mobile logo
Back to Top

Blog

“What a Terrible Accident” Let’s Play Dishonored: Part 12: The Regent

July 6, 2013
Accident-Only/ Challenge Run/ Dishonored/ fan-fiction/ Let's Play
Arriving at Dunwall Tower is a very bittersweet moment for me. Were it not for all the security, guards, and the Lord Mole I’ve been sent to kill, this would feel a lot like a homecoming. As it stands, it’s sad to see how far this place has fallen. What was once a bright and cheerful place where Jessamine did her best to help as many as she could is now under the control of a bleak and petty dictator. I may not have a great vantage point from the bottom of the water lock, but even from here the change is obvious. The darkness merely accentuates what is already there.
Due to my current standing with the government of Dunwall, I’m unable to get clearance to use the water lock’s mechanisms to raise our boat to the garden of the tower. This means that I need to climb my way up myself and go from there. After all of the many, many buildings I’ve climbed in a few short days, this isn’t a big deal to me, especially since I have magic teleportation powers. After climbing a few pipes, I find myself using these powers to land inside a nearby vent. There are spinning wheels that divide this vent, but in those wheels are gaps which I can easily sneak through. At the end of the vent, I see an opening that I use to exit onto a steel beam. From there, I see what appears to be a Bone Charm on the other side of the water lock, in another vent. Confirming that it is indeed a Bone Charm with the Heart, I Blink over there and pick it off of a corpse. It’s a good thing that I was the one who picked it up, because as soon as I put it in my bag, a swarm of rats appears out of nowhere. Reflexively, I throw myself back to the other side using Blink before I am devoured by rats. Looking at the Bone Charm, I see that it helps me restore my mental energy faster, so I equip it onto my belt.
Taking a quick breath to calm myself down, I overhear a few guards talking on the level above me. One of them moves towards the bannister. If he looks down, I will be spotted, ruining any shot of assassinating the Lord Mole. Luckily, his Dunwallian inability to look around gives me the break I needed to get to the balcony by the door to the maintenance room. Opening the door, I am immediately greeted by an Arc Pylon. The door is just outside of it’s effective range, so I’m safe for now. However, if I want to get to the upper levels, I will need to disable it somehow. The panel must be around here somewhere. I see that there is a metal barrier I can use to hide from the Arc Pylon, so I throw myself behind it, not giving the pylon any time to charge up. From there, I see not only the control panel, but the oil tank fueling the device. Quietly dislodging the tank from the conduit, I move upstairs and continue my ascent.
Rather than take the slow, painful route of sneaking through the top level of the water lock, I find that it is smarter instead to teleport onto a nearby spire and again to the roof of the building, bypassing the patrolling guards entirely. Sneaking across the rooftop gives me a perfect view of the tower gardens, so I take this as an opportunity to sit down and plan my strategy for braking in. While the basic structure of the garden is very much like how I remember it, security has clearly been improved. There are stations and watch towers that were clearly erected recently, on top of the large number of guards out on patrol. I also see construction laid about for further potential “renovations”. According to the Heart, two Runes are also in the area. One is close by, and I can likely get to it on the way to the tower proper. The other is clearly on the top of the tower. Unless the Regent is there as well, the odds are I won’t be grabbing it. It’s too risky.
Finishing my survey of the area, I decide to use the construction nearby to sneak through the right side of the gardens, behind a guard tower. Since the Rune is in the tower, I use a small hole in the construction to enter. As I climb up, I hear footsteps above me, and wait for them to pass before I pull myself up and Blink passed the patrol before he turns around. The watchman is in plain view of the door leading to the Rune, so I wait before making my move. Entering the room containing the Rune, I see that it must be the bedroom for the guardsmen in the area, judging by the cots, lockers, and food littered about it. One of the notices on a circular table says that after the death of my beloved Empress, Lord Mole severely restricted access to Dunwall Tower. That doesn’t surprise me, but I’m still angered at the way he spits on her legacy. Rather than listen to the words of the people, this fool would sit and watch the city crumble. My resolve is strengthened after this. I know now that regardless of my expendability to the conspiracy, this man needs to die.
When I look back at the way I came into this room, I see an awning on the side of the tower I can use to keep the high ground and advance further into the complex. I can’t teleport to it normally, so with a running start, I jump and then use my powers to get up there. Turning back, a wry smile crosses my face as I see that the guard is still completely oblivious. He didn’t even hear me thanks to my boots, outfitted by Piero to be as silent as possible. Fortune smiles at me again when I gaze to my right, finding a ventilation shaft that leads directly into the tower foyer. On top of the archway above the main entrance, I see the Lord Mole himself talking through one of the screens to his top general, standing atop the staircase leading onto the second floor.
What luck! Apparently all the stress is getting to the old fool. Rather than stay in his safe-room on the top floor, he heads to his bedroom. Considering that there is only one real “bedroom” in this tower, the rest being more accurately called barracks, I know exactly where he’ll be. I can’t help but be mad that this sick individual is sleeping in the room that rightfully belongs to the woman he contracted a hit on, but that’s tempered by the relief that I won’t have to struggle to get there. After all, the bedroom’s balcony directly overlooks the foyer, and from my vantage point I can see that the door is wide open. As many people on patrol as this idiot has, there was absolutely no way he could have known that his pursuer has the power to throw himself onto the chandelier, and then to the balcony. The moment he decided to leave that room was the moment he sealed his fate. Lord Mole, Hiram Burrows, you are mine.
On the balcony to the bedroom, I take the time to pilfer a Rune from his chest in front of the bed before climbing up to the awning above. It’s made of incredibly sturdy materials, so I have no doubt that it will support my weight. All I have to do now is sit, wait, and figure out how exactly I plan to get the job done without leaving evidence behind. He takes his time getting here, but eventually I hear him outside the door, chastising the watchmen. Part of me wonders exactly how much they like Lord Mole. If he wasn’t paying them money, how many of them would stay out of loyalty? My guess is few. As the door opens, I summon a swarm of rats to attack him. Watching the guards panic and swing their swords wildly, trying to assist him, my heart jumps as I see one of them accidentally swing their blade directly into the Lord Regent, killing him on the spot in a similar scene to the the Pendleton twins.
Oh dear, what a terrible accident. Apparently the guards in this city have trouble defending their lords from the rats.
Though I probably should look around and scout for more Runes and Bone Charms, I opt to not take my chances with Dunwall Tower Security. I leave exactly the same way I came in, using the chandelier to keep out of sight of the patrols and sneaking back into the vent. My journey back to Samuel’s boat goes a lot smoother than the one I made to get to my final target. After a few Blinks, I am back on the roof of the water lock and in a good position to dive into the water and swim to the boat. Explaining that the deed has been done, a weight appears to lift from the boatman’s shoulders, and he takes us back to the Hound Pits.
As we travel, Samuel confesses a mix of unease and excitement for the new change, worrying that the small guys like him may end up getting steamrolled. I didn’t tell him for fear of worsening his mood, but deep down I share the same apprehension. All the evidence I’ve gathered points to this being the perfect moment for the heads of this conspiracy to show their true colors, assuming my guess is correct. I hope I’m wrong, but considering I’m the foremost expert on being backstabbed, I trust my instincts. I can hear the party in the bar from here, so I decide to join the festivities. As Pendleton praises my final victory, he hands me a drink. Both him and Havelock seem excited for the changes to come, and in their fervor give a toast to me and Lady Emily.

