I wanted to save everybody in Dishonored 2. Not just from death - though during my first 25 hour playthrough I did, indeed, try to leave as many people upright as possible - but from themselves. If the strongmen, aristocrats, crooks and paupers of balmy Karnaca have anything in common, besides leathery complexions and comically oversized hands, it's that none of them are beyond redemption. Each villain in the game harbours a few, fitful sparks of virtue, a glimmer of promise you may detect while eavesdropping from a windowbox or rifling through diaries for hints about routes and hazards. All of them deserve a second chance, and in a handful of cases, you're able to give them that chance. Providing, that is, you are patient and attentive, and providing you resist the siren song of the game's more spectacular and corrosive abilities.
Gleaning hope amid squalor is, for me, as much the point of Dishonored 2 as wresting back control of the Empire of the Isles, from whose seat of government in Dunwall you are rudely toppled during the prologue level. Whether you choose to play as Emily Kaldwin, deposed empress, or her grizzled father Corvo Attano, among the first things you'll see when you get off the boat to Karnaca is a river of blood, blazing a path along the dockfront to the body of a slaughtered whale. It's a ghastly sight, but step closer and you'll discover something precious, a minor victory plucked quite literally from the jaws of defeat.
Similarly, at a glance you may despise the xenophobic Overseers who hold court in a later chapter, but sneak into their fortress - perhaps using the area's periodic dust storms as cover - and you may be surprised by how much you warm to them. A band of thuggish zealots or an army of lost souls, clinging to the reassuring iron of an oppressive creed? The key prop here is once again the Heart of Dunwall, an artefact from the original Dishonored that whispers melancholy insights about those around you (including your allies, all of whom have demons of their own to wrestle with). It's just as compelling, and nauseating, a means of delivering backstory as ever, though its power is diluted by a plot that too directly answers the question of the Heart's origin.
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