This is a video examination and critique of the Dishonored games by Arkane Studios. It looks at what makes them compelling as stealth titles, and why they have such huge appeal outside the subgenre. Spoilers throughout.
The industrial revolution in the real world was actually begun upon whale oil, and it was used as fuel for lamps, but also machinery. whaling was fairly quickly banned, as the animals were going extinct, which is when coal and oil became the most popular (or only) sources of fuel for industry. dishonored is not as far fetched as people think, at least in terms of the industrial revolution. the extraction of the whale oil was even carried out on ships, which is what inspired the massive whaling ships of dishonored.
and the steam engine came about originally as an attempt to pump water out of a mine more efficiently. The first ones ran on solid fuel, oil came about pretty far into the industrial revolution. But when it did - yep, whales.
the industrial revolution didn't start with whale oil it started with the steam engine and coal. whale oil came much later and the scale wasn't the same as in dishonored... though it was horrendous in reality aswell. It took humanity about a hundred years to hunt whales to extinction, the Empire in dishonored managed that in about 3 decades, just for comparison.
The game really got me when I was about to slash the throat of one of the guards, somehow I used the mechanical heart almost by accident and it told me that he was the last in his family, everyone else had died of the plague. I genuinely felt guilt and let him go.
Before the release, I was sure it would be a shitty clone of Bioschock, Assasssin's Creed. But Dishonored turned out to be one of the most atmospheric and emotionally touching worlds I've experienced. The game design and art touched something in me from the teen years, when I often had a feeling melancholia and mystery.
Jindosh's non-lethal is a sort of redemption too. If you pay close attention to the news articles it becomes clear that while before he was a tyrannical psychopath ruthlessly experimenting on his servants, after what you do to him he becomes extraordinarily kind hearted and empathetic towards others.
Michael Madesen has a cool voice so it was cool to actually have the characer talk. i was dissapointed in Death of the outsider that you are stuck as billie
Also with Delilah at the end, the point was that while her grievances were real, and she's powerful as an individual... She greatly overestimates her ability to successfully administrate a kingdom and in so doing ends up causing far worse problems than the ones that caused her to seek the throne in the first place. It shows an overall lack of empathy and megalomania, a sort of dark reflection to Emily's well intentioned but neglectful rule
your summation of dishonored 2 is perfectly put - storywise its flat but mechanically it surpasses the original. I love the first game, but I have happily sunk 70 hours into the sequel and played it through multiple times, with each playthrough taking a different approach, from high to low chaos, to no powers and full ghost. The flexibility of the world and the systems are staggering, as is the lushness of the art and environments. A truly wonderful game and amazing piece of design that I continue to unpack and discover new and interesting toys and styles to engage with.
I feel the same. I love D2 much more than the first. I personally think that the story is the best in D1 DLC, D1 has a pretty decent story, and D2 story is quite bland. However, the atmosphere is great, and gameplay is absolutely fantastic. Number of ways to achieve your goals is astounding!
This is basically why I have something like +100 hours in Prey. The story is rather simplistic and even annoying at places, but the game mechanics is so profoundly interesting that I've played the game through and through in almost every way possible. The space missions in Prey still get me every time.
@@seva4370 The most problematic part of Dishonored 2's story is that it's just a rehash of the Knife of Dunwall DLC. Delilah tries to overthrough Emily, causes chaos and at the end gets stuffed in to her own painting, rinse and repeat. with the only difference being that in the DLC she tried to take Emily's body and in 2 she tries to take the throne off her. The reveal that she is Emily's aunt retroactively makes that particular story point quite icky and messed up as she is trying to get what she wants by taking over her own nieces body...who at that point is a child.
exactly this! DH2 really could’ve been a masterpiece if they spiced up the story, and came up with something new instead of recycling delilah, sokolov, and billie lurk. I don’t mind them bringing back a couple old characters but Delilah absolutely should’ve been done away with and they way they tried to make sokolov look like a lovable uncle to emily when he was canonically an asshole sleazebag in the first game was just weird. But the gameplay is phenomenal. Very fluid and with many massive improvements from the first game that make both high chaos and stealth a lot more fun. The world looks amazing in Karnaca with beautiful landscapes.
