Headscratchers / Dishonored 2

New entries on the bottom.

Delilah Alive

• How is Delilah even alive? Not only was she killed by Daud in the first game, she had a whole plot to usurp the throne way back then; either she was killed back then and her plot failed, or her plot succeeded, and she was already Empress. How is she still around and only trying to make a move 15 years later? Even if one assumes that Daud "spared" Delilah in the first game by trapping her in her own painting, there's still the fact that it would have been impossible for her to escape: she was rendered inert and in stasis, in a painting in the Void, and none of her Coven had the same painting-related abilities Delilah had that would be necessary to have any hope of freeing her. Furthermore, outside of Daud's group and the Coven, no one would even know about her (and thus have any chance at releasing her).
  • For that matter, how is Delilah able to strip Corvo of his magic? Isn't that a feat only possible for the Outsider? If she had such a capability, why did she never use it against Daud?
  • Canonically, Daud snuck up on Delilah and knocked her unconscious - she never had a chance to use her powers against him, something you can do in the final battle here as well. Can't cast spells if you're not awake.
  • Delilah showed no such powers when Daud fought her when she was awake. Canonically, Daud only sealed her and the DLC showed that he's capable of doing that without sneaking and choking her unconscious. It's more likely that her escape from the Void, including forcing a part of The Outsider with her, gave Delilah a boost with her powers. Since she became something akin to the Outsider, it's possible she learned the ability to remove powers from Marked Ones.
  • Late game they outright explain that Delilah ended up finding the moment in the Void where The Outsider became the Outsider and somehow siphoned/became one with him. He even angrily states he does not like this. This could be how she can take Marked Ones' powers.
  • Secondly, it's outright explained in the game that it was sheer force of will which kept her going in the Void. She was able to muster enough strength and fortitude in order to contact people that still believed in, and loved, her - leading to the ritual in Aramis' mansion.
  • This is covered in the game. Daud trapped Delilah in the Void, and as someone said, found where the Outsider was created and became part of him. She managed to "whisper" to the people closest to her, Breanna and Abele, and they used a ritual to bring her back.

Appearance

• After becoming the most wanted man/woman in the world, why doesn't Corvo/Emily take any steps to altering their appearance beyond obscuring their faces in an incredibly suspicious-looking manner? They both keep wearing the same clothes (a note from Sokolov to Meagan shows that buying new clothes is very much possible), and in Corvo's case, his very (in)famous mask that is associated only with him, and Emily, having only covered lower half of her face, doesn't even cut or dye her hair.
  • There's not a lot of point to doing so. Corvo spends most of the game in a city he hasn't visited for decades, which is at least two weeks' boat travel away from Dunwall, where the mask isn't as well-known; Emily's appearance isn't so uniquely distinctive that she needs to do more than cover up most of her face to pass unnoticed, particularly since it's an era before commonly-available photography. Neither are wearing remarkable outfits; neither are under a specific threat from the natives of Serkonos, but are subject to attack because they're strangers, pedestrians, and/or trespassers. You don't have to work as hard to go anonymous in an era when, even as an empress or her best-known supporter, most of the people you meet have never seen an image of you that wasn't hand-drawn.
  • In the first game, the Lord Regent has a video screen that can send a fairly accurate image of himself to his guards on the lower floor, showing that the technology to transmit images is very much up to scratch. Likewise, it's mentioned that Emily's face is stamped on all the currency minted in the last fifteen years, so the average person would see it every day when handling money. Besides that, the wanted poster of Emily that comes with the collector's edition is as clear as a photograph and in-color, not a crude third-hand scratching. The people of Karnaca would have to be blind to look at it and not recognize her with a scarf over her face.
    • That technology might have been limited to a very short range, or outright unavailable to most people. It's also possible that the people of Karnaca simply don't care enough about national politics to a) memorize the faces of the Empress and her Royal Protector, b) identify the mysterious masked/scarf stranger, and c) do anything if they did realize who they were looking at. Life has been miserable enough under Luca Abele without worrying about royal coups and all that.
  • There's also the Clark Kenting factor. Imagine someone telling you that your friend in China who could easily win the Elvis lookalike contest is literal Elvis. Pretty much just as likely that someone would think a shady homeless man passing by is the Royal Protector, and your purse just got personally stolen by the Empress.

