Dishonored (English review)

The collection for the first Dishonored was on sale at GOG, so I bought it this evening and I'm finally about to play it.

I've beem mighty interested in how the stealth feels and compares to other stealth games. I made the decision from the very start that I'll be playing hardcore. No combat, not even using spells. Though I mellowed out towards slightly greater spell use in later parts of the game, I still stuck to as stealthy a first playthrough as I could.

How did it go ? What were my impressions of the game, its gameplay and storytelling ? Read this article, part review, part impressions, and find out.

By early June, I could conclude that I've enjoyed the first fifth or first quarter of Dishonored so far. I knew I'd have a blast, but it's genuinely the best sense-of-place atmospheric stealth game since the days of Thief (and if we count fan efforts, The Dark Mod).

Looking at my Dishonored playthrough statistics, by that point, I had 0 kills, including 0 unintentional ones. I didn't manage to ghost perfectly, but I had very few cases of NPCs noticing something before I knocked them out. So, pretty stellar for a first playthrough, on Normal.

I'm goin' all-out Alexandre Dumas with this playthrough, specifically, a "pacifist Edmond Dantès" approach. No one gets killed, at all, the conspirators behind the coup get publicly humiliated and sent to the slammer, but stay alive, and I avoid harming anyone.

I'm even doing my usual Thief gameplay habits of not leaving NPCs outdoors in the cold and in the rain, but taking them indoors and hiding them in the most shadowy areas available. Just so they don't catch a cold by the time they wake up, while not giving away my presence.

An acquaintance of mine noted, "Ah, pacifist ghost-runs... The best way to play the game.". Or, as I, a stealth game veteran, like to say... The way it's meant to be played. ;-) Granted, I appreciate that Dishonored does give you the option of wildly different gameplay approaches, and the resulting consequences/repercussions of the player's play style decisions.

My old self-imposed immersion habits are not something I ever plan to get rid of while playing a stealth game.

Some of my favourite moments so far was taking out up to six members of the Bottle Street Gang with sleep darts, in the yard of their distillery. I figured I couldn't completely sneak past them on my way back, so I created a false alarm with regular darts (works like a charm if you shoot them into loud surfaces, one of many Thief-inspired things in Dishonored) and then I sleep-darted them one by one. They didn't even know what hit them. The Bottle Street Gang thugs are particularly brutal in a fight, so knocking them out bare-handed or with the occassional sleep dart feels extra satisfying.

Some of you might be thinking right now, "Ah, but Petike, surely you poisoned the gang's secret elixir still while at the distillery ! Now unsuspecting innocents will suffer !". Well, nope. I didn't. I ransacked the place and knocked the gang members out stealthily, but I didn't bother messing with their still, lest it do even more damage than it's already done. Might do even more if I poison it. I brought the viscera sample back to the Loyalists, they might find a use for it.

The homeless, impoverished aristocrat going by the moniker "Granny Rags" (voice-wise, an instantly recognisable Susan Sarandon) gave me one of the game's magical artefacts as a present, promising another if I poison the gang's still at the distillery. I just never bothered to poison the still, for the reasons described in the previous paragraph. Instead, I non-lethally softened up the Bottle Street Gang a bit, just to teach them some manners, and also payed a visit to Dr. Galvani's lab, besides the whole High Overseer business.

I have to give it to Arkane, if they're able to make an early major mission this expansive and explorable, without any sort of technical issues, then Dishonored is very much walking in the gameplay legacy of Thief in more than just a spiritual sense. Thief's levels were always enormous.

Another favourite moment was breaking the glasses for Campbell and Curnow, then (through a bit of trial-and-error), sleep-darting both of them, sneaking them outside onto the outer ledge of the room, beyond the windows, then preparing stuff needed to expose Campbell, taking him there, leaving him with the evidence for the Overseers to find, and then smuggling Curnow into a safe location where the Loyalists can pick him up later. Plenty of little busywork, but felt like a genuine accomplished caper. I always love it when a complex mission in a stealth game leaves with you with a lot of emergent gameplay and interesting experiences.