I love this channel because you spend so long talking about why a game is great, which is much harder to communicate. I'm tired of longform videos that are just nitpicking mechanics, if you spend 50 hours with any game its clear you'll find mechanics that don't work as well as they could. The parts of a game that work well and actually feel good aren't quite so easily evident and you do an excellent job of identifying and analysing why they work so well.
I'm addicted to Dishonored. Its not like those games when you finish it, it becomes boring. For some reason, I always find it fun and interesting playing in a single level again and again for hours
Hi Noah, is there any chance we could address this? You're video essays are excellent and it's a pity if some people are missing out. I'd be happy to help out if I can.
@Kim Jong Børre I'm not sure if it works like that or how RU-vid handles content creator comment notifications but I'm here to add my voice to the chorus.
If you go to your settings, you can turn on Closed Captioning which I'm sure you already know. They also have automated captioning which tries to translate what Google thinks it sounds like they are saying. It's not the most accurate. You probably already know that stuff, and maybe it doesn't work for this video. Sorry if I'm just repeating stuff you've tried.
welcome here ! take a chair and a cookie sir ! enjoy your stay and have a tea or a good drink, listening to these wonderfuly long game analysis ! (also good job on your channel ! love your stuff too. I run a french gaming analyse/news webzine were i share your and Noah's content : facebook.com/tuyatrojouey/ ! )
i never placed non lethal Corvo as a good guy per se, just a way more controlled one. high chaos Corvo is all rage and bloodlust. he wants his revenge and anyone between him and it are just more lambs to the slaughter. low chaos Corvo is all about tranquil fury. he's pissed and *will* have his revenge but he's more sensible about it. he doesnt need to kill random guards because they never did anything to him. low chaos corvo has enough ice in his veins to direct his rage instead of wildly discharging it as well as to realise that a blade to the spine is in many ways an easy way out. low chaos corvo wants his enemies to suffer, but just his enemies. high chaos corvo wants their death and he wants it now, so you better stay out of his way or die. the most mercyful of all possibilities would be a Corvo that is stealthy but lethal to his targets. no collateral and the people that need to be taken care of for the plot to progress are dealt with quickly and with relatively low cruelty.
That's exactly how I play him. Lethal but hidden, picking enemies off one at a time, or in quick succession without giving anyone involved enough time to react. I usually spare the guards if there are civilians nearby since it would leave the chance of them getting hurt up in the air. But if there are no civilians, it's free game.
@@Zayindjejfj and that's exactly one of the chaos systems' greatest failures, because if you do that - as I did - you're still treated as a murdering maniac.
@@ExValeFor I know. For example, the wailer assassins and guards killing plague victims shouldn't be so much of a punishment. They're actually deserving of punishment. They contributed to the destruction of Dunwall's society. But don't worry! I'm the REAL bad guy cause I decided to use rat swarm ONCE.
@@Zayindjejfj My favorite (not) part is how they made it even worse in Dishonored 2. Carnaca is an even bigger shithole, and using the Heart you get a concrete characterization for each enemy if you decide to spend time tagging them. I played through the game making sure only to kill the really fucked up ones, but all of it was just set dressing. I think you get slightly less chaos added if you kill the ones the Heart decides are bad, but it's a miniscule difference; I gave up on trying sometime around the Jindosh level because every other level gave me a High Chaos rating.
@@ExValeFor If you got a High Chaos rating in every mission before the Clockwork Mansion then you were getting spotted/killing too many, not hard to get Low Chaos even with killing, just don't kill civilians.
I agree completely with the conclusions here--especially about how extraordinary the visual storytelling and moment-to-moment experience is, vs. how disappointing the story is. (My personal read is that the decision to offer 2 protagonists, while SUPER cool & one I was grateful for, because I like being able to play as a woman, had a negative impact here. It meant they couldn't structure the game as the player character's story, because there was no one player character. So instead the whole game is basically Delilah's story.) Anyway. Particularly good video. But I keep seeing people mocking the idea that whale oil could be the basis of this country's economy & it drives me batty. There was a brief period of time--in our real 19th century, so parallel to the game's setting--when the world ran on whale oil. Whale oil really WAS our best fuel. This is what Moby Dick is about--these sailors are going around the world to kill sperm whales for the OIL, spermaceti, which was brought back to be burned as fuel in lamps, etc. There's a really great book, truly a FANTASTIC book, that explains the context a little bit better--Nathaniel Philbrick's IN THE HEART OF THE SEA. Ignore the movie which everyone says is bad. It's non-fiction & started in Nantucket, the entire economy of which was built around WHALE OIL. Fortunes were made, whole American dynasties born, out of whale oil. It's a real thing people. It sounds far-fetched but, as we are all learning every day when we turn on the news, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
@@NShomebase Considering the oil literally glows blue and powers giant walls of arcing electricity and other mechanical marvels, I think this is completely fair to assume.
