Dissecting Dishonored 2 — Part 2: We Need To Talk About Emily
In the first part of this series, I discussed the common criticism of Dishonored 2: that it is a retread of the first game, and argued why that’s not strictly true and that it might have been more interesting if Dishonored 2 had actually committed to subverting the plot beats of first game more completely. At the end, I said that I’d be comparing Dishonored 2 to the two-part DLCs for Dishonored, and arguing the reverse, which is that Dishonored 2 is a retread of the DLCs and that the similarities hurt both games. However, in the middle of writing that part, I realized that a discussion Emily’s character arc in Dishonored 2 was essential to the points I was making and which vastly inflated the size of that piece, so Emily’s character breakdown is its own part now, and it’s this one.
Emily’s character arc, at least the Low Chaos route, to put it harshly, falls flat. Her story arc is supposed to be about facing the consequences of her neglectful rule, and committing to becoming a better ruler, but for a variety of reasons, I think the game ends up feeling like a gap year for Emily to help her gain perspective. I also think the same reasons that cause her Low Chaos route to feel flat, make her High Chaos route feel oddly compelling. This is all purely my opinion, based on my interpretation of the game’s plot and Emily’s characterization at the beginning of the game, as well as the change in dialogue that Emily has when she reacts to events and objects in either routes. If you disagree with any of this, I’d love to know why.
Emily’s Character Arc — A (Low Chaos) Summary
At the beginning of the game, Emily is presented as feeling stifled and constrained by her responsibilities. She frequently escapes her role via her rooftop jaunts and with her partner Wyman. Random bits of voice lines from the first level also indicate a sense of boredom and dissatisfaction with her role. However, at the start of the game, she is deposed by her aunt, Delilah and is forced to flee the city, and decides to go to Karnaca to get answers. In Karnaca, she is confronted with the consequences of the neglect of her duties, especially in not opposing Duke Luca Abele’s brand of whimsical, debauched ‘rule’, which has led to rampant corruption and dysfunction in the city, effectively ending its recent golden age.
Emily also has some conversations with Billie Lurk and Anton Sokolov in which they chide her for being an out-of-touch royal. Emily doesn’t argue with this point. She vows to take her responsibilities as Empress more seriously, and once she neutralizes Delilah, the epilogue indicates that she mostly followed through on this promise. On paper, this journey of Emily’s makes sense. She changes and develops through the story as her flaws and their consequences from the beginning of her arc become apparent. The endpoint of her story is the logical conclusion to this arc. But there are several plot and dialogue elements that undermine this character arc, causing it to feel hollow and flat.
Why I Think Emily’s Low Chaos Route Doesn’t Work
The most important reason that I think Emily’s Low Chaos route doesn’t work is that throughout the game, she comes across as feeling entitled to being the Empress. After being deposed by Delilah, Emily’s motivation for getting the throne back boils down to ‘I’m the rightful Empress’. Which she is; she is indisputably the rightful Empress. I believe that the game intended for her to undergo a gradual shift in her reasons for reclaiming the throne from ‘because it’s mine’ to ‘because I will be a good Empress’. A Voice line from the final mission of the game gives credence to this interpretation: ‘If I learned anything in Karnaca, it’s that birth doesn’t give anyone the right to rule. You earn it every day by serving the people who need you.”. It makes sense, right?
But.
The problem is that these voice lines are too random, scattered and far and few in between for me to credibly believe her shift in nature. There aren’t very many acts of good Emily can perform to demonstrate the attitude of ‘serving the people who need you’. In fact, most side quests in the game center around stealing from the Black Market shops. As it stands, there’s no one pivotal moment or even multiple smaller moments where Emily is faced with the consequences of her not taking her responsibilities seriously. Nor is there a subtle, persistent atmosphere of dread or corruption that Emily can react to. The game’s lighter tone, as discussed in the previous part actually clashes with Emily’s journey here. It’s really not that bad in Karnaca, which makes me as a player not really get why Emily needs to feel all that bad about not working hard as Empress.
The only two occurrences of Emily explicitly being held accountable for her actions that made any impression on me are noteworthy for how brief and inconsequential they are. The first one is the conversation Anton Sokolov has with Emily as he ferries her into the Dust District. This happens a little past the halfway mark of the game by which time Emily should more than be aware of the state of things in Karnaca. During the scene, Sokolov briefs Emily on the situation in the Dust Districts with dust piling up, dangerous sandstorms, turf wars between the Overseers and the Howlers with ordinary folk caught in the middle, and terrible conditions for the miners who live and work there.
Emily says ‘I suppose the Duke doesn’t care as long as he sips from his silver cups’, to which Sokolov responds ‘And what are the cups at Dunwall Tower made of, Empress?’. Emily doesn’t respond, and Sokolov moves back to briefing Emily immediately. This exchange is never directly referenced again.
The other is two missions later when Billie ferries Emily to a district near the Grand Palace, on her way to confront the Duke and recover the hidden piece of Delilah’s soul, the penultimate mission of the game, and the final one in Karnaca. Emily wonders how people in Karnaca turned a blind eye to all the Duke’s antics. Billie responds that among other reasons, the Duke had Emily’s full support all this time. This prompts Emily to admit her flaws. Here’s the exchange in full, cut a bit for length.
Emily: There were parties like that [Billie’s mention of people carving up the country at the Duke’s lavish dinners] in Dunwall. Full of toadies sucking up to me, stabbing each other in the back.
