kradeelav | dishonored loveblog, pt 1

i… have somehow already made it to the very beginning of “The Flooded Districtr” before writing this all down, oops. Consider it a compliment how addictive this game is? :

The beginning:

loling so much at how hard jess/corvo was hinted in the title card…
having emily play hide-and-seek with you is such a hilariously obvious empathy-gimmick but dammit if it didn’t work on me in less than five seconds… baby darling …
(after the attack) poor corvo, ;_____; tossed in prison and tortured for six months after sure didn’t do him any favors … i’m hanging on that as the reason why all the guards that were actually killed were in this level (trying and mostly succeeding at a low chaos run), corvo wasn’t feeling very merciful and/or not desperate enough to slow down.. (and also probably malnourished to the extreme and wasn’t going to risk that tiny bit of energy left).
someone once said bethseda had a sewer fetish, and between this and skyrim, i’m cracking up at how spot on that is …

dang, havelock is easy to like… i’m going to regret saying this, aren’t i …
- (later edit: FUCK!!!!!)
samuel is always so undeservedly nice ahhh considering corvo’s still miles above him in class. his comments before every mission were super touching, it’s clear he’s definitely thought about what would be hurting corvo the most… and ok now i get why tumblr wants to wrap him up in a blanket ;___;
- ~~(can i kiss him too)~~

i really like the naming conventions of dishonored … honestly, that and the architecture are two things that i’ve been really impressed with - the names fit the personalities of the characters and definitely tells you something about who they are/what their profession is without being anviliciously obvious. that subtle/obvious mix of helping the reader along with storytelling nudges is something i’ve always wanted to be able to be better with, tbh. i like it when stories hint that much.
(speaking of the architecture, i know that it’s technically late 1800′s and you see that more in the residential districts but krad has most def been eyebrow-raising at all the metal girders and the definite 1920′s modern vibe in the overseer’s office/dunwall tower/anywhere where there’s arc pylons etc, like … don’t be allergic to the word diselpunk, lmao.) (whalepunk?) (sry that’s just a pet peeve lmao)

High Overseer Campbell

mmmyas overseer uniforms are hella cute
- ~~what why that’s not the only reason why this level was a fav~~
also why hello martin, my lovely dear, what a compromising position you’re in, let me help you get out~ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
gameplay wise: the whole ‘stealth via line of sight’ mgs style vs skyrim-style 'stealth by dark spots’ really took a while to get used to…. think it was right around here that I finally got the hang of not, like, running away from mobs of alerted guards and/or shanking them all? :’D it’s actually really interesting, the different modes of mind you need to get into between those two types. dishonored-style feels more unfair to the player technically on principle since there’s no way to guarantee that the guard isn’t going to instantly turn around at any given moment, it’s a more chaotic/uncertain feeling - but man, it sure raises the stakes, and makes the whole thing less boring in the long run (since once when you get to lvl 100 stealth on skyrim you’re basically invisible if you’re so much as touching a shadow.)

The Golden Cat

def!! my favorite level!!!!!! (this far, at least)
man that watchtower is legitimately scary, especially after you saw it shoot some weepers … this game really did a great job making the actual environment an enemy, rather than having goblin-mook #1 and #2 attack, and so on - one of the things that made the plauge so … overarching ominous?
- like a lot of times, video games try to do this ~nameless blight-type of threat~ that feels super weak and gimmicky as an enemy other than The Big Bad and doesn’t feel like it impacts anything (much less the actual citizens of the land) other than Conveniently Being A Barrier (By Marking Off Unacessible Areas) to you… but the whole weepers/plauge/rats thing sure made it work, here.
this wonderful fic by @nihilnovisubsole already had pre-endeared me to the cast that inhabits the place and the various shenanigans there, but the levelbuilding was totally on the A+ game. just the right mix of enough hidey-holes to crawl in, but also kept you on your toes with the sheer amount of damn guards around the place… also with the various ways you could take out everyone … (brrr pendleton in the steam room!)
brb sobbing after finding emily’s hiding place ;____;
i’m still slightly annoyed that this game so heavily leans on fridging jess/using emily as emotional bait for corvo but dammit if it didn’t work that damn well on me … ah i’ll give it points for good execution.
- (har har pun intended)
- (god i’m terrible)
( after taking emily back) i feel like corvo’s the dad that just absolutely smugly beams every time emily says something not ~proper~ to everyone, callista, havelock, and samuel included … she’s so unapologetic about everything, it’s so deeply refreshing to see a girl as a character like that…

Lady Boyle’s Last Party

blink+assassinating a tallboy and then possessing-kill a second one five feet away in less than ten seconds was a definite highlight of this game, gad damn. F E A R M E
i love possession so much … i love it i love it i love it, what a hella awesome gameplay gimmick ( … shh it’s the only way i can be manically evil on a low chaos run… I’M REPRESSING THE MURDEROUS INSTINCTS FOR EMILY’S SAKE)
- (I mean, it’s still a gimmick considering how overpowered it is, but man it fits the tone of the game so well… though i almost wish there were some more notes around how it’s been used in bad hands, because surely the Outsider didn’t only ever give that gift to Corvo…?)
man lady boyle is kinky as heck ‘are you going to tie me up?? :DD ’ lMAO… i mean i felt really skeevy doing the non-lethal option on her (giving her to the nobleman dude), but she’ll probably find a way to have him wrapped around her finger, given that comment …
- ( this feels really weird to say, but dishonored feels surprisingly… kink-friendly (more than aware, certainly) than most games? (MGS is the only other one that comes to mind) It does it in a good way, i think - keeps the winks and nudges lighthearted and subtle enough that it’s not going to gross out a rando person, but between the art dealer and his chair, lady boyle, martin lmfao the poor man, uhh some of the maids wrt: the guards, etc … there was a … lot of nods, just sayin’…

