a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.
oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.
dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses
tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.
essay/long version under cut >
recap: what's dishonored's deal
[skip if you want]
dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'
similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.
daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.
dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.
in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).
bringing us to dh2 -
what's emily's arc
emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.
emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:
a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND
the crux of her storyline.
at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,
throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:
'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation
emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.
does emily become a good ruler
we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.
drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.
the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).
how does the game show it
you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.
to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.
this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.
coming of age
how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.
emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.
worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.
while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.
an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.
so what went wrong?
i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).
i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.
it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.
what are the upsides here
changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?
it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!
i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?
while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.
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IF WE ALREADY HAVE SPYPER AND SNY💀
(this sny and spyper render is not mine btw i found it on pinterest, couldn't find the og artist)
GET READY FOR MY SIDETRACK ABOMINATION CREATION HEADHACK MUTILATION I CALL THE
SCY AND SPOUT💀🤩
the head hacking gave me a migrane🤩🤩
my gawd SCY (scout) HAS NO DAMN BUSINESS TO LOOK THIS DAPPER AAAAAAAAAAAAAA💖💖💖😭😭
(I GAVE HIM THE SLAY LIGHTING 💖💖💖💖⚾🧢)
I AM MENTALLY DISTURBED MY SPOUT (spy)
HE FEELS WRONG😭😭
I ADDED A FRIED CHICKEN, HE STILL FEELS WRONG😭😭💀😔
(ngl i wanna make more renders of him now💀🖐️)
-----INCOMING TEXT DUMP, IMAGES STOP HERE--------
I also assigned somesort of au lore👁️👁️ bcuz why not
(also i suck at character building I just wanted to pour my random thoughts hoohaa)
- IN this universe :
spy has scout's personality (God forbid) - so he is now a snarky, loud arrogant lousy french con man who thinks that he is a gentleman and could seduce anyone, (he's just horrendous, much worse than scout)
he has less eccentric tastes than the og spy, he is a football and baseball fanatic, he is known as the kookie european who dedicates his time to geeky shit (scout-like shenanigans) bro doesn't know what table manners r
but by some miracle, scout's ma found him cute?
he pulled a joseph joestar🤩once scout turned 2, he wasn't ready for the child support and fatherhood
TLDR; SPOUT (spy) IS A (40+yr Old) MAN CHILD, BUT WITH THAT FACE NU UH😭😭💀
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Scout has a bit of spy's personality but with a mix of that noir-ish vibe ya know??💀
he grew up knowing his father left his mother, and this made him spiteful, he pushed himself to become a man of classy crimes like espionage, smuggling, heists and infiltrations for his motive is to provide for his financially struggling mother, later on these activities became his hobby to get to elite places, drink the finest wines and steal from the elites.
he's a lady's man just like og spoi, he is a young rogue with a calmer demeanor
TLDR; he's serious and dapper now🤩😇he's still snobby and arrogant but in a classy way
(yeah i didn't think scy (scout) through o well)
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Why did i switch their personalities??
BECAUSE IT FUNNI💀
BRO IMAGINE SPY GETTING HYPED OVER FRIED CHICKEN SAYING IT IS AN AMERICAN TREASURE TO THE FRENCH
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WILL WOOD FANS!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you a Average will wood fan? Maybe not so much “average”, and way past that? Have you listened to three songs by will wood, or literally all of them that have ever existed? Do you wanna find people like you?!
Well *sits down and spins in my silly rolling chair* Maybe you should join the sunshine cult ‼️
The sunshine cult is a “cult” surrounding Will Wood, Will Wood and the tapeworms, and pretty much anything related to Will. No, Its not exactly a CULT, more like a silly group. I started the cult on Pinterest out of all places, and that got mediocrely far. However, I know that some people here would be interested in this.
You don’t need much to join the cult itself. All you really need to do is ask me, and (most likely) I’ll let you in. However, I find just the group on its own is really boring in theory. Because of this (not so really a) dilemma, theres also a discord server !!!
“How do i join the discord server?”
Usually if you ask to join the cult, I’ll ask you if you’d want to join the server as well. Its not mandatory to do so, but I find the server to be a lot of fun. If you do want to join the server, Send me an ask or dm me that you’d like to join the cult & server with your discord user. I Don’t plan on linking the server here, as usually links expire and I don’t want to keep renewing it. Also, I find it more easier to just send whoever wishes to join the link directly, as its what Ive been doing ever since i made the server.
Slight note - I dont really have much experience with discord servers so it may not be the best discord server out there. Also, While the servers mainly fun and games, please follow the rules in the server. Last thing I wanna do is ban or kick one of you silly people here.
And thats all !!! If you have any questions, or if you wanna join, let me know !!! Im sorry if this really doesnt make sense or if my words are all messed up, its 5am as im writing this and im doing a all-nighter lmfao
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