In the excitement of the moment, I imbibe the fluid from the glass and immediately curse myself for it. I wait a few moments, and think that I might be okay as I listen to Callista argue her case to Martin that she should take the job of caring for Emily. It was then that my vision began to blur, and I knew that I had made a terrible mistake. It’s getting worse and worse, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it. The only thought crossing my mind is the vain hope that if I get to my bed and rest, maybe they’ll be too chicken shit to finish me off and I’ll have time to recover. Frantically, I rush up the stairs and to my room, but as I reach my bed, I collapse onto the floor. I’ve been lucky so far, but it appears this is where my journey comes to a close….

No Comments

Add Comment

Blog

“What a Terrible Accident” Let’s Play Dishonored: Part 4: The Granny and the Gangsters

June 1, 2013
Accident-Only/ Challenge Run/ Dishonored/ fan-fiction/ Let's Play
I head into the bar to begin my first assignment, and my new life. Havelock is there reading from what seems to be some sort of journal. He tries to encourage me, saying that “sometimes good men need to do bad things to make the world better”, but I think he realizes both of us see through the bullshit. With that said, he gives me three objectives. My first target is High Overseer Baldy himself. As he announced it, I couldn’t help but grin. In stories like this, the cliché is that the ones most directly involved are the last targets. Unlike those stories, the second-in-command is will be my first. Once the deed’s been done, I’ll need to loot his black book, where he keeps all his blackmail secrets, from his body. The final objective will be to free Martin, an overseer who decided to join up with Havelock’s group. From what the Admiral says, Martin is the brains of this entire operation, so freeing him will get me that much closer to Emily. Neither one of these tasks seems terribly complicated, so I don’t see much reason to worry. Getting their seems like the hard part, but Samuel can get me close enough so that I can do the rest.
Before catching my boat, I take a look at what Havelock was reading. It appears to be a report from one of his spies. The message claims that it’s no coincidence that the Mole took control after Jessy died. No shit, Sherlock! I figured that out almost immediately after it happened. What have you been doing the past six months? Continuing on, the report mentions what are referred to as “Tallboys”, special guards on stilts who are heavily armored, wielding incendiary bolts. I recall the vignettes from my trip to the Void, in particular the one of the stilted guards shooting two innocent civilians. If this text is correct, then the guards in these suits are drugged so that they feel nothing. Let’s hope these guys aren’t terribly commonplace, else I may be in for some trouble.
Since I’ve already stocked myself at Piero’s shop, I head to the boat in order to embark on my mission. Before I reach the vessel, I am stopped by the woman whose voice I didn’t recognize on the audiograph earlier. She introduces herself as Callista Curnow. I recognize her last name, as her uncle Geoff and I go way back. My recollection of Geoff seems to be a crazy coincidence, as her request involves him. My old friend has been invited to The Abbey of the Everyman to speak with Baldy himself. According to Callista’s sources, the High Overseer has ordered a quantity of exotic poisons that are impossible to trace. She suspects that the two facts are related, and fears that her uncle’s life my be in danger. I accept her request and vow to protect her uncle, after all what friend would I be if I let him die, especially to Baldy of all people. Since the poison intended for Geoff is untraceable, I think I know of a good way to kill two proverbial birds with one stone, or in this case switch the target of the stone from one bird to the other. Anyway, it’s about time I departed this place and made myself useful. I speak to Samuel and we head out.
As we touch down near the Distillery District, and out of sight of the City Watch, the boatman primes me on how the area’s changed in recent months. He tells me that the guards and the gangsters have been fighting over the territory for some time. The guards have establish Sokolov’s “Walls of Light” so that non-guard who passes through them is disintegrated. Meanwhile, the Bottle Street Gang has taken control of the Distillery, likely where Slackjaw is making his diluted plague elixir. Lastly, Granny Rags has recently appeared in the fringes, and who knows what the old hag is thinking. This information will no doubt come in handy.
Before I begin to pursue Baldy, I move away from Samuel, who has taken up camp nearby so that I can make a quick escape, and pull out the Heart. It points me to two Bone Charms and two Runes in the area. The closest thing to my location is a Bone Charm in the guard tower on a small island outcropping nearby. There are watchmen on the bridge dumping the bodies of plague victims, so I’ll have to swim around into order to get to it. When I pull myself out of the water, I see that the Bone Charm is out of my reach. Then, I spot a chain with which I can pull myself up towards it. Rather than risk the jump, I Blink onto the ledge. The Bone Charm is next to a body and a pouch containing 100 Coins. This charm has the effect of tricking rats into thinking I’m one of them until I get closer, so I hook it to one of the holes in my belt.
