#dishonored 2012

[pearliegates]

Revenge solves everything. DISHONORED (2012) ★ for @mercy-is-the-mark

[hornetkun]

the outsider is a twink with microbangs. send tweet

[graedari]

PART 2 BABEY!!! Enjoy my guyfailure of playing Dishonored while slightly less high than I was last time.

Edited by the beautiful @televy and i am absolutely obsessed with itttt!!!!

[wegog]

[stonecrusaders]

10 year old Emily Kaldwin the First from Dishonored (2012)

I made it just in case anyone needed a transparent picture of her like this.

Please like if you plan to use.

[graedari]

If anyone is wondering how one might navigate Dunwall after smoking some grass... Well... Wonder no more.

Please enjoy pt 1 of the 4/20 Dishonored Stream

[wegog]

Now, Granny Rags has told you a tale, so maybe you’ll tell it to someone else later. Change up the ending a bit if you want. Hmmm?

[agapi-kalyptei]

Ugh I should have made coffee. Third day in a row, I wake up with a headache - not a terrible one, but still rather unusual.

My Hydrasynth is arriving in a few hours!!! Happiness is polyphonic aftertouch and no headache.

I finished Dishonored (2012) yesterday, so a few more thoughts. It’s been almost exactly 7 years since I first played it - my first and only playthrough then was done with no deaths (”Clean Hands”), no power upgrades (”Mostly Flesh and Steel”), and not being seen (”Shadow” and “Ghost” achievements) - thanks to the miraculous power of quick save. (Have to admit, playing it today was a bit easier, with quick load taking 2-3 seconds.)

This time I went with same low-chaos run, but eventually gave up on the Ghost achievement (not being ever seen), as it made the game much more fun to just roll with the punches, sometimes just wasting 10 sleep darts when a bunch of guards start swarming from all around.

The major drawback from mechanical perspective was that there’s only sleep darts and choking as the two non-murderous options (sometimes I say “nonviolent” but honestly I wouldn’t describe someone sneaking up to me and choking me unconscious as nonviolent). The major drawback of the story was the fridged empress, of course, and the flat acting of the outsider (which they drastically improved in D2 and DotO).

Stories of forgiveness and redemption are as appealing to me as any day. Sometimes I feel dumb for wasting time on video games, but I do believe Dishonored still has something to say about the human condition. Dishonored also masterfully foreshadows. While the details of the story felt fresh enough that at no point I went “ugh this old boring cliche of a mission”, at no point I could also say “wow that is so out of character”. The Heart gave you all the information in advance, in small bits, enough for you to understand something from inside the character that they weren’t telling you to your face.

The thing that makes Dishonored a real masterpiece is the level design (in combination with the gameplay mechanics and powers, of course). I had so many good memories of different locations, which felt like they must have been from several DLCs and maybe the sequels - it’s a shock how they managed to craft such large, thematically varied locations that each felt like it had a purpose consistent with the world logic. Having attempted the Ghost playthrough in 2015, and possibly on Hard difficulty, I feel like that affected how memorable everything is - not having the power to see guards through walls meant I had to be hyper-aware of my surroundings instead of just rushing in, looking around, and then running away until the dust settles.

This is a part of the reason why I liked Thief:DS even if it wasn’t universally loved - the world in between main levels just added a lot of context. It wasn’t just “you’re in a mansion, steal everything”. You could see the world affected by your actions.

One minor disappointment in Dishonored is that you can loot everything from everyone and nobody cares (I still left bread to plague survivors because it didn’t feel right to take it) - but otherwise, same as Thief:DS, you can see the world as the context of whatever your main objective is. The game displays the economic, health and power struggles with its level design and NPCs.

Another thing is how they weave the story through lore books and notes - the books are always an optional reading, but the notes almost always have something more directly related to the story, mission, loot, or side quest. It’s never just “the code to the safe is 451”, it’s always some sort of “you idiot be more careful when smuggling the whiskey out, you know where to find the code”. Everything is consistent with the world, nothing is out of place. Everything contributes to storytelling. The starving survivors, the golden bars in lords’ safes.