When fighting the Lady Boyle I choke her to put her unconcious....the thing is that made her fall the flight astair Later I had to drop her on the ground to open the door to the basement...she received the door right in the face Later a bug with me trying to use blink to go through a window had me launch her like a baseball through the room She stil lived
I love Dishonored 2 but somehow it overall feels very different from the first game. I can't quite put my finger on it but the best way I could describe it would be, Dishonored 2 has the gameplay and Dishonored has everything else.
The Jindosh riddle does actually have a pattern where you can identify which thing belongs to whom depending on where the names and accessories are placed in the text
D2's Clockwork Mansion and Crack in the Slab missions are outstanding creations. It's really difficult to overstate how unique they are, and we salute the D2 designers and programmers. But having said that, the poor sound propagation should have been fixed, as that is the main factor that renders both games inferior to the first 2 Thief games from MANY YEARS AGO. Oh, and the gigantic Owls in the mission with the witches are awesome, as are Owls IRL.
The Jindoss Lock at 41:00 or so is a pretty standard type of logic problem, one that a childhood of reading logic puzzles lets me understand quickly. It took a couple read-throughs to identify the relevant information, but once I had done that it was simple for me to create a table for organizing said information. It's a table I've seen a hundred times. I made one for this puzzle right here: prnt.sc/g6mexb You then fill in information based on what the puzzle tells you. For instance, Countess Contee wore blue (which also means that she didn't wear any of the other colors, and no one else was in blue). Also, Madam Natsiou was sitting next to the lady in a red dress, meaning that the Madam wasn't in red. Since Natsiou was at the far left, the lady in red must have been sitting between her and the center lady. Continuing through the puzzle, we end up with a grid looking like this: prnt.sc/g6mizl From here, we can sometimes draw a few additional conclusions. We might see that the lady in white is both Ms. Finch and drank whiskey, meaning that Finch was a whiskey-drinker. Barring that, we might be able to made some deductions by elimination. We can do this a bit; for instance, Lady Winslow is known to have drunk rum, meaning that she can't wear purple (the wine-drinker's color), have sat in the center (where the whiskey-drinker sat), etc. Once we've gone through all of this, we get the following grid: prntscr.com/g6mogb Once those options are exhausted, we need to carefully analyze the remaining options. For instance, Purple sat to the left of White. Since Red sat two from the left, Purple can't be on the far left (or she would be to Red's left), nor can White be in the center (or Red would be to her left). This lets us eliminate a couple of half-related possibilities, which happens to let us determine (by process of elimination) that Madam Natsiou wore green. This leads to its own set of conclusions, one of which lets us eliminate all possibilities where the lady in blue didn't drink whiskey, which lets us put her in the center, hence leaving the right two spaces for Purple and White. This leads to a lot of logicking, and after that the grid looks something like this: prnt.sc/g6mrx8 At this point, we need to start trying out possibilities and looking for contradictions. For instance, the lady from Baleton drinks either absinthe or rum. If she drank rum, she would need to be Lady Winslow. However, Lady Winslow is known to not be from Baleton. Therefore, the lady from Baleton drank absinthe. Assuming Dr. Marcolla was from Karnaca lead to a similar contradiction, requiring Countess Contee to also hail from there, which let me determine that Marcolla must be from Dabovka, which lead to a flurry of other conclusions. prnt.sc/g6myfj And so on. (It's getting late, so I have to stop there.) I hope at least one person reads this and finds it helpful in solving some other logic problem. Maybe it's one in Dishonored, maybe not. Either way, happy logicking!
a fun thing about a lot of the art assets in dishonored 2 that seem so realistic: Arkane actually commissioned (or built themselves) a lot of them in real life, both to prove that they could and to use them as reference for programmers
What I did when I played this game was: I would go into an area, save my game, proceed to kill everything and everyone over and over reloading the game each time while getting familiar with the environment. Then when I got bored I'd proceed without killing anything and choose the non lethal options.
