Dishonored Step by Step Part 2: Coldridge Prison
making a conscious and continual decision to abstain to break the cycle of violence
I had an idea about whether or not a game might be rich enough to yield material to write about each individual room, piece of writing, or character. Dishonored came to my mind and I decided to break it up by location and write what comes to mind due to the imagery, fiction, and actions of each. This piece covers Coldridge Prison from when you wake up in your cell until you take a boat ride with Samuel after escaping. You can read the first piece here.
Shortly after escaping your cell a prompt appears telling the player, “Using stealth and nonlethal approach has benefits. Fewer rats and weepers, some people react favorably, and the final outcome is not as dark.” This message is communicated as the word of the Lord to His prophets. Why?
Proceeding your escape from a prison cell and preceding the word coming down from heaven, you are gifted a sword. The first of many, many, lethal weapons you will be handed. Here in Coldridge Prison your non-lethal options are to avoid enemies entirely, choke them out, and throw items to distract them. Should you desire lethal options you have stealth kills, drop-down executions, a gun, a crossbow, dismemberment and beheading as a result of sword fights, and rats to consume the bodies left behind. The quantity of lethal versus non was something that always stuck out to me when playing and replaying Dishonored. It was not until this most recent play that I was able to reconcile this beckoning to violence with the greater thesis of the game.
Corvo has experienced a fall. Once Lord Protector, lover of the empress, and resident of the highest elevation within the kingdom, he has fallen to a prison cell, stripped of all rights, and tortured. Descending even further into the sewers upon his escape. He is dubbed Assassin and dishonored. Once amidst royalty to picking his way through bodies dumped away from sight and care. Accenting this fall is the extreme height of the jail’s walls. Much like a cathedral, the effect is to make one feel small in comparison with the grand lengths ascending far above you. They intimidate you away from attempting to climb up and over, to stay where you are out of fear of another fall and death. We know for all their grand posturing they will fail to keep Corvo from ascending up and out.
Comments from the Watch indicate Corvo was capable of dealing death before you got control of him. Execution animations are Corvo’s flourishes, not the player’s. Previously the Lord Protector, does Corvo now kill to protect or for vengeance? Are the Watch deserving of death? Are they not ignorant pieces to be removed from the board to open the way to those responsible for Jessamine’s death and Emily’s abduction? The Watch audio barks are not as obvious as most games in how they beckon the player to kill them, some even voice sympathy for the dead empress. Were Corvo not the fall guy would he not be as liable to follow orders as they are? Does he ponder this specific fate that has placed him and them in their positions? Six months of torture probably blots it out.
My reading of silent protagonists in games usually falls under self-mutilation. The developers strip their protagonist of a voice, and therefore themselves of one. Is it an artistic decision, a feeling of ineptness, or one coming from fear of the audience?1 The backlash that lies in wait for one wrong move or word to spring. Silencing your lead is a way of neutering any explicit message. Developers making explicit stands within and out of their games, for good or ill, run into this. See any game daring to place a minority in the spotlight for the former and Neil Druckman’s “Joel was right” comment for the latter. A work cannot be devoid of “politics” anymore than it can be devoid of an authorial voice, silent protagonist or not. Dishonored speaks through its beckoning to commit violence, through its different endings, and in its continuation in the sequel. The authorial voice I find such delight in seeking out remains despite the overt muteness.
Corvo’s flourishes are not player controlled because they require too much. Videogames lack the capability of allowing one to perform elaborate movements required for anything beyond the basic verbs of jump, take, attack, activate. The quick time event was a stop gap for this problem, a way to display elaborate animations while retaining the player’s involvement. Motion controls with the Wii, then Kinect, PlayStation Move, and the current usage within Virtual Reality headsets opened up being able to better perform these flourishes, but were mostly derided and mocked. This lacking within videogames extends to sensory experiences. Coldridge prison, what does it smell like? Just how cold is it within the walls, laying on the stone slabs? What does gripping the gun and sword feel like? What is their weight? What is the kickback of shooting or of meeting an enemy's steel with our own? Drinking an elixir, what is its taste, how does it feel as it spreads through your throat and stomach? Does the ocean’s salt coat every surface? So much sensory potential is unrealized. Can it be? HD rumble and Dualsense haptic feedback are attempts to make playing games more sensuous, but not enough. We want to render things photoreal but miss so much else that could be a rich texture.
Armed to kill, why would you not? Is this vengeance out of loyalty or love? To save a daughter do you justify the ease with which you kill? Corvo never speaks so we decide for ourselves. The city speaks. Graffiti, a glut of corpses, rats eating bodies, the brutal Overseer recruitment process, an infected couple embracing each other in death, all of this asserts that this is not a place you would wish to live in, especially not as a commoner. There is no fairness in who lives and dies, in what conditions they live and die in. To live in this place you are expected to reflect this brutality back onto the world. To perpetuate an ouroboros of violence. This engagement with that violence is what will doom the city. Self discipline, a conscious and continual decision to not engage, to not fall into the easy choice of taking a life, to abstain from the multitude of lethal options afforded you, is how you break the cycle and create a better future.
Corvo is chosen by both material and immaterial powers to be a lever of change. By material loyalists to supplant others so that they may step into power. By immaterial Outsider due to his own curiosity in what will happen should you be given some of his power. A Shinigami dropping an apple to make play. His position is not dissimilar to me as a player.
This usage of a silent protagonist sits amongst many other elements that make it hard to separate Dishonored from Half-Life 2. Silent protagonist despite surrounding talking heads, hugging other characters in first person, upright metal coffin-like containers that move about on a rail system, imposing and overbearing buildings, and Arkane’s own cancelled work on a Ravenholm videogame.