I'd say my favourite characters in the game are Sam and Cecelia. While the other characters, the Loyalists included, are often involved in a lot of intrigue, those two characters are rather down-to-earth and wholesome. I also appreciate Piero, as eccentric as he often is (that, and me having a soft spot for Brad Dourif as an actor). The voice cast is pretty solid, and I had a good laugh when I recognized the voice actor who also voice-acted Reynolds in SWAT 4, a game I know inside-out.

Funnily enough, due to my intentionally super-pacifist approach, I mostly just see the minimalist reticle, and I don't see my own hands, since the knockout animation doesn't need you having your weapons held in your hands. I've not used the pistol a single time in an actual fight (I've used it once for target practice), I only use my crossbow with sleep darts, and I've never used my sword for anything else than cutting through boards in boarded-up doorways. The only times I got into swordfights and firefights was when I botched my plan, so fooled around a bit, then reloaded and retried.

Stealthiness and a strictly pacifist approach lead to the best possible outcomes, in terms of overall story development and the multiple endings that exist in the game. My old self-imposed immersion habits are not something I ever plan to get rid of while playing a stealth game. Which is what I've aimed for in my first playthrough. I might not complete all of the quests that seem to have an iffy conclusion to me, even if it's claimed to be a low-chaos solution. So I'm still roleplaying within the more limited scope of a mission-based stealth game, while trying to achieve the most low-chaos outcome possible.

The game forces you to think outside the box in certain situations. That's the exact thing I expect from a good stealth game or a good immersive RPG. Don't just give the player different tools in the toolbox, gadgets for fun and showing-off, but give the player several options to solve a task or quest at hand (well, at least the more major tasks, at any rate).

There's apparently a possibility to save Geoff Curnow without having to resort to the use of sleep-darts. I know there's no doubt a possibility, with Curnow possibly even "busting a cap" in Campbell once he learns of the secret poisoning attempt, but I wanted to keep things simple with rescuing Curnow on the first playthrough.

It's telling that the only time I fired a gun was in the prison, all shots fired by accident into the local furnishings - all because I was still getting the hang of the controls compared to other stealth games - and I've not used the pistol since. I think I picked up bullets once or twice, but I basically carry the pistol only as an extra bit of weight. Or for target practice in the yard in front of the Hound Pits Inn.

While I've not done genuine ghosting in a Dishonored mission thus far, I actually came fairly close, based on my mission debriefing statistics. Still got my stealth game playing chops intact ! I've had skills at ghosting entire missions in Thief, including fan-made missions, though there's not that many I've memorized in terms of how to conclude them without knockouts or ever being seen. No doubt I'll try it with Dishonored one day, but it's still early for that.

I think one of the reasons the developers at Arkane didn't add "noisemaker bolts" to Dishonored was that it would start to draw too many comparisons to the Thief trilogy, given all the other homages and references hidden in the game. The sleep darts are already like Thief 's rare knockout gas arrows, just with a syringe-style design.

I like that the in-game physics still allow for emergent gameplay with the regular bolt sound distractions or the throwing of small objects from cover. Not the most inconspicuous, but you can still create decoys, and it's very much the same as Thief did with its improvised decoys.

Using the sword not for combat, but creatively, to create a ruckus and lure away guards, is one way of using sound as a decoy, but this works just as well with the regular bolts, pistol shots into items in the environment, or thrown objects, I'm completely certain the sword can be used to create a brief distraction as well.

Though I'm not doing a true ghost-run (don't get seen by anyone) on my first playthrough, I think it's telling that I've mentioned earlier how I rarely draw my weapon hands and mostly just skulk around and use the bare-handed knockout animation, rather than the weapons and gadgets.