Once more, I follow the Heart to a Rune nearby, swimming back to shore and walking down the streets to get to it. One guard doesn’t even notice as I creep directly behind him and back into the shadows, until he returns to his patrol route. Rather than chance future encounters, I Blink to the top of a nearby pillar and decide to take to the rooftops as long as I am able. On the rooftops rafters overlooking the streets, I see a gangster’s corpse on a rooftop, apparently keeping watch for Slackjaw until he died. Next to him was a pouch of money that I decide to take with me. It was then I saw Granny Rags herself, talking about feeding the birds. It should come as no surprise that her squat happens to be the one with Poncy’s Rune in it. If I’m careful, I can in and out of here before she even realizes. Sneaking past her, I notice that the Rune sits atop a shrine to the ponce himself. Taking it from the shrine is enough to summon him into this world because apparently he’s so interested in speaking at me. He tells me things less about Granny Rags than I already know, then wonders out loud how I intend to take out the High Overseer. It’s amazing how dull chaos incarnate can be.
I take a moment to plunder a couple of heirlooms from this shack before I finally leave once and for all. Even if Granny Rags finds them missing, she didn’t see me and no one will pay attention to her, so no matter what I’m in the clear. I cross through Bottle Street on my way to the Abbey on John Clavering Boulevard. On my way over, the Heart once again starts to beat. It pinpoints a Bone Charm located in a nearby house, but going for it seems to be a less than wise idea. There’s a man being blockaded by two members of the Bottle Street Gang looking for their extortion fee. I can take care of them by summoning rats. However, if I want to get to that Charm, I’ll need to expose myself to the man inside. He’ll likely get grateful to me for rescuing him, but under the interrogation he might crack, so while I feel sorry for him, I have to ignore his pleas for help.
But just because I can’t help him, doesn’t mean I won’t do anything to the Bottle Street Gang in response to this outrage. Instead of heading to Clavering Boulevard, I make a split second decision to take a detour over at Slackjaw’s distillery. As usual, I take to the rooftops on my way there. And, as I’ve come to expect, the Heart starts beating once again, indicated the presence of a Bone Charm. I see a key on the belt of one of the guards. Assuming I’ll need this key, I wait on the rooftop until just the right moment. As I wait, I hear a group of nearby guards mention Daud, which gets my attention. Sadly, they don’t know anything I’m not already privy to. When the guard with the key goes to relive himself on a nearby tuft of grass, I Blink down behind him, nab it, and then quickly make my way into the distillery proper. Aside from those two guards at the front door, the entrance is barren. They have a locked gate barring direct access to the control room, but the key I nabbed renders it moot. Once there, I steal Slackjaw’s recipe for the diluted elixir as some strange form of revenge for the poor guy back on Bottle Street. Thankfully, Slackjaw runs with the type of people who would do something like that, so he’ll likely blame his staff. And it’s not like criminals are known for calling the City Guard.
I decide to nab the Bone Charm and then make my way out. The door to the room containing the Charm is being watched, so I take to the top of the some nearby pipes and wait for the patrols to pass before entering. Since I don’t know the guard routes in here, I am relived to find that the Bone Charm is onto of the rafters, so I can hide there for a bit. This one has the power to boost my speed while sneaking, so I immediately attach it to my belt. After the guard below me passes, I make my way through the distillery room back into the warehouse area. With haste, I Blink back into the control room before someone looks in my direction and slip back to the entrance. From there, heading onto the roofs and back onto Bottle Street in trivial.
Sneaking back onto the roofs, I utilize my powers to make it onto Clavering Boulevard. From my vantage point on a nearby balcony, I can see a Wall of Light under in the stone archway on the route to the abbey. Above it is a sign that I know comes from the Mole himself, saying that “The Boldest Measures are the Safest”. It’s amazing how paranoid one man can be. Rather than take a direct approach, I look around the area for an alternate pathway. Remembering the powers I have at my disposal, I have the idea to Blink onto a light fixture above the archway. Though the move could be seem as rather reckless, it worked, and soon I’m on the roof of the archway, above the Wall of Light. As I complete my maneuver, I hear a couple of guards scream. I jumped, not sure if they saw me or not. Luckily, they were being devoured my ravenous mutant plague rats. One of them shook it off, then other is too chewed up to be recognizable.

