#turnabout rambles

First off, the usual disclaimer that I did enjoy DH2. I thought it had some very interesting level design ideas with the clockwork mansion and crack in the slab, the new powers were very cool and fun to use, and it polished some of the rough edges from the first game’s mechanics. It’s just the story and such that disappointed me after how much I loved the first game.

So to start off here’s some of the things I found disappointing or frustrating (and keep in mind these are all just my personal feelings on the games):

“Spoiled rich person learns a lesson from poverty tourism” is a plot that gets on my nerves in general and that’s more or less what happened here with Emily’s story

Like, not to disagree with an anti-rich-people story but the first one did a much more poignant job of highlighting greed and corruption and letting you be the one actually fighting it, rather than putting you in the position of perpetuating it. It felt like the first game showed it, while the second game just preached about it.

Boy this sure did feel out of character for both Corvo and Emily. Emily watched her mother be murdered at ten years old for the sake of political power, and then was held hostage for six months while being told her father was executed for her mother’s death. She got a firsthand view of how much the people of the empire were suffering during this time, and then when she finally got rescued she was immediately kidnapped and used as a pawn again by yet more schemers after her mother’s throne. You cannot tell me that’s a person who would grow up to be spoiled and carefree and complacent with their position, or someone who wouldn’t give a shit about their people. Yes, I know that she was a headstrong, rebellious kid with an adventurous streak, and I’m not trying to claim she wouldn’t probably still prefer, on some level or another, to escape to the rooftops with a sword rather than being stuck in court. I’m just saying that kids grow up and change and whoever wrote the second game seems to be stuck on taking ten-year-old Emily at face value for her adult self’s personality too, instead of considering how the first game’s events might have actually influenced her. She’s got more than enough firsthand experience to know to be wary of scheming nobles. (Also I definitely got the feeling, playing the first game, that at least a bit of how Emily behaved at the Hound Pits was her trying to cope with what was happening.) You also can’t tell me that Corvo, father and royal protector of the current empress, man with the most reason and justification to be paranoid out of everyone in the whole damn empire after everything he’s been through, would be so negligent in paying attention to a coup that the first mission claims pretty much everyone in Dunwall knew was happening. 

Building off of that, in general it felt like the first game wasn’t allowed to have much of an impact. It pays lipservice to Jessamine’s death, and acknowledges Corvo having been a badass back then, but that’s....about it? Like I said in the other post, the first game felt so saturated in grief, both for Jessamine and for everything else going on in Dunwall, that it really influenced the overall tone of the game. The second one kinda feels like the first one never happened, or at least didn’t have any lasting influence on the characters or world, and it’s kind of jarring going from one to the other.

So with all that said, here’s my idea for a different DH2. Still using Karnaca as the setting and Delilah as the primary antagonist, just...different. 

"Delilah wants to use a reality-altering painting to change the world into her vision of it” is still a plot point. Except, instead of the end of the game, it’s the beginning. It’s a logical extension of her actions and powers during the Daud DLC - the plan to use Emily’s painting to take over almost worked til it was stopped, so there’s clearly potential there. She’ll just think bigger, more direct this time.

The game starts on a ship. Emily and Corvo are en route to Karnaca for some sort of diplomatic mission. We get to know them a little bit during this opening trip: Emily isn’t an absent, complacent ruler, she's a young woman who inherited a difficult throne as a child, after a series of traumatic events, and now she's trying hard to live up to her mother's legacy and prove herself worthy to an empire that still seems to only see her as the child she was during the interregnum. She’s doing her best, but she’s insecure about all of that, and spends a lot of time frustrated with the back and forth scheming of the nobles, trying to please everyone instead of putting her foot down and getting things done. Corvo is trying to keep her safe where he failed Jessamine, but court still isn’t his preferred arena either. 

The night before they’re due to arrive in Karnaca, we start getting hints that something is...off. Strange dreams, maybe?

They land in Karnaca and things are different than expected. But they don’t get time to look around, because there's guards there to arrest them, claiming they’re wanted criminals. They’ve got music boxes or something that can strip Corvo of his powers, and only one of them gets away while the other is taken. The one that gets away is stuck alone, disoriented, and hunted in an unfamiliar city - even if you play as Corvo, things are different than he remembers. More different than can be explained by just time. 

