Dishonored and moral choices

Dishonored is a game that is unabashedly a Bioshock clone - no other descriptor really fits this Victorian steampunk knockoff. There is undoubtedly a stronger focus on stealth aspects but the gameplay, mapping, and general storyline similarities are undeniable. It is a pretty enjoyable game to play but offers nothing extraordinary or remarkable for the seasoned gamer.

Dishonoured follows the story of the Royal protector "Corvo" in the city of not-London in roughly the 1860s. Having just arrived back in not London, he fails spectacularly at his job as the Queen is murdered within seconds of starting the game. With magical assassins and strange weaponry, it is clear to all those in the city that Corvo must have committed the crime. He is sentenced to death and spent the next year in prison at which point the "resistance" breaks him out and send him on a variety of quests in an attempt to free the city of its new found ecclesiastical monarchy.

Let me tell you something about rats. In most games, rats are a tiny little annoyances that will nibble at your feet until you whack with a big knuckle and send them sprawling into a heap of mutilated gore. Not so in this game. In dishonored, rats are psychotic little bastards that then together in order to cannibalise corpses in the most graphic and horrific manner possible. There will be bands of these roving murder rodents scouring the map for whatever meat they can find - not just in the streets but in houses, third story apartments, spa clinics, Bridges, the royal palace, the church - no one can seem to use a goddamn broom. in the early stages of the game it is possible to simply eradicate these with a knife and a fair bit of health but after killing your way through not London they become an unstoppable swarm of gnashing teeth.

It is at this point that the moral choices of the game become pronounced – the player has the choice of going through level by level and killing everyone they see and wreaking vengeance upon those who wronged you, or stealthing through the shadows using a variety of magicks and using indirect methods to neutralise important targets. You are told through each of the many loading screens as you traverse from sector to sector that your choices to kill or be a pacifist will have a direct impact on the ending ( and this is true) but the most profound difference killing will have is the number of rats in subsequent levels.

The moral choice system in this game is nothing out of the ordinary. The decisions you are presented with are the standard ones - easily kill with long-term negative consequences or a more difficult task sparing them but with positive outcomes in the end. However, the moral choices aren't really positive and negative or good or and evil - many of the good choices in the game are in fact psychotic and more malevolent than directly murdering the targeted individual. I will provide a few choice examples to demonstrate how messed up the decision-making in this game is -

1. The highly overseer ( or a Catholic Bishop) needs to be neutralised. You could either walk up to him and shank him in the face or you could knock him unconscious, take him to the excommunication chair and brand his face as a heretic. The second option is nonlethal and has the benefit of being enormously ironic. however, upon closer inspection of their religious practices, it is made apparent that this priest will now be treated as the lowest of scum and regularly beaten and whipped wherever he walks. he will not be able to buy or rent  land or property, he will not be up to get work from anyone unless they wish to risk excommunication and will likely die within weeks from exposure or starvation. This is not a mercy - this is a cruel and painful death.

2. The twin despotic businessmen - these two are legislating for the Regent and need to be taken out so that people will no longer be oppressed by their own laws. Again your choice is to murder them or, do a deal with a shady underworld character whereby they are knocked out and then taken away never to be seen again. A closer inspection of their actual fate reveals that they have their tongues and eyes cut out, and spend the rest of their lives at the bottom of a mineshaft as slaves. This is not an ethical moral choice!

3. Lady Boyle is the consort of the Regent and needs to be taken out because (?). It never made clear why you need to kill this woman other than to maybe unsettle the King. In any case, again, murder her, or have her and anaesthetised and left in a boat for another lover to take away, removed from all sight and mind. This lover is a crazed obsessed fan boy wearing a demonic rabbits head at an otherwise normal masquerade party. his last words to you as you leave him Lady Boyle is that "she may not love me now that she will have no choice as she has the rest of her life to adjust". This may not be as bad a fade as the others but so far to her only crime has been diddling the evil Regent - this game should be called Injustice, not Dishonoured.

I won't elaborate on the gameplay so much as it is identical to bioshock - there is a melee weapon, guns, and plasmids ("runes"). There is one other character/plot point/deus ex machina but I would like to talk about - "the Outsider". This guy is the most smarmy git - a hipster looking douchebag in his early 20s that pulls you out of the space-time continuum periodically like some kind of steampunk Q. Every so often he leaves you with an enigmatic quip or warning about what the future portends. In actual fact, he does nothing involving the plot and the one other person in the game who seems to know anything about him merely says "oh yeah I know him". The outsider it is not the trickster god that they make him out to be - he does nothing other than bother you once every level or so with his "mystique" and "folded arms judgement". Just once I wonder the opportunity to attack this jerk but no, sadly or you can do is listen with weapons away while he gives his little speeches about how merciful or vengeful you are. He narrates the ending and then berates you for whatever choice but you made - unless you didn't kill anyone at all in the game in which case he's "amused". The only possible reason for this guy to be in the game at all is to be the delivery method for the plasmids - they might as well have simply just left the runes in the game and left the source of their power a mystery. Hipster douche bag Loki? Don't think so.