Zodi Plays: Dishonored (Stealth Dad Simulator)

[LaZodiac]

You mean you're not going to roll straight into Daudhonored, since you just got it at a generous discount and would be compelled to continue the story? Curses, my sinister master plan for more LPs has failed...

As much as I would like to do Daudhonored, it is a full game and not JUST DLC, and while I've enjoyed my time in Dunwall it's time to get out of this rat infested quasi-European hell hole. There is only so much stealth action gameplay one lady can digest at once, and my living playthrough of all the Zelda game's won't complete itself.

Rest assured, these tainted emerald isles will bring us back one day.

[Gray Mage]

This rocked a lot. Really fun to see your skills develop and I think one of the game's strongest points is how it makes you feel in control and that by clever use of your powers you can feel really cool.

I do see your point about Havelock's motives. I think the "people can't know" is kind of a lie to themselves so they can save face, to not admit they're power hungry. I think it's mentioned somewhere that Havelock has poor impulse control too (it's also why he was kicked out of the navy), so he saw an oportunity and went for it. Mas regreted it later.

Spoiler: High Chaos Level

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One of the differences in this level in high chaos is that the island is under a big storm (thematic weather ).

Another difference and one of my favorite things is that they show that your decisions change how others see you. Not only does Samuel make a big speech about how you suck and are a terrible human being, he also lits up a flare and makes every guard in the level in a permanent alert status. He really ends up hating your guts.

Oh, and here are transcripts and audio clips from all versions the Outsider's appearances on shrines. There's also ones from the DLC and sequel, but they're well divided so it should be possible to avoid spoilers.

Good game, it was very enjoyable. Next one should be fun, Spirit Tracks is one of the few Zelda games I haven't played, so it'll be blind for me.

[HalfTangible]

In high chaos, the ending still takes place at the lighthouse, but in considerably greater disarray. If you're at a high enough level of chaos, Sam is so disgusted with you that he fires his gun into the air to let them know you're coming.

Teague Martin is laying siege to the place trying to kill Pendleton (who is hiding behind a collapsed wall and taunting Martin like the coward he is). When you confront him, he has a gun to his own neck and laments on how things came to be this way. All of them went into this with the best intentions, but like everyone who says that they're largely full of ****. Ordering the deaths of others (not just the targets but all the people you kill in high chaos and all those who die BECAUSE of high chaos) corrupted them; once you start ordering people to die it's harder to justify letting them live. Martin eventually blows his own head off rather than let you kill him.

Pendleton is happy to see you at first because you'll kill Martin, but if you get closer you can hear him thanking his captain for being a good and loyal servant (**** his actual servant though). When you talk with him directly he becomes the sneering snob we all know and hate. He's been shot already so he can't do much more than taunt you. He even states outright that "everybody knew you were screwing the Empress" and snarkily offers you his cousin "if you're into noblewomen". He died as he lived: being insufferable.

Havelock has pretty much gone mad and has brought Emily up to the very top of the lighthouse. By the time you find him he's ranting about how everything's doomed and the plague will take them all. Emily is yelling at him in a rage because "I am the Empress!". If you approach them directly or wait too long, Havelock and Emily fall off the ledge. Emily grabs on and manages to hold long enough for you to pull her up... or you can just wait a while and she'll fall, if you're that kind of *******.

When you save Emily, she figures you've already killed the other conspirators and is glad, remarking that she would've had them killed anyway. It's clear in high chaos that Emily has had her childish innocence shattered by all she's experienced since the game's start, and she's a much harsher girl. It's a neat little detail that her father is the only thing that could've prevented this, and then only if he treaded very carefully.

The ending sequence also implies that Corvo continues to enforce a tyrannical, bloody rule for Emily. As I recall, the city never recovers from the ravages of the plague, and the empire ends with Emily.

Way to go 'hero'! ^_^

[LaZodiac]

Oh right something I forgot to say.

The way the game ends, plus the ridiculous out of nowhere emo ballad as the credit theme, makes it 100% clear they had no idea they would be able to make a sequel one day. It's fantastic. Only people who truly believe they have nothing to lose will live their truth like that.

Also all you folk who are blind on Train Zelda are gonna have... a fun time.

*grumbles something about having to learn how to play the pan flute again and shuffles off back to work*

[The Glyphstone]

Ain't it grand, to see a relic from the days when everything wasn't pre-planned as a trilogy with integrated spinoffs and an eventual MMO clone-child?

[LaZodiac]

Ain't it grand, to see a relic from the days when everything wasn't pre-planned as a trilogy with integrated spinoffs and an eventual MMO clone-child?