After that brief amusement, I blink onto a nearby lamppost and again to another condemned building that has the look of a seedy hotel. This new rooftop gives me direct view of the entrance to the Abbey, but something else gets my attention. I look down at a small guard post and the Heart begins to beat in my pocket. Taking it out, it shows me that inside that post is a Rune. With a running start, I jump forward and Blink onto the roof of the post. Fortunately, there’s a hatch on the roof that leads directly to the Rune, so I drop, quickly seize it, and teleport behind a section on cover on a nearby awning. In order to make suspicion low, I make it back on to roof to close the hatch before retreating back into my cover. Since no one will see me from here, I take this time to strengthen my powers. With my mind’s eye, I envision my new ability. I see me, leaping into the air in order to get to someplace high up. Normally, I wouldn’t be able to do so, but I see myself leaping again, seeming to push off the air itself, in order to gain extra height on my jump. Pouring the energy of the 2 Runes I’ve obtained here into this vision, I feel my abilities strengthen. From this point, I teleport passed the guards and stroll up to entrance of Holgar Square, where I’ll find the Abbey of the Everyman, and my first target….

No Comments

Add Comment

Blog

“What a Terrible Accident” Let’s Play Dishonored: Part 1: The Death of an Empress

May 23, 2013
Accident-Only/ Challenge Run/ Dishonored/ fan-fiction/ Let's Play

Out of all of the games that were released Holiday 2012, none have kept my interest more than Dishonored, developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda. During my initial two playthroughs of the game, I made note of how good the game was at allowing for players to make their own rule-sets and self-imposed restrictions on how they progress through the game. With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to make use of this feature by starting a new challenge playthrough of Dishonored. Inspired by this video from PC Gamer, I will play with the aim of simulating a playthrough in which Corvo must carry out his assassinations while simultaneously leaving behind as little evidence as humanly possible, making it seem all the targets suffered unfortunate accidents. As a result, the rules of the challenge are as follows:

  • Use of weaponry is strictly prohibited. After all, they will leave behind trace evidence.
  • No enemies can be knocked out via Choke Holds or Sleep Darts. They will remember the experience of being knocked out, which will lead to the conclusion that an outside man was involved.
  • I am not allowed to be detected. If I finish the mission and the “Was Never Spotted” indicator is unchecked, I must restart the mission and try again.
  • Any kills made MUST look like an accident, or else have a sufficiently plausible explanation for why they occur outside of “An intruder/Corvo did it.”
    • For the purposes of this playthrough, Devouring Swarm is an acceptable means of dealing with enemies. Since Dunwall will be in the middle of a rat plague, most people are more likely to suspect bad luck when a man is devoured by rats then magical swarms of rats being summoned from the ether.
    • While I am allowed to use Windburst to arrange falls, this is something I am unlikely to do since the power itself, in my experience, has a way of drawing the attention of nearby enemies.
    • I am still trying to decide whether or not I should allow the use of Rewire Tools as a way to arrange for accidental kills. This is because I am unsure whether or not I should assume use of such tools would leave behind evidence of tampering. Feel free to chime in in the comments if you wish to leave an opinion one way or the other. Based on the consensus, I will adapt my playstyle accordingly.
    • I am also in the middle of deciding whether or not I should permit using choke holds and then throwing guards into the river, letting them drown or get eaten by fishes. Using the sword is out of the question because slash marks will be left behind, but should I assume that choking someone will leave evidence behind that detectives in Dunwall can discover with their current level of technology? I do not know the answer to the question.
  • I do not care about my level of chaos. Despite this, it is likely that I will be going for a Low Chaos game simply because there are only so many kills you can contribute to accidents.
Furthermore, I will be playing the game on Hard with the Health/Mana indicators, sneak icon, and Objective markers all turned off. The only things that will remain on are Heart markers and a simple crosshair for the purpose of aiming and to prevent motion sickness. Every time I want to see my Health/Mana, I will need to open my Inventory and inspect myself. In exchange for an immersive experience, it is a small price to pay. Lastly, these rules will not come into effect until after Corvo receives his powers from the Outsider. Until then, I will simply adhere to a Low Chaos/Ghost style, since the type of person who would have these codes of conduct would be a professional that keeps his work as clean as possible. Now that all of the background information has been laid out, let us begin.
I’ve spent the past few months at sea, petitioning neighboring regions to aid our lands in our time of need. My efforts have been… less than successful. And by that, I mean that every damn island in the area has decided to instead impose a quarantine on us until we beat the plague or die. My name is Corvo Attano, and I have the unfortunate task of telling my empress exactly how screwed we are. My good friend Geoff shoots the breeze at myself and a nearby guard, both of us with a sense of dejection from the complete lack of good news we return with. We dock through Sokolov’s latest contraption and return to land.
As I cross the bridge, I am greeted by the pleasant sight to the heavily-implied result of my likely romantic relationship with the Empress, her/our daughter Emily. Well, truth be told she is my daughter, but Jessamine and I like to keep our love life private. I try to be a good father. Sadly, I can only be around for her so often, especially in these troubled times. She seems pleased to see me return in one piece. As eager a girl as she is, the very first questions she has are both about my trip and whether or not I will play a game of hide-and-seek with her. Since I haven’t quite worked up the courage to deliver the news to my lady, I decide take Emily up on her offer. She takes my hand, and together we race down to the garden in order to start the game.
She begins the countdown and I take off. For most other people, hearing “10” would signal the start of some anticipation regarding whether or not they’ll be found. I know better than that. The girl is… less than perceptive, so I use the same tactics I always use against her. That is, I quickly dart up a nearby staircase and crouch. For some reason, Emily has never once found me. I think it has something to do with this region’s education system. During my many years as a resident here, originally hailing from a nearby island nation, I’ve found that the people have a crippling inability to look up or even really look around when searching for things. This knowledge has been critical in many of my late night “escapes” from the palace with the Empress. Everyone suspects that we’re likely an item and there are absolutely no rules against it, but there’s something about not outright stating it that both Jessamine and I both adore. Perhaps it’s the mystique, but I digress.