Outsider ritual

• What was the point of the ritual that created the Outsider? Given that he was very much an unwilling participant, was his apotheosis supposed to happen, or was it an unintended side effect?
  • He doesn't go too much into detail, but I do think it was an unintended side effect. The real reasons behind the ritual are not told us. All we are told is what happened without any context and background.
  • There's a song in-game called "The Month of Darkness" that details the Outsider's...becoming. Of course, it's an in-game folk song but it fits with the narrative he presents. [1]
  • Cultists usually do not think clearly, and probably never expected a human sacrifice to become more powerful than they have ever imagined.

Greeting her aunt

• Why was Emily so blase and even made a point to say, 'If you're my aunt, you're welcomed to stay' (paraphrasing), when Luca and even Delilah just said they were there to overthrow her rule? One would think when faced with such a blatant power play the very least Emily would demand they both be arrested for High Treason.
  • She is a little dumbfounded and just saying without understanding the situation. She doesn't expect a blatant and direct coup d'etat. The real question is why the security didn't detect and stop the Clockwork Soldiers before they entered the Throne Room.
  • Even if she dumbfounded, that's not a good reason for her to say, if Delilah was truly her aunt she's welcomed at the Tower. Emily should have at least asked, "What is going on? Who are you, really? And who authorised Luca to bring those soldiers in?" Shocked at such a coup happening before her eyes is understandable, blurting out something that seemed to be supporting said coup is not.
  • You find a note saying that Ramsey had given direct orders for them not to be stopped, and staffed the other checkpoints with his own people.
  • There's only one line suggesting it's a coup ("Your rightful empress...") before Emily speaks; the rest is all about how Delilah is Emily's aunt. Given that Emily's surrounded by reminders that her mother died in front of her fifteen years ago to the day, she could be forgiven for having family on her mind. Corvo does most of the talking, and he's the one saying pretty much what you believe Emily should, which makes sense because it's the kind of thing he should be handling.

Crapsack World survival

• How the heck has civilization lasted this long with with such incompetent, idle, and decadent people in complete and utter control? Granted, there have been periods in our own world where such behavior was common among the elite, but either the debauchees were marginalized by those who knew what they were doing or the whole nation imploded (i.e. The Roman Empire and/or the French revolution). Dishonored however, takes place in a world so hellishly lethal that natural phenomena can wipe out major cities, the urban wildlife are a leading cause of death, and humanity is confined to an archipelago that can't sustain more than four meager nations. In the first game, I assumed the rampant negligence and mismanagement was just a quirk of Dunwall culture, or escapist behavior in response to a seemingly uncontrollable plague. Yet Karnaca is an entirely different nation fifteen years later, and if anything, it's even worse than Dunwall during the rat-plague. How have the ruling class not run their entire civilization into the ground thus far?
  • Neither Dunwall nor Karnaca are normally such hellholes. In the first game you mostly explore Dunwall after 6 months of plague and the Lord Regent's governance. It's actually hard to say which was more destructive to the city in general. In the second game, you can thank Luca Abele for the general state of Karnaca. I think Corvo mentions it wasn't nearly that bad during his childhood. Furthermore, the city decayed rapidly after the disappearance of Stilton and the return of Delilah.
  • That's an overgeneralisation. People do actually live in Pandyssia; it's just not part of the Empire. Both games offer a brief window into unusually bad periods through the eyes of people who are wading through the worst of it, why assume the Empire is like that all the time everywhere? And people did manage to accept the possibility of sudden violent death as part of life in reality.
  • Saving Stilton in the Dust District mission actually shows visible improvement in the game world. The Duke doesn't push the workers to death, meaning theres less dust permeating throught the whole district, the Howlers and the Overseers aren't at war, resulting in the entire district not being as run down and dilapidated. One can assume that when the Empire isn't being run by sociopaths, things aren't as horrible as they are in the immediate aftermath of the coups.

