The Dexter of Dunwall: Part 1

Corvo's Dark Passenger awaits.

NOTE: The following article contains abundant spoilers about Dishonored, so if you haven't played the game yet, and intend to, best avoid reading.

Part One

Dishonored is a game about experimentation, about exploring its world and finding new ways to play with its systems. Yet it is also in some ways a contradictory experience. In particular,  the morality of the game is frequently at odds with its mechanics. The two broad-stroke methods of playing, action or stealth, sacrifice one in favour of the other. Playing the game as essentially an FPS is fun, but causes high levels of Chaos which inevitably affects the end. Playing stealthily leads to a rosier conclusion, but feels mechanically restrictive, not least because the developers themselves have admitted that the game isn't really designed to be ghosted.

So I decided to find some sort of middle-ground, a framework that preserves Dishonored's "good" ending, but also lets us experiment with the deadlier toys in Corvo's arsenal in a way that isn't random. Turned out, someone had already provided that framework in the form of the TV show Dexter.

This might surprise you, but this isn't an official image.

For those of you who don't know, Dexter is a serial killer who, in the initial premise at least, plays judge, jury and executioner over the city of Miami, killing criminals who slip through the cracks of the justice system in order to preserve the lives on the innocent. And quench his insatiable thirst for blood, of course, but a job's got to have some perks, right?

This concept fits surprisingly well within Dishonored's framework. Dishonored is primarily about assassinating a set number of targets, but beyond that political elite is a whole city filled with guards, beggars, thieves, thugs, courtesans, aristocrats and businesspeople.  So what would happen if we expanded Corvo's remit to include not only the specific targets the game's objectives give you, but every single citizen of Dunwall, judging each one using clues given by the environment, and executing the guilty while sparing the innocent? In what ways would that affect how the game plays? And what kind of city is Dunwall? Is it truly worth saving, or are its plague-infested streets beyond redemption?

That's a very long-winded way of saying I decided to play Dishonored like Dexter for my own amusement, and then write about it for yours. The results are below, in handy diary format.

Prologue: Coleridge Prison

Escape is the main goal of the Dishonored's first level, but that doesn't mean I'm letting Coleridge's Prison guards off the hook. They're all partly responsible for throwing me in jail, and some of them might be complicit in the Empress' assassination. So I'm on the lookout for anything incriminating, a letter, a diary, perhaps even a verbal confession. Until I hear something specific, however, I need to stay quiet, so I sneak through the initial areas, keeping my head low until I come across a couple of guards chatting in a courtyard. They're discussing filing a report over a boiler leak, to which one of them remarks. "Forget it. Just do your rounds. A report is trouble for both of us."

Hmm,  while fraudulently failing to submit requisite paperwork is definitely against prison protocols and therefore wrong, it's not quite the sort of illicit behaviour I'm looking for. I move on until I'm near the exit, where a guard at the security checkpoint grabs my attention.

"I can't wait to see Corvo's head roll!", he yells.

Oh indeed? Well, perhaps it'll be YOUR head that will be rolli-

"Not everyone did, but I really liked the Empress."

Ah, well, that's very nice of you. I can't really kill you for that. Carry on.

I move forward, and escape the prison without further incident. This isn't going as I'd planned. Dishonored's NPCs rarely give enough information about themselves via speech for me to make judgement calls, and the notes, letters and book scattered about the world rarely relate to identifiable, non-plot centric individuals. I need something else to help me out.

And then, while Corvo sleeps in the attic of the Hound Pits' Pub, the Outsider visits him in his dreams, and gives him the Heart of a Living Thing. In Dishonored, the Heart's primary function is to locate runes and bone-charms that can be used to upgrade Corvo's powers. But if you target a person with it and right-click, the Heart will open a window into their soul, and whisper to you their deepest, darkest secrets. Playing Dishonored normally, this doesn't serve much of a purpose beyond world-building. But for me, it's going to prove invaluable.

Reinvigorated, I set out on my first mission to assassinate the head Overseer of Dunwall.

Mission One: Overseer's Hall

Samuel the Boatman drops me near the Distillery District, on the shore of the Wrenhaven River. I've barely scrambled over my first boulder before I spot a watchman wandering around the beach. I focus the Heart on him:

"The pain in his head drives him to do...unspeakable things," the Heart whispers.

I take a giddy step forward, then pause.  What unspeakable things? Are we talking mass murderer here? Or does he eat his own earwax when he thinks nobody is looking? Knowing Dunwall it's almost certainly the former, but I don't know for sure. I think it's time to set a ground rule:

RULE #1 Corvo can only kill targets with clear evidence of wrongdoing. The target must somehow incriminate themselves or the Heart must be specific regarding the crime they have committed.

With this in mind, I simply knock Mr Earwax unconscious, and hope that whoever finds him takes him to hospital and deals with the pain in his head as well as the back of his neck.

I carry on, though it's not long before the next targets present themselves. Above me is a sort of bridge/pier thing, and on the near side two watchmen are throwing the bodies of dead plague victims into the sea. I focus the Heart on them. For the leftmost one it says nothing interesting, but for the one on the right...

"Unless he dies tonight, he will kill twice more before ending his own life."

Now THAT'S more like it.

I clamber up to the bridgepierthing, and sneak under a nearby railway car. Dispatching the watchman will be easy enough from here, a bolt from my crossbow will do it. But there's no way I can achieve that without alerting the other watchman, who will then attack. The question now is what to do with him? Time for another ground rule.

RULE #2 Once a target is selected, Corvo must attempt assassination without alerting others to his presence. If he is detected, he can try to escape or if necessary use non-lethal methods of takedown.