The most violent thing I've done thus far was clear an abandoned workshop with some nice loot from huge swarms of rats running around on the floor. Threw around a few grenades and spring-loaded razor bombs (which I don't have a use for, given my stealthy gameplay approach), got rid of the rats, then snooped around. I don't like killing off animals in games, especially stealth games, but hey, many of the rats in Dishonored can be openly hostile to the player and to non-player characters, and they also aren't counted as civilian casualties. I've put plenty of arrows into giant spiders while playing the Thief trilogy over the years, and I consider this course of action against rats analogous. As for the watchdogs of the Overseers in Dishonored, I made sure to sleep-dart the hounds I couldn't bypass. I've collected plenty of sleep darts throughout that early mission, so I was eventually able to knock out the hounds and hide them in various corners. I didn't even try bare-handed knockouts, as I doubt it's possible with the dogs.

I don't know if any of you have ever played the Penumbra series that Frictional Games started off with some seventeen years ago, but as I was an early fan of their's, I've always liked their idea of a stealth mechanic where you're able to lure away Penumbra's feral husky dogs by throwing them pieces of beef jerky, from cover, hidden. A simple combination of Penumbra's throwing mechanic and an item you occassionally find, put to good and interesting use. In the first Penumbra game, you still had some rudimentary self-defence combat mechanics and could kill said feral dogs, but I found the beef jerky decoy idea much, much more elegant (and funny). Pity no one at Arkane thought about something similar for Dishonored. I'd love to see Corvo throwing around fish meat or whatever, while there are no guards around, with a hound getting curious about the snack and paying no attention to the player.

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All right, so it's time for my Dishonored playthrough update. I've already reached the mission where Corvo attempts to return to Dunwall Tower and deal with Lord Regent Burrows. A tough mission, but an interesting one. I'm currently waiting a bit before I resume.

The Golden Cat mission was fine, some nice interiors in the titular building, though I found the mission a bit monotone once I was inside and started knocking out guards. I'll confess that when I started the mission, I had no opportunity to replenish my supply of sleep darts. I had a total of two for the entire assignment. "Nevermind, we'll improvise !", I told myself as a stealth game veteran. My entry into the Golden Cat was hilarious, because I climbed up all the way to the roof, to one of the dormers with the shutters, climbed inside, and the second room in the attic was where I found Emily, on house arrest. I was not expecting to find her so quickly, but it made the rest of the mission less of a fuss.

For most of the mission, I was sneaking up on guards, knocking them out, no gadget use whatsoever. I only used the Blink spell to reach a higher storey while carrying knocked out guards upstairs, and kept dumping the guards in the various service rooms of the building. I bet that a more anxious guard would start to question after a while where all his buddies had gone, given the dwindling number inside the establishment. Now, where do the sleep darts come into play ? I went down into the steam baths, knocked out a guard, but the other one heard something, so I spent the dart on him. I snuck the guards away upstairs, just to be on the safe side. I was determined I want to neutralize the two Pendleton brothers non-lethally, so I carefully opened the door to the steam room, hid in cover and shot one or two standard crossbow bolts into a metal surface. The Pendleton there paniced, ran outside, kept searching. The courtesan calmed down, stayed in the room. The Pendleton brother decided to give up the search and return to the room... and then I jumped him and knocked him out.

I did the same with the other Pendleton brother upstairs. Open the door, shoot some bolts to make a ruckus, wait for him to look around, calm down, then jump him and knock him out. I returned with the two knocked out brothers to the back alley, followed Emily back to the docks, taking a detour to finalize the deal with Slackjaw. I'd say it was a fairly smooth mission, with a few annoying moments. Oddly, though I didn't kill anyone, the mission results claim that three guards had perished, or something like that. I'm suspecting this might have been caused by the Dunwall City Watch getting spooked by me knocking out and hiding several of their guards, then disabling the guard turrets and other contraptions. In all that streetside commotion, they might have injured themselves fallen on their swords or been otherwise affected by me confusing the various security systems in the streets. Who knows. Low chaos and no intentional kills.

