I've always played a stealthy, cautious assassin in these games. Now, I'm out for blood.
Small nitpick:
In Dishonored 2, I squirmed when presented with a resolution to a mission that had you going after Kirin Jindosh, one of the technological intellectuals who was predicted to bring about an age of enlightenment, but in reality, gave the ruling class new weapons to squash those beneath them. You can, of course, simply slit Jindosh’s throat and move on—or strap him into his own electroshock machine and administer a few doses. Jindosh doesn’t die, but is robbed of his intellect, doomed to wear the face of a genius but without a brain to back it up. Surrounded by his toys for the rest of time, but with no understanding of what they do.
Wasn’t that one of the only pacifist target resolutions that had a cruel outcome in the same vein as the first game? I recall every other target’s pacifist route usually involved you helping them achieve some sort of redemption or atonement.
I played through Dishonored 1 using pure non-lethal stealth. I was meticulous. the “moral” choices you had to make with major plot characters were mostly bad so I more or less ignored the game’s storytelling and viewed everything at an abstract, mechanical level.
in Dishonored 2 my first playthrough was with Emily and I just murdered everyone and everything. these are people who all actively participated in a coup and they deserved to die. also they set up Emily as being kinda shitty so it felt right that should wouldnt view the coup as entirely her fault and would lash out angrily at those who had wronged her.
plus her lethal skill set was so much cooler than non-lethal. linking a bunch of guards together and turning them all into ash was pretty cool and allowed me to stealth through the entire game without being seen.
Duke Abele was committed to an asylum under false pretenses, and will probably remain there for life. Ashworth losing her powers, but implicated in witchcraft will probably means she hides from Overseers for the rest of her life without any means to defend herself - if caught, she’ll probably be tortured to death. Delilah remains in a fantasy realm, TNG Moriarty style. They’re all better than death, IMO, but not redemptive aside from Hypatia’s (unless you count Stilton as a target, and prevent him from getting framed)
In Dishonored the first I did two playthroughs, one stealthy and then one action. The action one was so much more satisfying for me, and that was probably the point where I realised the fun I have during playing the game is probably more important than whichever ending I get (though in D1’s case, the final mission was much better in high chaos anyway)
This is how I played Dishonored 2, as Emily. At least, the first few areas before I got distracted and stopped playing. After that opening it felt pretty in-character for her to just want blood, these people performed a coup after all.
I should go back to it and finish it.
I just finished Death of the Outsider, and I actually had a little more fun doing it non-violently than I did Dishonored and Dishonored 2.
In Dishonored, Corvo has a really good set of abilities for murder, but because of the Chaos system, you’re discouraged from really taking that to interesting places if you want a good ending. The same thing happens with Emily in Dishonored 2. After seeing how one of the biggest draws to Dishonored was the creativity embedded in the system of supernatural powers, that Arkane decided to just tweak the Chaos system and use it again might have struck some as a little disappointing. I definitely understand that, but at the same time, it feels completely justified.
I’m gonna go off on a little tangent here, so bear with me.
In Bioshock, you’ve got your options to:
A.) Kill none of the Little Sisters
B.) Kill some of the Little Sisters
C.) Kill all of the Little Sisters
One of the biggest complaints I heard in regards to the endings of that game is that if you only killed some of the Little Sisters, you got a pretty similar ending to if you killed them all, just with a sadder voice over. I didn’t understand the fuss people were throwing. Killing just some little girls who’ve been used as experiments isn’t less heinous than killing all of them. It’s still a morally bad choice to make.
So when I look at it like that, I’m less annoyed than most people who disliked that a High Chaos ending is tied to their bloodthirstiness. Of course things aren’t going to go well for the Empire if you’re just going around murdering people for jollies. It also makes sense from a character and story standpoint. An Emily or a Corvo that goes around ruthlessly slaughtering people isn’t going to get their position of power back and suddenly decide to make nice with everyone.
Death of the Outsider doing it in a different way is pretty good, though. Billie doesn’t have the well-being of an entire Empire on her shoulders. She has a fixed goal that she needs to carry out and that’s it. In the end, the only choice that really matters is how you deal with the Outsider, and that’s a really good way to go about it in this case. I went mostly non-lethal, just because Billie’s powers are just so much better for it than anyone else in the series, and it made sense from a story standpoint with the ending I wanted to get first.
I did kill a bunch of people in the last level once I realized it barely mattered, though.
I came back to this thread because I finally started playing more of Death of the Outsider this weekend. I played Dishonored 2 in mostly stealth because I like that style, and I tried it for a while in DotO, but at some point in Upper Cyria I got frustrated, stopped quick re-loading, and got a lot less sneaky. While the guards and citizens I can get the drop on get choked out and put in a closet for face-stealing if needed, I just kill any other guard that gets in my way. The Billie I’m playing knows that there’s no redemption for her, just a job to finish, and wow is that liberating!