Leaving the Duke in power

• If the Duke is dealt with using the non-lethal option, wouldn't it look strange to outside observers that he remains in control of Karnaca after Emily Kaldwin is restored to the throne? He did openly participate in the coup after all, and non-Serkonans would have little reason to maintain the charade that the body double is the actual duke.
  • The player character is the only one who actually knows, remember? He could just blame the coup on the 'double', and say the whole thing was his doing. With Emily in his corner, who's going to contradict him?
  • It's probable that the savvy members of the aristocracy could read between the lines and see that the Imperial Throne's endorsement of a vassal "whose double was responsible for orchestrating the coup" is actually the Imperial Throne's endorsement of the double who took over the real Duke's identity. Seeing that raising issue could be seen as tacitly supporting someone who heavily aided a despotic usurper and is a despot himself, they'd be inclined to go along with it... and stay the Void away from getting their own doubles in case the Throne decides they need to "have a troublesome delusional double disposed of". Remember, Corvo is the TV Tropes God of Cruel Mercy, and canon D2 protagonist is Low Chaos Emily who takes after Daddy Dearest.
  • If you use the announcement system as Emily after replacing the Duke she states that she travelled to Karnaca to speak to the Duke and implies that he was tricked into the coup by Deliah giving him false information and, having spoken to her on the matter, has recanted his support. Presumably that's the story they go with.

Paolo and the Vice Overseer

• If you solve the puzzle lock on your own and go straight to Stilton's manor without interfering with the local turf war and also replace the Duke, you get an ending where the improved Duke includes the Vice Overseer and Paolo on his council. If you instead put both of them in those shipping boxes, the Duke will have some generic citizens on his council instead. This happens even if Stilton is saved from madness. Shouldn't this undo the "shipping them away" bit, seeing as they would probably never establish themselves in the district if Stilton remains in control?
  • Timey-Wimey Ball Presumably in the altered timeline they still established themselves just less so and the new timeline incorporates as much of Emily/Corvo's actions as still make sense.
  • On a simular note: it's possible to have both Breanne and Jindosh on that council. Why? Former is an ex-witch and a traitor to the crown,the latter is brain-damaged and a criminal as well. Why on earth would Emily and/or Corvo allow those two to have any say in anything?
    • In the Low-Chaos Emily Epilogue, Breanna and Jindosh are present in the shot of the Council, but in chains.◊ Presumably to establish that they are being officially punished for their actions - otherwise, to someone not privy to the protagonist's actions, they would appear to be getting off scot-free.
  • Maybe it was the "Duke's" idea and it didn't work out.
  • Given that they are in chains and escorted by a guard I'm pretty sure that was their trail/sentencing.

Guard genders

• Why are rank-and-file guards all male, while the red-coated elites can be either male or female?
  • Ran out of animation time?
  • Maybe the women tend to try harder, since there is still a fair bit of sexism in this world, so now the Duke (likely due to Deliah's influence) is willing to promote them they tend to get promoted.
    • More likely they got the job opportunity due to being blue bloods. Officers don't do all of the grunt-work and heavy-lifting, and at higher ranks carry significant political and social influence. Granting commissions historically has more to do with politics than competence.
    • Comissions are explicity the reason for the promotions - in the Clockwork Mansion level, I believe, you can overhear a group of guards discussing how their lieutentant, a "distant cousin" of the Duke (they refer to the cousin as a she) was killed in a accident. The officer dialogue also makes it clear that most of them are blue blood.
  • One possibility is that they wanted lower-rank guards to all look identical to make it easier for players to immediately recognize them. The requirement for high-rank guards is that they "stick out" visually, so establishing that regular guards look like the generic male model and anyone who looks different is an elite makes it easy for players to identify the elites at a glance.
  • Oddly, there is a bit of dialog explaining why there are no female Overseers (the faith is gender-segregated and women become Ocular Sisters instead.) The lore establishes that Ocular Sisters are trained in combat, so it seems likely that they were once intended to appear in the game but were dropped because the entire Church isn't a big focus this time around. It seems strange that they'd go to that length for the Overseers and then just have male grunts for the lower-rank guards.

Duke and Stilton

• Why was the Duke keeping Crazy!Stilton alive in the first place? It's not like they were good friends or anything. Why not just kill him and sell the mansion just like it happens if the player kills Stilton in the past?
  • If Stilton doesn't arrive at the seance, Duke Luca Abele specifically states that the man gets preferential treatment because he was a friend of his father.
  • A very close friend of Luca's father at that.
  • Abele's respect for Stilton even goes so far as improving miner safety at the cost of productivity and his own wealth if he keeps his sanity, which is saying a lot for someone as hedonistic as the Duke.