The bridge mission, The Royal Physician, though quite long, felt very interesting I also love that I was finally playing an outdoorsy stealth mission set in the evening, the scenery all "golden hour", rather than just night, night, rain, rain, as is often the case in stealth games of this type. The nice weather and the fair bit of variety made it a very enjoyable mission. I have to say the sidequests and side-exploration in this mission, though a bit challenging at times, was a good deal of fun that added to the overall enjoyment. I'm often disappointed when side missions feel like busywork, but thankfully, most missions I played in Thief and its fan homages, as well as the missions in Dishonored, were decidedly not busywork or boring. (Concerning homages in Dishonored, I had to smile when I heard two guards arguing over a card game at one of the bridge's guard posts. There's a mission in Thief: Deadly Shadows where some manor house guards are playing cards and one of them is explaining the rules to the less skillful one. I was imediately reminded of TDS when I heard the card conversation.)

Kidnapping Sokolov and saving the lady in the cage, his human guinea pig, was easy-peasy. It took me a bit longer to clear out the rest of the building with knockouts and secure the loot, but it was enjoyable and I found plenty of interesting passageways. The mission results felt very satisfying, as I had not been detected once, killed no one, nor alerted anyone to my presence. I wasn't consciously trying to ghost the mission, but it assumed that was what I was doing. Sokolov pretty much woke up only in the Hound Pits arena's fight cage, after he suddenly fell unconscious from my dart in his greenhouse, not even knowing what happened or what hit him. I gave him the expensive brandy he has a soft spot for, after buying it from Piero just to spend some extra money on a potentially useful item. I had no idea it would be useful that soon ! No rat scares needed. I suppose this forces Sokolov to consider me and the rest of the crew to be more gentlemanly than he expected. Before I went off on the aristocratic party mission, Sokolov even confided to Corvo that he knows he was close with the empress and they held each other in great respect. I was just glad that he prefers brandy and reason to either Burrows or the Boyles.

I was expecting the evening party mission at the Boyle estate to be engaging and visually pleasing, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. For once, this was also a mission that focused more on exploration, social interaction, finding clues, rather than just tailing guards and house servants all the time and knocking them out. The tallboys at the beginning of the mission were a little tricky at the start, but once I was in, it was a very pleasant exploration mission. Though I did some knocking out of the guards and the service staff, and I used my time manipulation spell a single time, to get to the upper floor via the main staircase, I've otherwise focused on staying incognito while looking for clues and loot. I was very pleased to find the secret passageways through the mansion's attic, yet another element that immediately reminded me of the countless Thief missions that involve attics and hidden passageways.

I eventually ventured outside for a bit, to look at the business with lord Shaw. We did the pistol duel properly first, but I regretted killing the poor man, just because of Treavor Pendleton's idiocy and Pendleton using me as a proxy in the duel. Thankfully, I did think of an alternate plan. I reloaded the save with the duel, and once Shaw drew his pistol, I drew my crossbow and tranqed him with a sleep dart. The two guards were big enough dilweeds to not notice I didn't use a pistol, and they considered Shaw dead. I took him to a more pleasant location and let him sleep there, unharmed. I went back in the mansion, and after having no luck tricking Lydia Boyle in the harpsichord room, I convinced her to go downstairs to the wine cellar, to meet her contact. By that point, I had made sure every guard and maid in the staff room was knocked out and hidden. No use in making Boyle startled, so knocked them all out, just in case. Once Boyle was in the cellar and waiting patiently, I knocked her out. I was a bit confused at first about opening the portcullis, but eventually found the lever.

The creep, lord Brimsby, Brimsy, or whatever, was already waiting for me down there, with a boat. He was now blatant about wanting to exploit Boyle, sounding impatient. I considered him a huge creep and a stalker already upstairs, but he was being explicit about it now. He asked me why I've put Boyle down in the cellar, nearby, and am not bringing her to him. Right after that, I drew my crossbow and shot him dead. So much so, he flew in the water with a loud splash. I pulled him out of the water, put him in the boat. I then brought a sedated, sleeping Lydia Boyle to the boat and put her in the boat, right next to the creep. As I'm roleplaying my entire playthrough, what with the pointless care about putting all knocked-out people and critters indoors, in safe places, I even noted with regret "Sorry, Lydia", and shot lady Boyle with the crossbow. If the game only allows me to kill her or force her into a life of cruel misery at the hands of a slobbering creep, I'll take a third option, of sorts: Eliminate the guy who'd harm her, then eliminate her as well (since the creep was necessary for the non-lethal option), and do so painlessly (while she's knocked out). The guests and servants will find them both in a boat, and think this was some suicide pact between the two. Plausible deniability, and lady Boyle at least won't have to be abused. This was so far the only mission in which I had killed the target, because I found the non-lethal option unreasonable by comparison.