Return to the Tower …

jesus christ this level was super easy considering how built up it was (tho i think most of that was knowing how to hack Blink II and go up the rocks/skirt around the watchtower ohohoho)
headshotting the interrogator with a bolt was supremely satisfying, aw yiis. I’M BACK, BITCH!!! HOW’D YOU LIKE THIS YA FUCKER!!!!
- (made sure to only sleepdart the wolfhound, though. poor bby didn’t deserve being with the guy. ;a;)
likewise with headshotting the regent on his bed, no less. best regards, from emily & co~!
herpaderp, right back to samuel~

… and Afterwards

> goes back to the loyalists being full aware of the betrayal
- (i like reading spoilers in advance, it’s a thing)
> u better not have touched emily yet or i’m shankin’ yo ass >:lll
> oh cool that’s some neat poison effects… i-
> WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK SAMUEL, YOU TOO??!!!! I TRUSTED YOU!!!! I’M GOING TO SKEWER YO - oh ah thank god, phew.
- like i still would have shanked you, bro, but i would’ve been hella guilty. ;___;
o shit things really got interesting… i wasn’t expecting daud to come back around here ….
- (daud, was the cage and that line about jess and tossing MY FUCKING STUFF really necessary…)
gosh, this whaling place is beautifully eerie …

… i think the flooded district was one of my favorite levels to play, ever, oh damn.…

damn.

right from the start it’s this …

eerily still, poignant, silent - silent like a tomb, almost, or someplace once sacred - atmosphere.

greens and cold yellows, murky waters… it reminds me of places i’ve seen in dreams, many times. cold, empty ruined husks of buildings, half-flooded and swarmed with pipes and the most breathaking shades of light - daud’s hideout and that whaler building in the beginning in particular tugs at something in a way that only scenes from NGE’s done before.

i took my sweet time through the first half. listening, waiting, watching.

being.

(notably also my favorite instance of ‘having all your equipment taken away from you and getting it back’, hands down - not too hard, not too quick, not too gimmicky - you felt yourself crawl your way out of a grave, even moreso than the very beginning of the game. not quite at the sheer desperate panic levels of tearing through the area without seeing, but more of a lingering knife-focused unease.)

(scavenging from the dead overseers told more of a haunting story of caution than anything could. )

_____

things started picking up once when you got to daud’s hideout, of course - was particularly good (!?!) at zonk’ing out the whalers

(and pleased as punch considering how frikkin terrible i was at the very start of the game, lmao).

Went in leaving it as a mental toss-up about how I was going to deal with Daud - low chaos doesn’t mean no chaos, and me being my vindictive self, was leaning towards a crossbow bolt to the skull (sure, i like the dude but. you are talking about krad the fucking terminator of stealth games - once did a mgs playthrough where the goal was to leave the largest bodycount because i could. nyeh. )

_____

anyway, finally whittled it down to the last two, one, that was with him.

(it’s interesting he didn’t move, at all. he knew corvo was there. daring the man. whether out of spite, out of a desire to be put down, out of a last defiance … it was all of the above. )

( he was so very tired.)

it was the journal that was right on that bookcase, that made the choice for me - (and i can tell right this very moment that his DLC is going to eviscerate and stake my heart in a way that the game proper never finished the job at, oh dear god) - and it was surprisingly easy, nicking the key and coinpurse, and walking away.

…. surprisingly lifting, actually.

…

never felt that way about an objective before.

__________________

exiting the flooded district was … different, more blurred.

(i thought the whole granny rags thing was clunkily done, to be honest, especially with what went on before … came out of nowhere, for one, and you really should’ve gotten more of an unsettling vibe about her, not just in dialogue but weird little UI things that would go wrong - (kinda like the geth primes in ME2, that would distort your map? noise, perhaps. maybe a much much larger/more distorted silhouette when you used Dark Vision/II? that would have been an ‘oh shit’ moment, and fitting with the overall vibe of everything being turned upside down.)

and ah dang i just remembered i forgot to free slackjaw. >_> sorry dude.)

there was one other thing that got another gut reaction from me, though.

i remember hopping through surprisingly tall apartments, industrial-half-sunk buildings again (goddamn the levelbuilding team needs to get an award just for this area alone), getting a rune, crossbolt’ing a weeper (always tended to do mercy-kills on weepers), and then examining what looked like a … rail? underneath, with a surprisingly open gap and trying to figure out where the devil the obvious pipe-pathway was -

(dishonored veterans know exactly where this is)

saw the train-cart(?) thing roll up. dump something out.

oh jesus. jesus.

(saw the bodies fall in the water - what the Heart had mentioned before. in a strange way i had assumed that the comment would be about more of a …

…

well.

- a less … industrial and profane version of how they got rid of the plague victims, at least.

… it very carefully not overdone. (the set designer in me was nauseatingly impressed). i can tell you right now that the level-designers studied some truly horrific things to get that vibe and implication across the way it did.)

…

… that scene’s going to stay with me for a bit.

______

and oh of course we’re back in the old dunwall sewers.

of course.

… here we go again, back to the game proper.

time to get emily back.