I mean if you play a lot of weirdo indie games like me you don't have to live with that, but yeah true. It's just game developers, living in the moment, embracing the fact that they have created a game in a basically dead genre and it will touch the right people but no one else.

And then oops it touched everybody and inspired the genre to maybe exist again, maybe? Possibly? The new Prey exists and that's the only game comparable I can think of.

It's a testament to how sometimes we do have to just live, you know? Final Fantasy 1 was made as one last gasp of a company. Fire Emblem Awakening was made under the impression that it would be The Last. I'm not one to suggest making yourself suffer for your art, but sometimes it pays to take a deep breath and go into it as if what you're doing won't matter except to those that truly, genuinely love what you're doing.

Because that is when you do something great. Something that is loved. Something that endures. I'm being melodramatic but I'm a writer so you get what you paid for.

[Amechra]

And then oops it touched everybody and inspired the genre to maybe exist again, maybe? Possibly? The new Prey exists and that's the only game comparable I can think of.

The particular game type that Prey and Dishonored belong to is really hard to get right, since it relies so heavily on good level and scenario design. I can think of a few other modern games that are kinda similar - you have the newer Hitman games and the Thief and Deus Ex reboots. Oh, and you have Vampyr, which is a bit weird and doesn't entirely fit, but which has it's own take on the whole Low/High Chaos thing.

[DataNinja]

And so it all ends. Wonder how well you'll do... and if you can break 200, er, hugs.

Yeah, it seemed peculiar to me that the music was mentioned but never really showed up, ever. But, high chaos for it makes sense.

Neat how you can find secret ways to make other paths easier without bypassing them altogether. I like that.

Well, broke 200.

...whoops. Guess your eyes had an unfortunate blink in them.

Figures. Gotta hold onto that power.

How fitting. Thirteen taken down nonlethally. That luck couldn't continue. And a fitting end. With nobody around to see him, not knowing what had happened.

Yay, happy end. Except, y'know, for an utterly scarred girl who had to witness a bunch of terrible stuff.

Well, this was a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be, given this genre isn't really my jam. Good show.

Spoiler: Takedowns

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Episode	Non-Lethal	Lethal	Total
1	0	4	4
2	4	8	12
3	0	0	0
4	0	0	0
5	6	2	8
6	9	7	16
7	2	3	5
8	3	0	3
9	7	0	7
10	16	1	17
11	2	0	2
12	3	0	3
13	13	0	13
14	11	0	11
15	9	0	9
16	2	0	2
17	7	1	8
18	13	0	13
19	7	0	7
20	2	0	2
21	2	0	2
22	2	1	3
23	5	0	5
24	4	1	5
25	2	0	2
26	6	0	6
27	11	2	13
28	6	2	8
29	0	1	1
30	9	0	9
31	13	1	14
Total	176	34	210

Hey, about 84% of your takedowns were non-lethal. So... pretty good, all-in-all.

Also, I'm looking forwards to Spirit Tracks. It was the first Zelda I ever played, the only one I've 100%ed, and I really liked it (though, there are some particular moments I do recall being... frustrating). Is that just because of nostalgia goggles, or does it hold up decently to an expert scrutineer? We'll see. But, at least it means I can comment a bit more on my experiences with it, from what I can recall. For better or for worse (it's worse).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

And at the top... well, we see something that I find very silly. It makes some degree of sense, and writing wise it's actually good, but as I mentioned previously this is just too much explanation. Havelock being a fool who wanted to manipulate Emily makes sense. Corvo will always protect her, can't puppet the government when someone who can cut strings is there. But not only does Havelock have that, he also has "if the world sees the bad we did, they will turn on us" which is... not how this works and doesn't super gel with everything else. There's also the idea that nobles are supposed to be seen as noble, a thing from the real world where the nobility seek to appear as pure and pristine as the title suggests. I can understand that, not wanting to be seen having dirtied their hands... but again, that's not how that works. And I feel one could safely argue that doing all this skulduggery to save the country from someone who murdered the queen and infested the city with plague rats is um... a good thing? And then they also add on what we see here; the melancholy of Admiral Havelock. Doubting himself, doubting his sure-foot actions. It feels excessive. As does uh, killing the other co-conspirators. Welp. But yeah, this is my main issue with the writing in the game. Havelock having a multitude of reasons is too much, for one specific reason. If we kept it with the "he got power hungry and Corvo will stop him from manipulating Emily" then that's all well and good. Still clearly a mistake, but reasonable. But adding all the other reasons makes the first motive weaker, because it all continues to brush up on "Corvo literally took over the entire country for you in less than a week". Every additional reason added to the pile makes Corvo's stance more complex as well... and in a straight fight of logic, all of Havelock's paranoia and overthinking adds up to "don't do a traitor Corvo will ****ing murder you". So if they had kept it simple, there wouldn't be as much thinking directed towards his reasoning, thus not piling on how traitoring us is the worst idea imaginable.