When I was finishing up in the abandoned apartments among the city streets, the Outsider (i.e. annoying magical EMO) showed up again to gloat, "how dare you kill lady Boyle, Corvo, ah-ha, you're not such a hero" and other tripe. Funnily enough, there were several "Weepers" in that building and I had put them all to sleep, knocking them out non-lethally. Rather idiotic gloating by the Outsider when I've even avoided killing "Weepers" for the entire game. The Outsider seems like the kind of person that is just desperately hoping you'll do something morally ambiguous, just so they could start insulting you and trolling you. Not a fan of the character, at all. He's pathetic even as a villainous figure. I was expecting Sam would have hid the boat a bit father away, and I was right. He seemed relieved to see me again. The mission results showed that I had killed only two individuals, lady Boyle and the creep, and didn't harm anyone else. I even spared lord Shaw. I'd say that's a solid first playthrough of that evening party mission.

You might consider it a bit hypocritical of me, making a deal with Slackjaw to have the two Pendleton brothers sent to break stone in their own mines, but being very uncomfortable about leaving lady Boyle to the whims of a clear stalker and creep. Well, for all the labour the Pendletons will have to endure in their own mines, in a very stark contrast to their pampered lifestyle, they at least won't be constantly abused in the manner lady Boyle would very likely be abused if that creep aristocrat "had his way with her". Boyle is the only major female target for neutralization in the main campaign, and I'd find it iffy if I had the other characters merely humiliated and punished, but Lydia Boyle ending up in constant abuse by an apparent lunatic. I'm not one to complain if the devs wanted to make many of the non-lethal choices controversial or morally dubious, that's actually pretty good on their part. At least they're making the player think, rather than follow any option blindly.

My own personal conclusion was that the non-lethal option in this particular case was horrendously cruel, and that Corvo couldn't say with a clear conscience "I have my hands clean". So, a mercy kill it was, but not only for lady Boyle, but for her wannabe-suitor first. I took care of him first, just to make it clear I don't approve of what he wanted to do with her, and as I couldn't deal with Boyle non-lethally anymore, I at least gave her a mercy kill (the first and only I've administered since the start of my playthrough). Oddly and shockingly, the other two Boyle sisters sent me a gift after I returned to the Hound Pits Pub. With relatives like these, who even needs enemies ? The Boyles and Pendletons are screwed-up families, to say the least.

Personally, I'd be very surprised if the third Pendleton, despite being a member of the Loyalists, wasn't planning some underhanded manoeuvres to betray the group and get it in trouble, once he no longer needs us. Even though he's grown to be amicable with Corvo and the others, he's a fairly shady-seeming man. An intelligent man, certainly, but still prone to scheming and neuroticism. I won't be shocked if he either betrays the Loyalists, or causes some chain of events that will reveal the location of the Loyalists to the authorities.

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My list of achievements in Dishonored, as listed by my GOG Galaxy account, in chronological order:

• Dishonored - Complete the intro missions
• Excommunication - Eliminate High Overseer Campbell
• Cleaner - Fight with 5 enemies at once, without any of them surviving (happened during an accidental scuffle with a gang, before I reloaded and retried)
• Bodyguard - You protected Callista's uncle, captain Geoff Curnow
• The Escapist - After Coldridge Prison, elude 5 pursuers at once without killing them or leaving the map (something that's second nature to me from other stealth games)
• Child Care - Find Emily Kaldwin
• Specter - After escaping prison, complete a mission without alerting anyone, and kill less than 5 people (my standard stealth procedure, as far as I'm concerned)
• Faceless - After Coldridge Prison, complete a single mission without alerting anyone (that's the way I like it in stealth games)
• Surgical - Play from the first mission through Kaldwin's Bridge, killing fewer than 10 characters (but of course)
• Capturing Genius and Madness - Complete the Bridge mission
• Merchant of Disorder - Acquire 15 equipment upgrades
• Manipulator - Make others kill 5 of their own allies (I don't even remember how I achieved this, I might have tricked some guards into fighting each other or something, but I reloaded a save anyway)
• Thief - Pickpocket items worth a total of 200 coins (I've done relatively little non-key pickpocketing in the game thus far, doing some before leaving the evening party being the one notable exception)
• Well Mannered - You completed the Boyle Estate mission without spoiling the party