That covers it nicely. I take the shot, and the guilty watchman crumples onto the pile of bodies. The innocent one spins around and immediately charges toward me. I crawl out from beneath the railcar and take a flying leap off the thingbridgepier into the waters below, hiding amid the rocks that line the riverbank. It's enough to convince the watchman that I'm gone.

Success! And that watchman isn't the only one to fall beneath my blade of +1 Justice tonight. As I pick my way over the rooftops overlooking Clavering Boulevard, the wealthier part of the district, another watch officer patrols the street below. I bring out the Heart and focus it on him:

'He once killed a man just for a change of boots' the Heart whispers.

I silently drop from the ledge. Let's see how he likes my boots. PLANTED ON HIS CHEST. Hiyaaaaargh!

I sequester the body at the bottom of a stairway, and make my way toward the Overseer's Hall, the religious institution of Dunwall. There are no further incidents until I reach my destination, where a group of three Overseers are chatting beside the perimeter fence. I bring out the Heart. For two of them it says nothing of consequence, but for the third:

"He has no care if the ones he kills are heretics, or innocents."

We have another winner! At that moment, however, they split off, and my target heads into a heavily fortified guard post. Ugh, this could be difficult.

I'm not an enormous fan of people burning other people, so I'm sure you can guess what happens next. If you need a clue, it didn't involve a box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers."

That's the other intriguing aspect of playing Dishonored in this manner, all the little challenges it generates inside the game's broader scope, how it forces you to deal with the environments, the positions and patrols of guards, in new ways. Even better, The Heart works in a semi-randomised way. It will say specific things for major characters, but for minor characters it has a pool of personality traits that it picks from at random. So however many times you play, the results will never be quite the same.

In the end, dispatching the Overseer isn't as tough as I thought. I carefully weave my way between the patrols of the two other, innocent Overseers, and position myself outside the window slit of the guard post. From here, it's a simple case of teaching him a short, sharp lesson using my crossbow.  Heretic this, here-take that.

I proceed further into the compound, but the Heart finds nothing especially noteworthy, so I focus on completing the mission, assassinating my target, naturally. On the way out, an Overseer is trying to burn the sister of another Overseer on account of her being a witch. I'm not an enormous fan of people burning other people, so I'm sure you can guess what happens next. If you need a clue, it didn't involve a box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers.

Day saved, I head on over to the extraction point, where Samuel waits for me. My tally for tonight is four, a respectable number. Tonight, the citizens of Dunwall can sleep a little safer, now I've smashed a few rotten eggs. I head back to the Hound Pits for a well deserved rest.

Mission Two: The Golden Cat

Dawn breaks over Dunwall. It's a beautiful day, perfect for some early morning vigilantism. My orders are to dispatch two noblemen over at a local bordello known as The Golden Cat, but I'm more interested in doing a little extreme street cleaning.

Samuel takes me back to the Distillery district, blinking sober in the cold light of day. Before heading to the brothel, I decide to pay a visit to the headquarters of the local street gang. Surely if anywhere is going to be filled with bad apples ripe for the picking, it's there.

But I'm surprised to find the list of viable targets is surprisingly short. The Heart is either too vague for me to make a judgment call, and in a couple of cases reels off some heart-rending stories. " "He looked after his brother the best he could. But the boy died of plague at the age of six," it says of one thug. And of another. "He feeds a stray dog every night. He named her Billy." It seems, as with the City Watch, the morality of Dishonored's factions isn't as black and white as it might initially seem.

Still, not all are thieves with Hearts of gold. "He murders for coin," the Heart hisses of one, who conveniently walks over to stand right below me. I swiftly perform a Drop Assassination, and drag the body out of sight. Meanwhile, "A brutal thief" patrols inside the distillery. Dispatching him is straightforward enough, but there are other gangsters patrolling the area, so er...I hide him on top of one of the whiskey stills. Never let it be said that the Bottle Street Gang don't bleed for their product.

Back to the task at hand. Although the Bottle Street are something of a disappointment in the depravity stakes, there are still plenty of deeply unsavoury characters lurking around Dunwall today. In fact, my foray in and around the Golden cat involves so much cleaning up it would take another two-thousand words to go through them all. We need some kind of summary, a montage you might say, and since the Heart of A Living Thing is well and truly on fire today, cue the music, and read on:

·         Watchman on the bridgethingpier, Distillery district. "He has a lock of hair from everyone he has ever killed." I cut his throat and throw the body into the ocean.

·         Watchman on the top floor of Dr Galvani's House, Clavering Boulevard. "When his cousin refused his advances, he sent a watch patrol to beat her to death." Particularly nasty. I load an incendiary bolt into my crossbow, and watch him dance in the flames.

·         Golden Cat's Madam, Private Room, First Floor, "She throws the dead girls in the River." I throw a Springrazor into the room, and close the door before it triggers.

·         Courtesan, first floor, Golden Cat. "She is a plague carrier, infectious but not ill, and she knows it." I slow time, cut her throat, and move the body before the House guards notice.

·         Watch Officer, second floor balcony, Golden Cat. "No one even mentioned the missing boys, he feels confident he has gotten away with it." He hasn't. Knife. Neck. Ocean.

STOP THE MUSIC.

By missions' end, including target assassinations and several other incidents, there are thirteen fewer monsters prowling the city of Dunwall. As I stroll back to Samuel's boat, I feel jolly well pleased with my day's work. That is,  until the mission ends, and the statistics screen rolls up:

Chaos Level: High

Oh. Oh dear. In my efforts to cleanse Dunwall of evil, I may just have doomed it completely.

UNTIL NEXT TIME, READERS.