After what seem to be only a few minutes, Emily gives up the “chase” and concedes. Now that my willpower has been restored, I finally decide to make my way towards my sweet… I mean, the empress. On my way up, I am greeted by High Overseer Baldy, whose portrait is being painted by Royal Physician/Artist/Inventor/Chauvinist/Disgusting Pig, Anton Sokolov. I never liked either of those two. They seem like the type of people who would gladly shake your hand while working the knife deep into your back. Ah well, they aren’t really worth talking about, but since I’ve worked myself up by just thinking about them, I decide to take the wine off the table in some petty plot to ruin Sokolov’s latest “masterpiece”. He has talent, don’t get me wrong, but his genius is only outmatched by his own insufferably.
Feeling back in the groove, and satisfied that I’ve denied Sokolov and Baldy a bit of wine, I head up to the Empress to deliver my report. And that’s when I come across the sad sight of Royal Spymaster Hiram Burrows, who I have come to call “Mole” as both a pun off his name and the way he tends to scurry about like a rat. I overhear him arguing with Jessamine over whether or not to help the sick people in the city. Y’know, I’ve always joked that if you tried to stab that guy in the heart, you’d find he doesn’t have one. He says something as I pass but I never pay attention to him, especially not when he disrespects Jessy’s authority like that. Speaking of my love, I finally see her again after my months since we’ve last seen each other, and I can feel both of our hearts skipping a beat. Before I grow weak in the knees, I am reminded of my duty, and hand her my report before my heart sinks so deep into my chest that even the jaws of life couldn’t get it out.
Jessy, Emily, and I all stand together, as we try to figure out how to get our city out of this mess. Those thoughts are cut short as the ruthless gang of mysterious, masked strangers appear and begin their assault. I had just enough time to draw my weapon before they struck at us. As my blade lashed out at each assailant, I could feel their bodies vanish into thin air, taunting me. When the last one fled, we were ambushed by an even stronger duo. One of them was in a mask and I could barely get a glimpse of the other. If not for their black magic, I would’ve cut them both down. This was regrettably not my day, as I was levitated into the air and forced to watch as the unmasked man plunged the knife into my dear. Emily was taken by the other, and they both faded away. I managed to crawl my way to Jessy, but she didn’t have long for this world, dying in my arms as she spoke her last.
When her life force had finally faded, Baldy and Mole approached us. The haste of their accusation astonished me. Against all logic and common sense, they both accused me of kidnapping Emily and murdering the Empress. It didn’t take long to immediately begin suspecting them of being the real culprits. Nobody accuses someone of something that fast unless they have something to hide, and these two have always found a way to piss me off. In my anger and haste to extract revenge, I grew careless, and one lone guard managed to knock me out with the blunt of his sword. Thus began my half-year stint at Coldridge Prison.
I was subjected to the worst torture you could possibly imagine. You’d think the burns and the lashes were the painful part. Please, that crap is child’s play. No, the real torture came from having to listen to Baldy and Mole drone on and on about how their obviously evil plan is so good for the city and how I should be happy to die for their petty power grab. I can barely stand being in the same general area with either one of these two for more than an hour, but six-months? That was some serious punishment and wasted time that I will neverget back. I guess they though that I’d sign their “confession” if subjected to enough mental anguish that I became a madman. Fortunately, I spent most of the torture in my mental happy place, repeatedly shouting “I can’t hear you, la la la la!” while I imagine pulling their teeth out with pliers as a crude form of payback. But since the next day is slated to be my execution, I’m going to die never getting the revenge I so richly deserve. Or so I think, until my meal arrives, with a special package….