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Finally, today, on the 8th of June, I've completed my first playthrough of Dishonored. As I was expecting, there was a betrayal in the leadership of the Loyalists, though driven more by admiral Havelock than by the remaining Pendleton.

Below are the results of the last four missions of my first playthrough. As far as I know, all cases of NPCs getting killed were most likely by accident, as I painstakingly avoided killing anyone.

Unsurprisingly, I finished with a Low Chaos conclusion and an optimistic ending.

An interesting part of the Flooded District was meeting High Overseer Campbell as an infected "Weeper" and finding his note. This is what I had praised previously, that the game makes you contemplate even the non-lethal punishments and their consequences. This was a very interesting callback to the fact that you had a hand in exposing Campbell and getting him punished. I sort of harbour a secret hope that Joplin and Sokolov managed to perfect their cure for the rat plague and someone eventually found Campbell and cured him. One could hope, for both him and the other people infected by the plague in Dunwall.

I made sure to avoid killing Daud and focused merely on robbing some stuff from him (a key, a money pouch) and his magic-harbouring gang of assassins. I wasn't in the mood to get into a fight with Daud and his gang, given that I was doing a strict pacifist run either way.

I found Granny Rags holding Slackjaw prisoner, and after finding her cameo and disposing of it, I freed her of her curse, then let Slackjaw loose. In real life, I do not approve of criminals or gangs, but as I've done a bit of thieving throghout the game's story, out of necessity for the sake of Loyalist resources, I didn't want to judge Slackjaw too much and wanted to repay him the favour of dealing with the two Pendleton members of Burrows' conspiracy against the Empress.

In the second half of the game, I knocked out only a single dog and my only kill was the dog's owner, the torturer in employ by Burrows. The tortuter was also my only conscious kill in the mission to expose Burrows as the primary culprit behind the spread of the rat plague.

Man, Burrows really was a textbook coward and sociopath. He intentionally imports an invasive species to kickstart a poorly understood deadly plague, untold thousands perish, things get out of hand, he decides to depose the empress... and once the chickens come home to roost, he turns into a snivelling little... well, you know. I was absolutely convinced this guy needs to be thrown in the slammer with a life sentence, just so he can't avoid living with the horrifying consequences of what he did to the city, the Empire and its society.

Once I got back from the Flooded District after getting Burrows exposed and arrested, I found out that Wallace and Lydia didn't make it, but Cecelia, Callista and Sam were thankfully alive, Piero and Anton had also survived and even burried the hatchet and became buddies thanks to mutual teamwork. Cecelia left me a note that she's off to a safer place and we'll meet again one day. Sam helped with the last two missions, bless 'im. Callista stayed on guard near the pub. Me and Sam went to Kingsparrow Island, so I could rescue Emily and throw the three traitors in the slammer. Great endgame moments, all of them, especially after the ordeal my character had to go through after the earlier celebration in the pub.

I made sure to save my last remaining sleep dart for admiral Havelock, knocking him out after his long-winded speechifying on why he decided to usurp power in the monarchy after our/my defeat of Burrows and his jailing. Havelock also implied apologies to Pendleton and Martin, over apparently murdering them because he feared they'd expose him or simply out of panic. Either way, I didn't waste much time with the admiral, all the more that I clearly remembered a post-mission cutscene/sequence around the middle of the game, where the admiral shook my hand cordially, like an old friend. Farley Havelock, I, Corvo, am disappoint. Since I was focused on an Edmond Dantès style playthrough, with as little killing and violence as possible, with as much sneakiness, cunning, and an effort at proper justice as possible, I decided that the best course of action was to leave admiral Havelock atone for his crimes, including the apparent killing of Pendleton and Martin, in prison. Just like Burrows. Dunwall didn't have much luck with Lord Regents during the events of the rat plague, didn't it ?

