given my options as the man, what would I rather do with Lady Boyle? The things you can do to your targets, although nonlethal, are enough to destroy their reputation or send a strong enough message that turns people against them. Such as physically branding the high overseer a heretic, and I was surprised he showed no emotional reaction as he was knocked out at the time, I thought ironing the man would wake him up.
However, you can come back from most of the nonlethal "takedowns" if they were performed on you. You can exile yourself, overcome your shame, accept sentence, etc. and come out alive, a better person, or you consign yourself to obscurity. Worst case scenario, they kill themselves, which is them left to their own devices if they don't seek help. None of it is legit torture. None of that is on Corvo after the fact, and I mostly chose the nonlethal options not for the moral high ground, but to show the people I'm not some cutthroat asshole.
But I wouldn't send a woman off to be some creep's prisoner. I weighed my options in the present moment, and found simply killing her to be preferable to the possibility that she would be made helpless and used in such a despicable manner. Retrospectively, if she had simply manipulated the fool and walked away...where does that leave her and Corvo and the Empress in the future? She was kidnapped and she escaped and she is stronger for it. She remains a threat. I only killed two people in my playthrough of Dishonored, and one of them was Lady Boyle. The other was Havelock. I simply did not trust him not to attack me at the end of his speech.
No spoilers for game 2, please.
When you started talking about the storytelling with the example of painting I thought you were legit talking about Sokolov's painting style in-game.
Talking about difficulty you missed the biggest challenge -- true ghost, meaning no violence whatsoever, lethal or not.
This video is so well made I love this game just finished my first play through with clean hands
Also you can stay in low chaos even with killing the targets
Loved the Rumination Arche!!! Excellent as usual
That was a great video, but I would counter two points: playing a slaughterhouse playthough on the hardest difficulty with high chaos is tricky as time goes by, and the difficulty is hard to balance in such an apples and oranges scenario. Also, as far as "you can steal more if you kill people", you can get as much loot on a non-lethal playthrough as a lethal one, a fact highlighted by the "Enough Coin to Dissappear" achievement in the DLC.
Still, that being said it's great to see someone with their own takes on the lore and the setting who can talk at length from bullet points instead of needing to write and recite. Nothing wrong with the latter, but it's nice to hear some emotion in a voice reviewing something for once.
I wish to call out the poison. With the delayed onset and the fact it introduced that ambient anti-magic sound, I actually spent several minutes walking around thinking "Why the hell isn't anyone reacting to whatever the hell is going on out in the city right now?". Wonderfully done.
so i have an almost perfect run of dishonored i do my stealth the old fashioned way so doing a level can take me 3 or so hours to play.
so it was on the High Overseer Campbell mission and and i got one death just one death in the whole game and it was because the physics engine spasmed out, so my normal method of hiding the guards was a trash bin towards the back of the level (there was like 30 people in there by the time i have finished) but for this 1 guard i had to hide him on the piping that ran through the building i didnt have time to backtrack as there was 3 other guards pathing here, so i blinked up put him down and checked to make sure he wasn't moving (i have seen body's slide befor if they aren't put down right) so i go about removing the other guards and as im passing back through on my way to finish the level i see this Guard on the floor and think that's odd but as he was fine when i hide him and he didnt fall far i didnt think anything of it, i i deal with the overseer in the ""non violent"" way and grab the guard and hide him with his 30 or so friends in that bin, i finish the level save that one guard that was going to commit suicide (which for some reason would also count as me killing him? go fighter) and i find that i have 1 death on the level, i raged a bit as that level was 4 hours work (im heating up now thinking of it) i was not happy in the least i will have to go back at some point and get the clean hands achievement.
I'm late to the party but wonderful video! I remember discovering your channel a few years ago when I was going through a Bethesda phase, but I don't think I was old enough to appreciate the depth of your analyses, and I certainly didn't appreciate Dishonored back then.