They meet Meagan Foster. She takes them to meet a group of ex-whalers (the player character doesn’t know who they are). They’re a group that got back in touch with each other in Karnaca after Daud left and the whalers split, and they still do shady shit, but these days it’s generally more smuggling type stuff and they’ve put down the assassin blades. They’re the equivalent of the loyalist home base in this game. Meagan is still the Samuel stand-in, taking the player places and narrating things as necessary. 

Information is shared and the player finds out that somehow, the world is changed from what they remember. Delilah is the empress, here, come by it what seemed like legitimately at some point in the 15 years between Jessamine’s death and now, and Emily and Corvo are wanted criminals. No one seems aware of the change except for the player and the whalers (who only remember it because of their experience with magic, though the player character doesn’t learn that til much later). 

Clearly it’s Delilah who did something, because she has magic, and she’s the one on the throne now. 

The Outsider shows up in their dreams that first night in the new world, but something is clearly wrong in the void, too, and it seems like he’s barely capable of reaching out and communicating with them. He offers the mark, but disappears before really getting a chance to explain anything. 

The player goes through the game now with the goal of finding out what happened, how it happened, and how it can be fixed. DH2 and DOTO explained a lot more than I felt they should’ve, at times, and I preferred how the first game balanced worldbuilding with mystery. So, let things be explored and figured out along the way. 

Things are real bad in this universe. From Emily's perspective as she goes through the game, we get commentary questioning whether or not she was doing a good job, and comparing it to how things are in Delilah's world. There’s lots of corruption and poverty and people suffering, and the question "is this just Delilah's world? How much of this going on in mine too? In trying to navigate court instead of putting my foot down, was I failing my people in the end after all? Would it have been better if my mother was still the empress?" The difference between this and what DH2 did is that she was trying, there was just a lot hindering her, including her own doubts. In this one, those questions aren’t preaching, they’re a sign that she does care and is pained by the idea of her people suffering like this again, by the mere possibility that it might not be just Delilah’s world. 

Corvo and Emily have distinct perspectives, not just the same lines very slightly altered. 

The bloodfly infestations are either 1) a natural thing that wasnt supposed to turn ugly like this and has been affected by Delilah’s magic, or 2) wholly the product of unnatural magic. None of this "we need them and they’re always like this, just not this bad" stuff. if you're gonna repeat the plague motif, make it actually horrifying, like the rat plague was. In fact, there’s obvious magic influence here and there in general - maybe not quite as thorough as at Brigmore Manor, but it’s present enough to give you the creeping feeling that things aren’t right, here, visual confirmation of Delilah’s influence, that things have been changed and twisted from their normal state of things. Hell, maybe this is where the hollows from DOTO come in, the original world and Delilah’s altered version of it trying to bleed through each other in some spaces. Maybe that’s a different explanation for the crack in the slab mission, even. 

Actually, if you’re gonna repeat the plague motif, lean into the similarities between the rat plague era and now. Have them be reminded here and there by things they see, recount what happened and how terrible it was, compare it to now. Give NPCs lines about the comparison and how some of them left Dunwall only to be stuck living through something like this a second time. Let the first game have happened and had an impact, folks, cmon.

On a similar note, if you’re gonna keep Delilah's backstory the same when we finally learn it, let Emily and Corvo get mad about it. They lived through the first game - what right does Delilah have to talk like she's got a monopoly on suffering and that's why she should have the throne?

Delilah's mistake was assuming Emily was a sheltered child who wouldn’t come for her, rather than someone who's already been through a lot and come out on top. That was almost a satisfying thing about the second game but they messed up the execution of the whole concept and I want it to actually pay off. 

I’m not sure if the targets in this one should be the same or how much should change there. Honestly, except for Breanna, the targets in DH2 felt a lot less relevant to what was going on than the DH1 targets did, like...why are half these people even at this ritual? But for simplicity’s sake let’s keep it as close as we can, while also adjusting for the fact that this reality has been tailor-made for Delilah and her buddies. Perhaps the Duke is only the Duke here because things were rewritten to put one of Delilah’s allies in charge, and it was supposed to still be his father. Hypatia isn’t the crown killer (what even was that plot point honestly), she’s the doctor they found to help Delilah recover after her time in the void, and now they’ve rewritten things to imprison her in the institute to keep her quiet and out of the way, and you get wind of it and go to see what she knows. Etc. Is Sokolov involved in this version of things? I dunno! But speaking of Sokolov I want some sort of explanation for where the other surviving loyalists are, damnit. 