I thought the timepiece was a lot of fun and reminded me of Titanfall 2 and it’s time gauntlet. In Titanfall 2, however, the enemies you face think it’s a cloaking device and continue to shoot into the general area they think you’re in, hoping to hit you, never once realising you’re not in their time period anymore. Great game ideas.
Amazing work as always sir. It's because of you that I have been inspired to write more in depth about games that I feel have a lot more to offer than just great gameplay and story. Keep up the great work my friend.
Ah, one of the most delightful discoveries in my RU-vid-recommendations list in weeks. Reality can stay on hold for the next 55 minutes and 48 seconds.
@@JWStreeter I'll be interested in why you feel that way about it. Personally I don't care much for it. I think some levels are cool but overall the game is a waste of potential and the ending is even more disappointing than Dishonored 2.
This is serious genius. Easily the best single piece of games criticism I have ever seen or read. The scope and detail of your analysis reminds me of a WWII history I just read, Inferno, that captures both the insane scope of the war and the daily lived experience of the people trapped inside of it. Your analysis helps me understand art better. Thank you.
Much appreciated man! I generally start checking your channel two weeks before every episode. Really respect everything you do. Oh, and happy marriage!
I've heard about Dishonored many times, but never had an interest in playing them, until now. Thank you for the deep look inside, Noah! And congratulations!
Finally got around to watching this after it sat around in my "Watch later" playlist for a week. Very enjoyable and thoughtful video about a games I love. Good job with this mate, I'll definitely have a look at your other videos whenever I have time. Plus I loved that you also talked about the DLCs and Daud.
H.D Beird similar thing happened to me too. I was watching another video, fell asleep, and woke up to one of Noah's previous videos and wondered to myself when a new on was going to come out. low and behold lol.
What a fantastic video, all very well said and interesting. I’m a big fan of the series and you described so many of the reasons why I enjoy it. Thanks
Well done with such a long essay! Sound quality and a little editing of mistakes and missteps is all that keeps this from being professional quality! Great voice and inflection! You've got me interested to see the rest of your channel. :) Well done!
Anytime Steely Dan is used its deserving of a like. Either way, Great video. I agree with the point that the main reason dishonored 2 wasn't as glorious as the prequel was because the prequel existed. It is a fine game in its own right. But Dishonored is nearly a perfectly crafted world and compelling story that few can hold up against in the FP stealth genre.
Finally got around to finishing all the Dishonored games so I felt like I could finally watch this critique and join the year old conversation! First off I love your work, it's always very insightful and in depth, treating each game like a fine peace of art. The one thing I'd have to disagree on with you though is the non-lethal fate for Jindosh in Dishonored 2. I'd argue it is on par with the redemtive nature of every other non-lethal solution to the games antagonists. By no means did I do exhaustive research, but I distinctly remember coming across in game newspapers describing how after his "accident" he's been extremely pleasent towards his employees for the first time. So I'd argue that the game posits that his high intellect and ambition was what had made him a cruel person, and by removing it you've helped him. That's my inexpert opinion anyway. -sincerely, A semi-intelligent person on the internet
I definitely get what you're saying about appreciating the in-game art as actual art - such as the statues. I had that reaction to the Sokolov paintings. Specifically those from the first game - the new ones in the sequel seem a bit half-assed, sadly. But the original ones are amazing. Not just nice game scenery but genuine, beautiful art by itself. That attention, not just to detail but also art and design, is one of the things that make Dishonored so outstanding.
Architecture and many other things were made so well (AFAIK) is because they hired real architects and other people in different fields to create realistic stuff. For example, i read somewhere that they were debating how to disable windmill powering walls of light in Dishonored 2. Game designers wanted for players to shoot blades down thus crippling it, while engineers (i think) said that's unrealistic and bullets/bolts wouldn't be capable of doing that thus they went with a simple lever to turn it off. It's not as interesting as shooting it down, but at least its plausible thing. That's just one example i remember, i bet they did this with many other things in-game too.
I love your vids man, been watching on and off for awhile but I gotta say dude you're like a man out of time, in a good way though; It's like you used that van to come to 2017 from the past.