Dreadful Wale

• How in the hell is Meagan supposed to run a fairly large ship with only one arm, one eye, and no crew? Don't tell me that Sokolov helped her, he's smart but lacks common sense and is drunk nearly all the time.
  • The short answer? Very poorly. The Dreadful Wale is a leaky piece of crap barely holding together. In the expansion it's half sunk by the time the story starts. She presumably gets it a tune up in port from time to time but refuses to take crew (given her secrets) and is just about able to get the tub to not sink.

Emily not knowing about magic

• Putting aside the fact that Corvo can use all sorts of powers right in front of her in the first game, and she even has special dialogue if Corvo possesses Havelock in which she recognizes it as magic (all of that can be considered just Cutting Off the Branches and No Canon for the Wicked), there is no good explanation for Emily not knowing that magic is real. In the intro of the first game, no matter what the player does, Emily witnesses a Whaler assassin float Corvo into mid-air with the Pull ability, who then grabs her and Blinks them both away. Even if she dismissed herself being teleported by magic as some sort of trauma-induced hallucination, she later finds a rune and realizes that it's magically causing her nightmares. And why in the Void would Corvo not tell Emily about his powers in the fifteen years since, anyway? He worries about her safety, thoroughly trains her specifically to defend against any threats that might come her way, and he doesn't think he should tell her about how the deadly powers that were used to assassinate her mother work? Not telling Emily anything about magic is negligent at best and terminally stupid at worst.
  • One of Emily's key allies is the High Overseer so her revealing any knowledge of magic could have been very dangerous. Furthermore he may have wished her to avoid having any contact with the Outsider given the interest he took in her fate and what a dangerous and corrupting influence he can be. Corvo's logs mention disliking the Outsider and that he enjoyed seeing him annoyed when he refused the mark. He may have assumed that with his support and that of the Abbey she should be well protected against supernatural threats, especially as he's unaware of Daud's interaction with Delilah (as far as he knows the only Marked are Granny Rags and Daud, neither of whom were on Delilah's level). On a meta level he may have assumed based on the Outsider's narration at the end of Dishonored 1 that Emily's reign was now assured, and been blindsided when Delilah returned (something the Outsider had not predicted).

High Chaos endings don't make any sense

• Low Chaos is clearly the canonical ending (especially with the references to Callista, who is killed in High Chaos), but if you play as Corvo and get High Chaos, Emily abruptly pivots into being "Emily the Vengeful," even though she's been her usual Low Chaos self up until this point and can't have had the experiences to change her, as she's spent most of the game as a statue. Even worse are the "Corvo the Black" and "Emily the Butcher" endings, where the one you play as just leaves the other one in stone for no reason. Even if you play Corvo/Emily as a complete psycho who murders everyone in his/her path, those endings completely contradict their characterization in the other 99% of the game. Even on the highest Chaos levels, Corvo/Emily is constantly expressing rage over the other one being imprisoned, furious with Delilah for it, repeatedly proclaiming that they'll bring the other back no matter what, and writing emotional journal entries about how much they miss and worry about him/her. There's no explanation for this abrupt character shift and no dialogue acknowledging it besides the Outsider's closing narration, making it just feel like a pointlessly evil option thrown in at the last minute.
  • The name of the Special Action is 'Your Daughter/Father is Safe' and the Outsider's closing narration also references the action in the context of safety. In a twisted way, keeping Corvo/Emily as a statue ensures they will always be safe and can never be killed.
  • For Emily the Vengeful, perhaps Emily is left shaken and paranoid by the coup and Corvo served as a corrupting influence, or she somehow Came Back Wrong and developed a bloodthirst.
  • For the Black/Butcher endings, perhaps Corvo/Emily wanted to prevent the other from learning that they've become a mass murderer, worried that they would usurp and kill them or disown and leave them.
  • Emily/Corvo may not plan on leaving the other petrified forever; just for a couple decades or so to keep them from interfering with their plans.

Delilah's blood relationship to Jessamine

• I wanted to know if there's any confirmation in the game about Delilah being Jessamine's half-sister. She said she was illegitimate, and thus had no claim to the throne anyway. I'm just curious. If you use the heart on delilah in 'A Crack in the Slab', it's said they knew each other, there was a vase episode, but this relationship isn't confirmed.