Dishonored just seems to have lost something in its most recent installments. In the original game there was something Biblical hovering just around the edges of your vision - hints that the rat plague had some kind of vicious, retributive nature; whales as both divine beings and the foundation of industry and in fact the whole civilization is run on their grotesque slaughter (the horrified, reverent way the Heart says “They’re burning the whales”); everything regarding the Outsider and the way people react to him with either maniacal desire or equally obsessive disgust; the sacred music fundamental to the creation of the universe which cleans away the primordial forces of chaos and inquity and it hurts you; little things like Delilah’s teeth lengthening as she screams in the split second before her death (and that’s one of the creepiest moments in gaming history because in the rest of the DLC she has it together perfectly, and then you realize how much she’s been warped by being touched by the divine in the midst of her hatred and it came out of fucking nowhere). I was always a bit confused and slightly disappointed about how it never seemed to add up to anything - you get your spunky tween back, end of game. (Also a bit disappointed that you couldn’t Fight the Power and the aristocracy is just the same as it’s always going to be. Yes I did want an expansion pack where Corvo can spend 40 hours arguing the legal precedent for a representative democracy.)
Dishonored 2 just kind of lost that and I don’t think Death of the Outsider picked it back up. Maybe because the book wasn’t good and in DH2 the Outsider all but drops his human background in casual conversation and so the dramatic crux of DOTO doesn’t exactly get off to a good start. It’s hard to put my finger on why.
(Aside from that Billie, who is about to perform an act of contrition on the level of her entire civilization, doesn’t really seem to be developing complex or deeply-felt ideas about compassion and forgiveness - or guilt, responsibility, and condemnation - as we play. She’s robbing banks and mooning over her childhood sweetheart, which is disappointing to see from a middle-aged gay woman who’s had plenty of lovers, not to mention kind of weird. The choices she has to make are both thin on the ground and don’t really have anything to do with these ideas (the game doesn’t even respond to your chaos levels so if you want to kill everybody on the map or spare them the difference barely registers) and her relationship with Daud is just a little thin to carry it all the way to the ending (not to mention they’ve already decided how they’ve felt about each other and what to do with one another), so it’s more like she stumbles on the Outsider and feels momentarily sorry for him, and that’s kind of moving but not as moving as it could be.
Billie is concerned about whether she can change, but whether someone can change isn’t entirely relevant to the question of what to do with the Outsider, where it’s more about whether the world is harmed by having him in the Void and if he has in fact brought evil down on humanity, how responsible he needs to be for that. He’s been doing the same thing in there for four thousand years and he can’t do anything while he’s dead and he can’t do anything as an ordinary guy, so the question of whether he can change doesn’t apply to him. It’s easy to stretch it a little bit to “Do I deserve to live?” and consequently, does the Outsider deserve to live either, but you can’t kill yourself or join a convent or whatever (I guess you could just put the game down and walk away), and I don’t feel like the arguments for the Outsider’s guilt and death are strong enough outside of Daud’s whining. I was never able to wrap my head around the Abbey of the Everyman’s actual theology and aside from enjoying being evil and totalitarian in general what exactly they needed to use the Outsider as a scapegoat for - the evil inside their own hearts, I guess? - and since the atmosphere is lacking in the second generation of games it’s hard to really be immersed in the idea that he’s a truly divine and fearful being that creates real terror in the heart of the religious. I’m not the type to say we have to make the edgelord choices look better in gaming, but it would have made Billie’s choice to love and redeem him in spite of everything much more meaningful.)
Though honestly in a lot of places I can say “Well, it would have been good if…” and they did do something like that. It’s hard for me to say why it didn’t gel.
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
stormborns
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