5 Comments

  • Reply
    anaphysik
    May 23, 2013 at 7:24 am

    Devouring Swarm can only be used in areas where large rat swarms would plausibly congregate. No using it it in fancy houses ;P. Dark, dank, dirty alleyways, sewers, abandoned buildings, etc. Also note that if areas change due to high-chaos, then new Devouring-Swarm-enabled places may open up. (This encourages MORE KILLING.)

    Rewire tools are acceptable to use, but you must either wait at the fusebox until after the person has died, or return there after they've died. (This simulates Corvo removing the evidence of an intentional rewire, by either returning it to its original state, or some other (non-suspicious) malfunctioning state.)
    Alternatively (or additionally), rewire tools can only be used in places where skilled electricians are unlikely to be sent out to investigate/check. So you can't use them in fancy places, important checkpoints, etc.

    Choking someone out and throwing them to the hagfish is only acceptable if there are no guardrails/etc. next to the area they were in – that is, if it's plausible that they could have just stumbled/tripped/fallen in themselves. Likewise with Windburst.

    Also, you should aim to kill as many people as possible, and keep an "accidents created" tally.

    Also, you should consider whether you're allowed to steal anything. My suggestion: You can loot from anywhere that scavengers could be found, or anywhere that no guard will ever inspect. Stealing from fancy houses is outright verboten, as is stealing from anywhere that would keep an up-to-date inventory (armories, kitchens, etc.).

    You are actually allowed to use your sword (and technically your pistol, but that would generally be foolish) in some rare situations. Notably, you can kill rats with them. (The important part here is to only kill targets that city guards would kill, and only with weapons that city guards would use.) Weepers are a more complicated case, because although the guards would kill them, they would also keep a tally of those kills, and dispose of the bodies. So a slashed-up weeper laying around might look suspicious, because guards would have reported it, but citizens wouldn't have the weapons to kill them. Maybe use the 'where no guard would check' rule-of-thumb again.

  • Reply
    newdarkcloud
    May 23, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    I'm… not going to abide by that first rule, because rats are EVERYWHERE. All the buildings in the game have rats in them. I'm not even using that as hyberbole.

    Interesting. It's an idea I could consider. If I get no better ideas for Rewire Tool use, then I'm likely going to use that one.

    Likewise with the choke rule.

    I've been thinking about how much I should let myself steal, and I think I'm going to go for the rule where I can steal anything, but I can't destroy or tamper with anything when attempting to steal. If there's no evidence of forced entry, than odds are they'll just blame the hired help.

    Possibly. But in those situations you outline, it's typically easier to move around the rats/weepers instead of killing them.

  • Reply
    Exetera
    May 24, 2013 at 3:41 pm

    But, rat swarms do occur in fancy houses in the game. I seem to remember one NPC saying that an important lawmaker was killed in his office by a rat swarm…

  • Reply
    Unknown
    May 26, 2013 at 8:29 pm

    where is the video at?

  • Reply
    newdarkcloud
    May 27, 2013 at 3:35 am

    It's a text LP, there's no video. :p

Add Comment