I think the most underwhelming character was the Outsider, with his full-of-himself, smug attitude, an attitude that didn't endear me to him in the slightest (not even as an entertaining villain, he was just smug and boring). I would've preferred a different narrator of the epilogue sequence, as the Outsider narrating the epilogue felt a bit hollow. I didn't meet him that often during my playthrough, and my approach probably didn't endear me to the character, as he seems to prefer a lot of chaos and mayhem, even if he pretends otherwise. Given that the world of Dishonored continues without any issues after the events of Death of the Outsider and also in that newer Deathloop game, methinks the Outsider has an overblown ego on how supposedly important he is to the Void or other supernatural matters in the series' world. So I'm taking a lot of things said about the Void and the mysteries of the setting with a grain of salt, rather than completely at face value. I also think that the Outsider's narration of the epilogue came across as a bit amusing, as he seemed to be startled or surprised that I played in such a merciful manner. He almost sounded disappointed, which arguably fits his characterisation.

Either way, I felt that the epilogue I got definitely felt like it achieved the best out of the unpleasant situation in the background of the story. Mission accomplished.

As far as the spells I invested in are concerned, I only focused on Blink and Bend Time, and invested a bit in Vitality and Agility. I started using the spells a bit more often around the middle of the playthrough, partly because I had upgraded them by that point to be a bit more useful than their basic versions. I originally wanted to use almost no spells whatsoever, but later decided to use them sparringly and stealthily. Though I've never counted it, I'm sure I've knocked out donwright hundreds of people during my playthrough. Even Daud's gang buddies, despite their own spells (a fact I found somewhat hilarious, given how much hyped-up Daud's gang were).

Aside from botched moments, I never used my sword for anything other than smashing through boarded-up entrances. I only used my pistol for target practice on a whisky bottle, for occassional shooting of those annoying krust molluscs in the late missions (the Flooded District in particular, where I also used grenades on them), and the only person I actually shot was the magic-wielding torturer working for Burrows (it was harder to overcome his spells any other way, so I pulled an Indiana Jones on him). I even figured out a way to shoot Shaw with a tranq dart instead of a duelling pistol, and have the game acknowledge it as a fair duel, as described earlier. I think I only used the incendiary bolts about twice, both cases were krusts. And the spring-loaded razor mines/traps a few times, exclusively on rat swarms.

Though many of the characters don't appear in the second game in the series or were deceased some time before its events, my headcanon is that Piero and Cecelia eventually got together, maybe even had kids. Young redheaded mad geniuses inventing new useful contraptions. You never know...

I consider Samuel Beechworth the unsung hero of the game. Not only was he your (i.e. the player's) humble companion and batman/boatman virtually since the first mission, he's also the reason Corvo survived, at all, especially after that poisoning. (Given the choice of name, it feels an outright detour into Tolkien in a setting otherwise straight out of Vandermeer. Sam couldn't carry the burden of duty for Master Corvo, but he could tamper with the poison dosage, and carry a half-poisoned Corvo to a potentially survivable place. S'all I'm sayin'.  Maybe Samuel Clemens too.) The fact that on a High Chaos playthrough, Sam apparently alerts your adversaries in the final mission, with a flare gun, out of disgust, really says something about him being a principled and genuinely wholesome character. There's also that one time he mentioned his wife in past tense. When you consider him a Virgil-type figure for Corvo, I think Sam really, really works.

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I wouldn't be shocked if one of the influences on Arkane while they were creating the setting were some of Jeff Vandermeer's stories. Plenty of parallels.

A few years ago, Michal Wojczik wrote a good and brief article on esthetic qualities inspired by the English 17th century Interregnum in Dishonored's otherwise 18th and 19th century inspired world. Give it a read, I think you'll find it interesting.