Alright, so I beat the game today (Low Chaos Ending). While it’s a rather well put together game, I personally found the narrative rather lacking. So I’d like to talk about it, in case that maybe I’ve missed something and the game has more to offer than it seems. But before I go on my little rant, just want to give a little disclaimer: There’s probably going to be a bit of naysaying below. I’d just like to say that I’m not bashing the game for the sake of it, but because I genuinely enjoy good games with good narratives, and I feel the best way for new games to come up with better narratives is to look at what mistakes other games may have made. So here goes:

SPOILERS FOR WHOLE GAME!


1. The Plot

First, let’s look at a quick summary of the game:

You are Corvo, bodyguard of the Empress. One day, the Spymaster kills her and kidnaps the Princess. The conspirators pin the blame on you. You’re rescued by a bunch of loyalists, and you help them take down the Spymaster, who turns out to be behind the plague affecting the city. The loyalists betray you, but you’re saved by the boatman. The assassin who killed the Empress finds you, but really isn’t of any consequence. You escape and kill the loyalists and save the Princess again, and everyone lives happily ever after.

For a stealthy-intrigue sort of game, it’s actually a very straightforward plot. This is not a necessarily a bad thing. I suppose the game was aiming for your standard revenge story, and it would be unfair to draw comparisons to the convoluted web of conspiracy theories featured in Deus Ex, even though the games share the same gameplay genre.

After all, other games get by with a simple plot. The trick is to tell it well, and I think that’s where Dishonored is a bit of a letdown.

2. Mystery

Dishonored really likes telling us stuff, and I’d argue that it’s detrimental to the game. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the most interesting things about Dishonored are the bits they don’t explicitly explain to us – the Outsider, the Heart, Granny Rags, etc.

I mean, we’re immediately told who’s responsible for the Empress 30 seconds after she died. Emily’s location? Given away at the end of the first real mission. The origin of the Rat Plauge? More or less ignored by most of the game’s characters until the Spymaster’s ‘It was me all along!’ speech, by which point I had almost forgotten it was an issue. Even when dealing with Lady Boyle, the game pretty much tells you which dress she’s wearing.

Compare something like Bioshock. Nobody sits down and tells the player character the history of Rapture in one go. Rather, the player has to piece it together from various audiologs to get the big picture. Letting the player slowly discover things and piecing it together organically is to me, IMO, far more satisfying than info-dumping them answers.

3. Telling, Not Showing

More on the subject of telling, the game does a rather weak job in showing you the state the city is in. There aren’t any images that really stick in my mind after the game is over. The city watch is supposed to be corrupt and oppressive? There’s uh…two guards throwing bodies in the river, and uh…threatening the artist’s assistant. Remember Half Life 2, where the Combine stormed the apartment complex near the start of the game? That one scene immediately established the tone of City 17. In Dishonored all we get are eavesdropped conversations where we here how bad everything is, but we never really get to *see* it. And that’s what counts, IMO.

What really got me, however, was the massive info dump Cecila (sp?) gives when you return to the Hound Pits. “They killed everyone (well, two people)! But I guess you don’t get to see it, huh?” I can only imagine how much more effective it would have been if they had actually *shown* Havelock shoot Wallace and Lydia. They could have easily shown it while Corvo was in his half-poisoned state. But apparently they thought it would be better to just tell you about it later, and I can’t fathom why.

4. Bland Characters

The telling extends to the way Dishonored treats its characters, and the end result is that none of them come across as very interesting. We’re told how Pendleton was abused as a child (by his brothers, who the game constantly reminds us are very cruel), but does he really show it? We keep hearing about Martin being a strategic genius, but where in the game does he pull off any strategic brilliance? Even Slackjaw has to keep pointing out how honorable he is, as though the developers don’t trust the player to come to that conclusion themselves.

Piero stands out though, with his peeping-tomery. Maybe there are moments like these for the other characters that I missed. If they are I would like to hear about them.

5. Emotional Weight

Because none of the characters are particular interesting, it’s hard to care about any of them. I feel like we’re expected to find difficulty in the choice of whether to spare or kill certain people, but since I don’t really know about any of them, the choice feels rather arbitrary at best. Daud is probably the worst offender. We don’t know anything about him. Are we supposed to be surprised by his guilty conscience? To do so would require us to have a clearly preexisting conception of him, which the game really gives beyond ‘he stabbed the Empress!’, a character we got to know for all of five lines. I can see what the developers want me to think (I should care for the Empress! Daud must die!), but I think a distinction needs to be made in setting up Corvo should feel, and what the player should feel. While Corvo loved the Empress, I was never given a chance to, and so killing Daud felt meaningless to me.

6. The ‘Twist’

Lastly, I felt the betrayal could have been better handled. It just kinda…happens, and is far from the ‘Would You Kindly’ moment Bioshock gave us. A good reveal, I believe, should make you look back at the rest of the game in a different light, whereas all this did was made me go ‘oh I guess I’ve got more missions’. It doesn’t help that the game sort of portrays it as something they made up along the way than an elaborate plot on their part.

So that’s my opinion. Maybe the High Chaos path is better. But I feel I shouldn’t be getting a crappier story just because I chose not to kill anyone. So maybe I’ve missed stuff. Would like to hear what you guys think.

I think your points are well made, and the weaknesses in the story would bother me more if I put more emphasis on the main narrative. But, much like TES games, to me the narrative is larger than the main story line and is more about the total lore, and on getting to experience it with minimal developer interference like cutscenes. Also the heart of the story for me is Emily and Corvo and I find that pretty compelling.

One thing that bothers me about the world building- the Overseers are so evil, it makes me wonder why the common people put up with them at all, or put any faith in the Seven Strictures. There doesn't seem to be anything positive that would balance out the corruption. I feel like the writers maybe don't understand why anyone would have a religious faith, so the picture ends up being of cartoonish evil without anything to balance it out.

Unlike you, though, I do find the minor characters quite interesting. You do have to talk to them a lot, Heart them, to get all sides, though. If people aren't doing that or don't have a natural curiosity about NPCs' back story, I could see them thinking they were bland. They're really not. Take Wallace or Lydia- they are both a nice mix of failings and empathetic traits.

One small point: Martin is the one who had the idea to bust Corvo out, so he does demonstrate some strategic sense.