Finally got around to watching this after playing through the second game again on hardware that didn't struggle to run it (I am a cheap bastard with a cheap laptop). I love this series for being exactly the balance of stealth and combat for me, personally. The tone shift from the second to the first slotted nicely in my brain by thinking of the first as a prequel, a storybook version of events Emily tells herself as she dreams of something more energetic than being a good ruler. So seeing her take the long walk back up to the top by seeing her father's homeland worked for me. Either she gets some bloody, firsthand realpolitik or she can learn how to set up the dominos of one good deed begetting another. Your inaights did give me new perspective on how the narrative construction is not as solid as I remembered, but I still love this game for what it does to my brain, specifically.
There are two levels in this series I always have a tendency to go absolutely high chaos on. In the second game, it is Jindosh's manor. Both because playing cat and mouse in an active deathtrap delights me, and because they hurt my science grandpa. And I take exception to that. The other is the Flooded District in the first game.
In my first time through, I put myself in Corvo's shoes so deeply I cut a bloody swath through the people who had killed "my" empress, even though my run had been nearly bloodless until that point. (I left some unconscious bodies in places a rat swarm could eat them. A harsh lesson for my pacifist run hopes.) I even managed a lucky Blink above Daud, pushing me out of the AI's notice for just a hair, letting me do a drop assassination. It was not until my second playthrough that I learned you could even get the choice to spare him. That has always left an impression on me, that I could do that and not break the game's stride for even a second.
Fun fact: if you read the books, you find out that lady boyle eventually kills the dude and takes over his estate. Not that that makes the choice in-game less repugnant but it's and interesting eventuality.
You know, this is the first of your video that I stopped watching midway through - To actually play the game again after I gave up on the first mission (High Overseer Campbell) years ago. And you know what, I'm baffled as to why I couldn't play this game. I'm having so much fun. So thank you, as always.
When I played the DLC for Dishonored, I was entirely expecting Daud to die. I only really thought about the fact that my road would end with me meeting Corvo at the very end. As Daud, I wanted to change because I felt killing the empress had changed me. When Corvo stood over me at the end, I expected to be killed. Then, he walked away, and I remembered doing the same thing after a very messy fight against Daud in my first playthrough of Dishonored. I never expected mercy as Daud, but I got it all the same. I broke down and cried.
Mr Caldwell, as a long-time fan of your work, I firstly hope your never ending roartrip of the US goes well and the exploratory nature of said trip is bearing fruit. Your mention of metro and your impatience with its stealth mechanics made me wonder If you would be able to do an analysis of the metro series (2 games so far and a third announced at e3 this year. While I agree that, mechanically speaking, the stealth mechanics are lacklustre at best and downright broken at worst... I find the deeply immersive world invites players to attempt the stealth approach for story purposes, even if impact of such stealth approaches are quite obviously severely limited to end game videos. I find myself unable to dislike the world as it is the most deeply enthralling post apocalyptic world I have ever witnessed, and would enjoy your more informed critique of the series all the more for it.
the video clip at the end is too quiet :/ Great analysis on this hybrid game series. Not many games have their own atmosphere but I'm glad individuals identified what made dishonored shined where many slump.
Definitely convinced me to get Dishonored 2 whenever I get a decent PC again, as well as replaying the original one. Though on a mechanical level I liked the first game, my enjoyment of it on a narrative dimension was somewhat hurt by what appeared to me at the time as the artificiality of a singular fixed number as a threshold between high and low chaos. I had gone for a more organic first playthrough, not going out my way to do everything non-lethally, but trying to avoid killing as much as possible. This, however, resulted in a situation where a single decision in the late game where you can choose to dispatch several enemies in one blow put me over the limit, getting me the high chaos ending despite the fact that it was rather at odds with the narrative that emerged from my actual playing of the game. This left a rather sour taste, as it basically rendered moot the decision to avoid combative approaches with none of the fun of having engaged in the combat. This was a rather unfortunate first encounter with the game, rather demotivating when I look back at it, as after getting a low chaos ending by avoiding that single decision just for the sake of completion, I dropped the game feeling rather unfulfilled narratively and mechanically.
You make the fundamental mistake of equating non-lethal with mercy. In Dishonored, non-lethal is about vendetta where it's not just enough to kill the targets, they must be made to suffer.
Great video! Glad to see you enjoying your time on the road! Have you ever played No One Lives Forever? It's a fantastic game, and I believe it would be worthy of your signature style of review and analysis.
![Dissecting Dishonored [Spoilers]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
