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[ChairmanPoo]

I wont say any spoilers. Or at least any plot-related spoilers. Mostly. But I will comment a bit on some things that made me thoughtful on this game.

So, I played it mostly non-lethal. Not because of achievements, but because, well... it felt right.

Fact: I'd say that roughtly, like, 10-20% of Dishonored characters are utterly disgusting people (I don't think it's a coincidence that low chaos gives you around that kill percentaje while still giving you the good ending), and about 70-80% more are on a scale from semi-disgusting to flawed. You find about ten percent nice people.

You have two "objetive" ways of judging this. One are documents and diaries you find. Another is the secrets the Heart tells you.

And the thing is, that you find that even amid lower class guards, not everyone is a monster.
You see, most of the time the heart tells you tactic stuff like "Careful, he's armed". And sometimes they tell you that this particular NPC is a murderer, or a rapist.

But sometimes you casually aim the heart at some guard or thug, and you get stuff like:
"He feeds a stray dog every night. He named her Billy".
Or
"When not at his post he searches for his sister, missing a week".
Or
"He visits his father in the asylum, even though the man no longer remembers him"

When you get stuff like that. And stuff like in the diaries, suddenly murdering people out of expedience, even in a computer game in which the main character is basically a hitman (!), gets distasteful. During the game I honestly felt bad about doing it, and in fact went waaay out of my way of killing NPCs. I wasn't a vigilante and wasn't about to judge every character I met, but in a pinch, unless the Heart told me the enemy NPC in question was fucking rotten, I preferred to avoid a kill and search for an alternate pathway, if possible.


It made me think. See, most people are gray, I'd say. There are very few truly shining examples, and far more dirty rotten ones. But few people truly have unredeeming qualities. For instance, one person from my workplace whom I regarded as a dick, recently did something very brave  to try to help another person. Even though it got him in trouble, he did what was right. At a point that noone else was willing to do it. Really, he was the fucking unlikely hero of the day.  Made me reconsider my own attitude.

I guess that my point is that while you have to be wary, and watch your back. But that even though very few people are really good, it's also true that very few people have absolutely no unredeeming qualities. Sometimes you get unlikely heroes. And sometimes you're the unlikely hero, I guess.

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As for the main characters in the game, when they were assasination targets, I tended to gravitate to non-lethal options because for the most part they felt either more pragmatic plotwise, and/or more satisfying


I think my most difficult moral choice was at a point in the game in which you had to choose to kill one of two main characters who were mostly morally bankrupt but which had both done you a good turn (or more) in the past. Not "choose a third option". (In the end I decided to spare the one I felt was the more interesting of the two). I would comment which characters I mean, and which I chose, but it'd be spoiling things.

[ChairmanPoo]

PD: the Heart shtick made me remember this old XKCD comic

[Neonivek]

Dishonored still any real target is always super scummy.

[Majestic7]

I'd actually really want a game like that comic. While I don't think violent games make people violent, I think they can make war seem like a game and make people chickenhawks. So a game where all the enemies are humans and made to see so would be awesome. Something with an awesome gameplay so you'd still play it despite the game telling you that the Wehrmacht soldier you just shot was Hans, 17, whose fiance will be heartbroken by his death and never recover.

Anyway, regarding Dishonored, I found it interesting that the game basically tempts you to murder everyone. Killing people is fun and rewarding; you get to see cool animations, use the environment and most of your abilities help in murderous murderating. Sneaking around non-lethally is less rewarding. I think this is interesting because I think life basically is like that. Being good is harder than being a dick. The only reward you get for being good is knowing it, while being a dick gives you lots of rewards.

[inteuniso]

Rather, killing gives instant gratification while being nonlethal gives a just reward at the end.

Want the best ending? Better stop killing.

[Gabeux]

Nice. And some people think games are just Candy Crush or simply shooting stuff. People get extremely surprised when I tell them the story of To The Moon or the moral dilemmas from Fallout.

I only played the beggining from Dishonored and then watched gameplays.
A game that had potential to bring something similar to that was Watch_Dogs. Of course, even typing its name make me feel bad, they ruined that one.
If they had multiple endings or choices, it would have affected me - because I would have chosen to Vigilante the fuck out of the whole city, but then I'd probably get to a scene that actually made me think. Namely:

Spoiler: If you don't care for Watch_Dogs, feel free to read (click to show/hide)

I can't remember the reason 100%, but there's a part on the plot where the protagonist's (remaining) niece is kidnapped.
He already had lost a niece because criminals tried to assassinate him and ended up killing her instead.
So he goes ahead and murders everyone in the building where the kid's being held.
What he didn't know, is that his niece was held in the security room of the building, and he watched everything from the security cameras.
For some damn reason, I got all thoughtful during/after that scene.

Here's a clip.

Sometimes we make decisions and we don't think about how we'll be seen by the eyes of those who loves us.
Being seen as a monster by someone you love is really screwed up.

[Neonivek]

Sister

[Teneb]

I'd actually really want a game like that comic.

I don't know if it counts, but Borderlands 2, of all things, actually had a gun based on that. It was actually pretty good, stat-wise, so you would end up using it, only to find out about its... commentary.

Sister

Nephew, actually. The sister too, but not in that case.

[Gabeux]

Wow. I mixed up nephew with niece. Brain fart 

[nenjin]

I went a complete no Chaos run. Somehow, I ended up appreciating the subtlety of the choice to kill/not kill a lot less because I simply told myself "no killing."

It also made the game take about 4x as long to finish.

Sometimes I regret the Chaos/No Chaos dichotomy was spoiled for me. I think I'd have appreciated the game more playing it according to my own moral tunings. As it is, everything seemed more two dimensional because I knew the choice was there, and made the "scum bag killer who feeds kittens" a lot less effect in wrenching on my emotions. Sometimes "I don't care what they've done, I won't kill them" is as boring and reductive as "I don't care what they've done, I'll kill them."