I wanted to mention that I fully agree with your take on Daud and I just wanted to add that I think the change that the empress had in him wasn't necessarily anything to do with the Empress herself, as much as the reaction from Corvo. In a way, I think the short moment when the two lock eyes is the most important in the game as a whole, DLCs included, as from Corvo's perspective, this hired killer has got past his own defenses as Lord Protector and snuffed out everything he cares for. And, in contrast, Daud sees Corvo's eyes as his world is shattered and realises his mistake. This Empress wasn't some corrupt official or just another cog in the endless cycle of replacable political machinery, she was loved, respected, and in seeing that look in Corvo, he sees for the first time in maybe his whole life what death and, in turn, what life really means. He knows Corvo will stop at nothing to get to him. It's about the consequences of his actions. I think the only thing that really confuses me about his character is the way he treats Corvo when they first meet, tossing his equipment and basically acting as if his life is in his hands. It seems like odd behaviour considering he knows what Corvo is capable of. My only thought is that perhaps he wanted Corvo to kill him, that he wanted to face the consequences of death, but then why beg to be spared?
Anyway, great video, I'll be watching a lot more of your ruminations.
Watched you initially do some talk on Deus ex and mass effect when i was bored out of my MIND at work, glad to see you're still writing man
I've been waiting for this!
How tf does this only have 13k views
Best moment I found out I killed someone. I figured I could just throw them into some water and he drowned.
Aha time to restart the game
Poisoned the watered down cure without thinking, using a plague infested rat.
I always regard Dishonored as a Count of Monte Cristo type revenge fantasy.
Your interpretation of why the non-lethal eliminations are considered morally good in-universe is interesting but I think there’s another valid interpretation that’s not quite as meta.
While it’s true that most non-lethal routes result in a “fate worse than death” for the target with regard to their suffering, part of what makes killing morally reprehensible isn't necessarily the fact that it causes suffering but the fact that it’s irreversible. Though likely unintended on Corvo’s part, his non-lethal eliminations leave the door ajar for the target to claw their way back from rock-bottom to a better situation, much like Corvo himself does over the course of the game.
What really drives this home is how we see different outcomes of this “last chance” in canon. Campbell fails to grasp the straw he was given. Lady Boyle improves her lot in life eventually. Daud buys himself 15 more years of living and manages to accomplish some meaningful feats after he was spared.
I think that was the idea. "Dishonoring" someone by stripping them of their wealth and status is harsh, but it's not inescapable.
the isle morley is crying in the corner. : (
Amazing and profound, and i'm only 10 minutes in.
11/10 would sneak into his lecture
One hour! :O
46:42 "Poison Was the Cure"
Sad to see that D2 had a minute video compared to this
ua-cam.com/video/7jLloavXE8M/v-deo.html
I kinda like your old format tho
Where u take up more of the screen.
Since there is nothing really going on in the background.... I like when you occupied that space.
Or even if you had gameplay of the game you're ruminating over running in the background. That would be chill too.
Also I'm sure you get this a lot.
But your long hair Rocked. \m/
17:50 "The church is trying to oppose progress... please don't turn this into a political debate...." I have a particularly cold place in my heart for those who impose their bullshit on others, and on my non-pacifist playthroughs Overseers had a much lower chance of survival than other hostiles.
I know on the console version (unless it was parched) it was impossible to do no kill because of the section with granny and the gang leader. You had to freeze time and rush past that section for no kill. Any action toward granny registers as a kill. Really frustrating.
Patched
Adam Loose I did it on my Ps4. So I think it's fixed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not quite true, as you can also bypass that section by simply not interacting with Granny Rags during the High Overseer mission (sewer gate is not locked in that scenario).
Mrtyugata Ahh that is true. Didn t help the first time though.😀
If you were still doing your fanfiction universe, Lore, have you thought about which Hand of the Bastion would step in as Korvo?
Well duh, the fate worse than death is better in this universe... there's a Hell but no Heaven, so staying alive is the best case, especially if they're evil and would contribute to the Void.
Is it just me or is his zip large?