DIARY Rick Lane is the judge of Karnaca.
PART I Playing judge, jury, and executioner in Arkane’s masterful murder sim.
The Dishonored games are often described as being about choice, but it might be more fitting to say they are about judgement. After all, when you make decisions in Dishonored, you aren’t simply selecting from a list of potential actions, as you would order a dish from a takeaway menu. Instead, those decisions are always made with a view to their potential consequences. What’s the best way to clear out this room? Or what’s the best way to sneak through it? How should I kill this person? Actually, should I kill them at all? This notion of judgement is most evident in the assassination targets Corvo and Emily pursue in each mission, who can be dispatched via lethal or nonlethal methods. Dishonored 2 never guides players toward one option or the other, yet throughout each level are documents, recordings, and other environmental details that provide insight into that character’s life and personality, helping players judge for themselves the best way to deal with their target.
Yet beyond these key imperial conspirators is an Empire bustling with criminals and rogues. The cities of Dunwall and Karnaca are prowled by corrupt guards and thuggish gangsters, while all manner of thieves and killers hide in plain sight among the Empire’s citizenry.
Hence, what if we extrapolated Dishonored’s core mechanic across every citizen in Dishonored 2, dispensing justice like a whalepunk Judge Dredd? That’s my plan for this run of Dishonored 2. I will be the judge, jury, and executioner for all of Karnaca, safeguarding the innocent and killing the guilty.
My first judgement is simple, who to play as. For this run, I’m going to play as Corvo. While I think Emily’s powers are more interesting, particularly the wonderful Domino, a couple of Corvo’s abilities, namely Possession and Slow Time, are more useful for manipulating and eliminating individual targets in crowded environments.
“Forgiveness isn’t my speciality”
For the first mission, however, I’ll have to exact my judgements sans powers, or much of anything really. Emily has been overthrown by the witch Delilah and her lapdog the Duke of Serkonos, while I’ve been locked inside Emily’s private chambers by the traitorous captain of the guard, Mortimer Ramsey. In addition to treason, I’ve just watched Ramsey cold-bloodedly murder one of the Watch’s lieutenants, so I’m feeling unambiguous about what his fate is going to be.
The same goes for the four of Ramsey’s guards lurking inside the palace. As I start prowling the halls, I see that there are bodies everywhere, far more than Ramsey could have killed on his own. These “traitorous dogs” as Corvo himself puts it, are clearly Ramsey’s most trusted aides, so I feel little regret as I sneakily cut them down. Ramsey isn’t long for the world, either. I hide behind a stack of shelves as he heads to unlock Emily’s vault, and shish kebab him through the shoulder as he passes.
With everyone inside dead, I head to the streets. Out here, I’m less certain about how to deal with the guards. The streets are littered with dead civilians and watchmen loyal to Emily. Clearly Dunwall is ripe with murderers, but I’ve no idea who’s done what.
As I cross the rooftops to the palace gate, a sergeant declares to his men that, “We’re in this with the Duke, sink or swim.” I decide to help them all sink with the addition of several new orifices. For the remainder of the level, I resolve that my priority needs to be to get out of Dunwall with my skin intact. If I can sneak past the guards, fine, but if they attack me, all bets are off. Without my powers, skulking around is tricky, and I get into several messy fights. The only considered judgement I make is to put a bullet in a sergeant about to murder a local journalist. “Forgiveness isn’t my speciality,” Corvo tells the journalist afterward, a fitting motto given what I have planned.
Home is where the heart is
In the end, I escape Dunwall leaving 13 guards dead. Considering the situation, I’m okay with this, but I would have preferred a less chaotic start. Thankfully, after a visit from the Outsider, I get my powers back. More importantly still, I get the Heart.
The Heart of a Living Thing is the most important tool in this approach to playing Dishonored 2. Its purpose is to guide you toward upgrades, but if
Dunwall is rip e wit h murderers, but I’ve no id ea who’s done what
you right-click on an NPC with the Heart equipped, it will tell you that person’s innermost secrets. With the Heart, I’m no longer reliant on appearances. I can see right into people’s souls; quite useful for a self-appointed judge of humankind.
Newly empowered, I step onto Karnaca docks for the first time. Officially I’m on the trail of the Crown Killer, which leads toward an old Solarium known as the Addermire Institute. But I have plenty of other work to do en-route, starting right here, on the jetty.
I set the Heart to work, and instantly I’ve got a raft of judgements to make. “At the gaming table, he keeps cheating cards in his boot,” the Heart tells me of one dockworker. I’m not killing someone for that. At the end of the jetty, a woman is taking photographs of the ocean. “She tells them it’s whale meat, but it’s not,” the Heart whispers. I’m ready to spring upon this cannibal-by-proxy, when I realize the Heart was not specific about what meat was being served. Now that I’m out of the treasonous mire of Dunwall, I don’t want to kill someone unless I’m sure they deserve it. If the Heart says something ambiguous like that, I’m going to ignore it.