To put it bluntly; Havelock deserves what he gets. The co-conspirators do too of course, but Havelock most of all bought his ticket videos ago. And with Havelock gone... we can finally save Emily. Happy end.

Havelock was mostly trying to make excuses for himself, trying to convince himself of all the reasons he should do Corvo dirty. He was none too sane to begin with. All the stresses involved pushed him over the edge.

But really... so your plan is this. You take one of the most dangerous men in the city, the guy who was directly responsible for the Queen's security as her personal bodyguard, and who only failed in that task because YOU arranged it, and even then only because Daud had magic that could not be mitigated against. You steal the princess, her daughter, and use her as a pawn. Then, when he... let's be blunt here... assassinates targets you could not get to, thus proving just how capable an assassin he is, by the by... your plan is to take this man, who has so far escaped from every deathtrap, every plot, and every device the entire Inquisition could muster... and to betray him by trying to have him killed.

Yea... bad plan. Because now it's all on YOU, Havelock. Because he's not going to stop. Ever. Because your problem is that you screwed up. You only TRIED to have him killed. You had one shot, and you blew it. You dug this grave, Havelock, now you must lay in it.

I will admit, though, consigning his body to the sea is at least a final note of respect. It is what he likely would have wanted, had he kept his sanity.

So yeah. That was Dishonored. Thank you all very much for watching. I loved playing it, and I hope you all enjoyed. Thanks to my supporters on Patreon, and thanks to those who watch at all. We've been through a lot here, and I'm glad to see you stick with me to the end. I'm going to take a week long break to relax. And this time an ACTUAL week. So join me next time, on November 11th... for The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks. Oh booooy.

I'm honestly sorry I wasn't more active here. Life... has happened to me over the past couple of months. But I'm truly glad you enjoyed yourself.

I have not heard good things about Spirit Tracks, but I am also willing to be proven wrong. I just hope you won't be saddled with the really, really bad user interface that the last game had.

[LaZodiac]

Havelock was mostly trying to make excuses for himself, trying to convince himself of all the reasons he should do Corvo dirty. He was none too sane to begin with. All the stresses involved pushed him over the edge.

But really... so your plan is this. You take one of the most dangerous men in the city, the guy who was directly responsible for the Queen's security as her personal bodyguard, and who only failed in that task because YOU arranged it, and even then only because Daud had magic that could not be mitigated against. You steal the princess, her daughter, and use her as a pawn. Then, when he... let's be blunt here... assassinates targets you could not get to, thus proving just how capable an assassin he is, by the by... your plan is to take this man, who has so far escaped from every deathtrap, every plot, and every device the entire Inquisition could muster... and to betray him by trying to have him killed.

Yea... bad plan. Because now it's all on YOU, Havelock. Because he's not going to stop. Ever. Because your problem is that you screwed up. You only TRIED to have him killed. You had one shot, and you blew it. You dug this grave, Havelock, now you must lay in it.

I will admit, though, consigning his body to the sea is at least a final note of respect. It is what he likely would have wanted, had he kept his sanity.



I'm honestly sorry I wasn't more active here. Life... has happened to me over the past couple of months. But I'm truly glad you enjoyed yourself.

I have not heard good things about Spirit Tracks, but I am also willing to be proven wrong. I just hope you won't be saddled with the really, really bad user interface that the last game had.

Slight misunderstanding there; Havelock's conspiracy isn't the same as the Spymaster's. Killing the Empress was the Spymaster's idea, as was kidnapping Emily. Havelock and friends was a counter-conspiracy.

And hey, it's okay Shneekey. Life puts people through the ringer sometimes.

As for how Spirit Tracks is... well, you'll see. It's... certainly interesting.

[DataNinja]

I just hope you won't be saddled with the really, really bad user interface that the last game had.

Well, uh, at the very least, you don't need to draw circles to roll.

[PraetorDragoon]

Slight misunderstanding there; Havelock's conspiracy isn't the same as the Spymaster's. Killing the Empress was the Spymaster's idea, as was kidnapping Emily. Havelock and friends was a counter-conspiracy.

And hey, it's okay Shneekey. Life puts people through the ringer sometimes.

As for how Spirit Tracks is... well, you'll see. It's... certainly interesting.

I hope you have better luck with the flute than me.

[LaZodiac]

Choo Choo it's time for a new Adventure!