Delilah did something in and to the void, just like in canon, but it actually has a visible impact here (beyond just a total aesthetic redesign of the void between games that never gets commented on). The void is struggling under her influence when you find shrines, and you never know what you're gonna find at one of them, or what the Outsider is gonna be like, if he even shows up. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the way DH2 gave him a human backstory, because I liked the mystery there behind what he was and what the void was, but this is open to go either way, either with Delilah finding his death site like in canon, or some other way she found to influence it. I’m not sure how the progression would go of how the void changes over the course of the game, but it would be cool to get to help/save the Outsider in some kinda way. 

Finding Corvo's childhood home should have more impact. Let it be like when you find the saferoom in Dunwall tower, in the first game. A temporary refuge in a dangerous place, full of obvious memory and grief - not so much for the time spent here since that's so long in the past, but for all that's been lost, everything they've been through and are in the middle of going through. Especially if you're playing Emily - this is the home of the father she just lost.

Let the heart be vague and ominous again, and let our interactions with it be sad, especially as Emily! I’m still messed up about the first time I heard "the doom of Pandyssia has come to the city" in DH1, and the lines about the floodwaters and the plague victims, give me stuff like that! Especially in a world that isn’t meant to exist the way it currently is, where things have been twisted almost beyond recognition. And give me lines that remind Emily of the mother she lost and how this is the first time she's heard her voice since she was a child!

Give us more on citizens and how they're suffering in this world, the way the first game showed us plague victims who died in each other's arms, journals from the desperate and dying, living people sent to the flooded district. Let it be a reminder to Emily why it's worth it, why she has to change the world back and what she wants to be fighting for when she gets her throne back. Another reason to question - has she been doing all she can? (Alternatively, a source of righteous fury for high chaos Emily.)

This is a journey of self discovery for Emily, either low or high chaos. It's about realizing she hasn’t been doing all she could, despite her intentions, because she's been trying to please everyone and in the end it still wasn’t good enough. She needs to stop living under her mother's shadow and come into her own (and the heart plays a role in this epiphany, probably. This might actually come to a head when she has to let her mother's spirit go, if we're gonna keep that plot point.)

High chaos Emily is similar but in a more "alright no more nice empress" kinda way whereas low chaos is more about conviction to put her foot down to do what's right.

You meet people during the game who in a good ending become part of her new council. Common people, who are more in touch with what needs to be done. It pisses nobles off but she's determined to do better, after everything. It helps both her and Corvo come to terms with the whole safety thing, because you can't ever make sure you're totally safe but you can try to make sure the empire can keep going should something happen to its ruler.

In fact, part of Corvo's perspective on this game probably would involve him still wanting to keep Emily out of things for safety's sake, and wondering if sheltering her from knowledge of magic and such contributed to this situation.

When it's revealed who the whalers are, it's late in the game after we've already come to like them a lot. They don't betray you like the loyalists did, but it should still feel like a punch to the gut for Emily and Corvo.

They don’t know where Daud is, haven’t seen him since the whalers disbanded .

Billie talks about that whole thing, and it's complicated. She decides maybe she should try to find him, after all. Cue DLC, which is about finding Daud, and helping/saving him, and the two reconciling and Billie finding some kind of...if not redemption, then absolution. A parallel to the first game’s DLC, Billie getting an arc like that in Emily’s game the way Daud got that arc in Corvo’s game. Y’know, instead of DOTO going and undoing all of Daud’s character growth. 

I know I’m kind of handwaving the actual mechanics of who the targets are and how you actually go about uncovering what happened and how you can fix it and take down Delilah in the end, but this is all just. Concepts. If I were to try to write this as a fic or something I’d have to actually sit down and work out all those details, but for now this is something that’s just been living in my head since like an hour after I finished DH2 for the first time a couple years ago.