With this rule in place, I move further into the docks. Interestingly, my next couple of targets don’t come from the Heart at all. At a jetty farther down the dockside, an altercation over money ends in a man openly bludgeoning two people to death with a length of pipe. We have a winner! I slit his throat and drop the body in the ocean. I then turn the corner and head up the street, where I catch a guard pushing a man into an electrified wall of light. I’m too slow to save the poor fellow, but I can at least give him justice. I swoop down, choke out the guard, and throw his unconscious body into the wall of light. Zap!
I return up the same street when the Heart delivers its first proper target. A woman is leaning on a balcony on the floor above. “She tells the children it’s just tea, and when they’re asleep, she puts them on boats bound for Morley.” Crikey, that’s nasty. Frankly I can’t think of a punishment harsh enough, so I plant a springrazor on her back, and blink away before it triggers.
It’s interesting how the Heart’s stories tug and pull at my own sense of ethics. I quickly decide that I’m not killing anyone for stealing. Partly because it’s excessive, and partly because I’m practically hoovering up stuff that doesn’t belong to me as I explore, and I’m not comfortable with that level of hypocrisy. At one point, the Heart whispers a story to me that I really struggle with. It relates to a man tending a ramshackle dockside tavern. “He took her books, and made her watch as he burned them.” The thought of it makes me genuinely angry, but cruel and nasty as such an action is, in the end I stay my blade. If I’m giving thieves a pass, it would be wrong to kill for destruction of property, however vindictive.
I continue up the hill, judging as I go. The Overseer’s Headquarters proves particularly fruitful. From a rooftop, I drop onto the shoulders of someone who had a woman dragged to her death for witchcraft. Inside, the Heart hisses of another, “He’s not a believer, but he tortures them anyway.” I use a flame dart for this one.
By the time I jump into a carriage bound for Addermire, I’ve relieved another 16 people of their vicious lives, and those were just the really bad ones. All-told, I’m feeling pretty bleak about Dishonored’s world as the Art Deco bulk of Addermire looms into view.
Cat person
Mercifully, Addermire appears to have sensed my ailing mood and prescribes a remedial sprinkling of decency. As I arrive and explore the area surrounding the carriage station, I find guards who for once are more kind than cruel. “He’ll never be a rich man, but he is honest,” it says of one watchman. Of another, the Heart whispers “He gives part of his rations to two street urchins.” I love the color the Heart’s oral vignettes add to the world, but it’s a relief to use a paint that isn’t black.
I sneak by this little cluster of wholesomeness. Upon entering Addermire proper, Karnaca’s ugliness rises to the surface again. “He crushed her fingers and told her she needed a permit to fiddle on street corners.” Grim, but I grit my teeth and move on. “She dumped them in the bay.”
I draw my sword, but for all I know the Heart could be talking about fly-tipping, so I settle for a sleep dart and head to an outdoor terrace.
“He threw her cat out of the window.” Okay, murder time. I rush across the terrace and gut Addermire’s resident cat-launcher. But in my haste I neglect to check my surroundings and alert a cluster of guards to my presence, including a pistol-toting officer. Once I escaped Dunwall, I resolved that bets were no longer off, so I don’t want to kill any of these guards unless I’m sure they deserve it.
What ensues is a semi-farcical battle across the terrace as I deflect blades and bullets with my sword, while juggling the Heart to see into the souls of my opponents. The grunts have done nothing particularly egregious, so I knock them out with sleep darts and stun mines. The officer, however, is a rum one. “He put the poison in the wine and replaced the cork. He plans to give it to his father as a gift.” Oh aye? Well, I’ve got a gift for you pal. Plot twist, the gift opens you.
With the officer dead, I focus on completing my objectives. In the end, I leave Addermire with seven more souls weighed upon my imaginary scales. I spared the Crown Killer, however, for story reasons that I won’t spoil. As I leave Addermire, I reflect on my actions. I feel like I’ve been sufficiently strict. Okay, maybe the cat thing was an overreaction, but nearly all the others have been traitors, murderers, or worse. Nonetheless, I’ve killed 36 people, leaving me with a High Chaos rating. If I carry on like this, my overall effect on Karnaca and the Empire will be negative. If I’m going to continue, I’ll have to start thinking longer term, and focus on eliminating the apples that aren’t just bad but seething with maggots. Otherwise, I’m liable to doom the Empire to a fate worse than if I’d stayed a prisoner in Dunwall.
I rush across the terra ce and gut Add ermir e’s cat -launcher