Billie: Poor Empress. I could see those party lights from across the river, in the abandoned butcher shop where I slept
Emily: I know you grew up hard, Meagan. I used to wander Dunwall with my face hidden. But when I got tired of it, I could always go back to the Tower. Karnaca’s given me perspective
Billie: Good. After you’ve eliminated the Duke, find what he’s holding for Delilah and take it.
I don’t want to come off as hyperbolic, but this exchange honestly gets worse every time I encounter it. It’s appallingly tone-deaf and unsubtle. There’s a lot to unpack here. First there’s Emily completely ignoring Billie pointing out that one of the reasons the Duke was able to endure for as long as he did was because he had Emily’s support. Instead she complains about having to attend similar dinners with similar people. It’s worth noting that she makes a remark like this on the Dreadful Wale, a little before this conversation takes place. She clearly feels that attending social events as Empress is not something she enjoys or even treats as a necessary evil.
Billie puts that view perspective for Emily. She points out that Emily never had to struggle for food or shelter. And then Emily brings up her infamous rooftop hopping, saying that it was a privilege and that she always had the comforts of her palace as a safety net. ‘Karnaca’s given me perspective’. Except that’s clearly not true. Not a minute ago she was complaining about the dinners she had to attend in Dunwall. She complained about Lady Brisby’s social events not more than half an hour prior, judging by the progress of the sunset. She doesn’t acknowledge her role in enabling Luca Abele even when directly confronted with that fact. Nothing about her actions or motivations have noticeably changed during the events of the game. The whole reason Billie had to lecture her like that in the first place is entirely because Emily doesn’t seem to have gained any new perspective.
Billie’s ‘Good.’, after which she immediately moves back to briefing, just like in the Sokolov exchange is the cherry on this cake. The game doesn’t let this scene breathe, not even a moment’s silence in which we might imagine Emily reflecting on Billie’s point of view. The game’s message seems to be, ‘The characters aren’t taking this seriously, so why should you?’
There’s also the fact that all things considered, her time in Karnaca wasn’t that bad. She was empowered by the Outsider on docking at Karnaca, meaning that even though she was being hunted, she wasn’t exactly defenseless. She always had a comfortable place to sleep, never had to worry about food, and neutralized her targets and got all the information she needed in a relatively short time span. This ‘not-that-badness’ of Emily’s situation (Corvo in the first game was tortured for six months before being sentenced to death, and it only got more hairy from there), the overall lighter atmosphere of the setting and Emily’s hollow speech about gaining perspective really makes it seem like the entire experience of the game for Emily was something like a gap year where she found herself. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but it is here, since this feels like a really fluffy, less meaningful version of what the game was going for.
Throughout the game, I noticed parallels between Emily and Luca Abele. Both are the children of beloved rulers, who are failing to live up to the high standards set by their predecessors, and whom, to varying degrees, aren’t trying all that hard. They both come across as privileged and out-of-touch with their subjects. The one attribute that makes foils of the two of them is that Emily often wishes to escape the privileges and responsibilities of nobility while Luca Abele revels in the privileges his status grants him while blithely ignoring his responsibilities. It’s interesting, and compelling that Emily shares so many traits with someone she despises so intensely. But Emily never has that moment of realization that she and the Duke are more alike than she would like to admit. Sokolov’s jab at Emily could have prompted this introspection in Emily, but nothing ever comes of it. It’s almost as if Emily is in willful denial about her similarities to the Duke.
Emily’s Low Chaos route where she realizes that ruling is a responsibility and not a right doesn’t work because even though she says something to this effect at the opening of the game’s final level, the game does no legwork for this statement to have weight. Emily never goes out of her way to serve her subjects. She never meaningfully acknowledges her mistakes, even when confronted with them, she never introspects on her shared similarities with Luca Abele, even when confronted with that, and never really demonstrates the ‘perspective’ that Karnaca has given her. Which makes me wonder…
Should Emily Even Be Empress?
I think the story has been held back by its insistence on Emily reclaiming the throne. Emily doesn’t seem to enjoy aspects of being the Empress, escaping from her role whenever she can, either with Wyman or by herself and in general not taking her duties seriously (like the time she attended a meeting with no pants on). The game presents this as a flaw, since her neglect has allowed the Duke to act unchecked in Karnaca, something that ultimately led to Emily’s overthrowing. But I disagree with this interpretation. I don’t think that Emily’s lack of interest in being Empress is a flaw, I think her refusal to let go of the throne despite this disinterest is her and the game’s mistake.
It’s OK for Emily to not want to be Empress. This was something that was thrust onto her when she was a child. If, as she got older, she realized that it really wasn’t for her, and what she wanted instead was a life of adventure, that doesn’t make her a bad person. I think her arc would have been more compelling, if, after eliminating Delilah and freeing Corvo, she abdicated, maybe even instituting a form of democracy, something her critics were advocating for. At the very least, an option to end this monarchic system would have been welcome, considering that Emily embodies one of its biggest flaws: what if the monarch doesn’t want to rule and consequently doesn’t do a good job of it?
Instead the game’s insistence on Emily assuming the throne once Delilah is dealt with makes Emily come across as entitled, since the game doesn’t do a good enough job of convincing us that the events of the game have made Emily more suited to the job, or that she even wants it beyond the belief that ‘it’s hers’. This simply doesn’t work in the Low Chaos route. Mostly of Emily’s arc doesn’t. After playing through that route twice, I decided to give High Chaos a go. And suddenly, a lot of things clicked for me.
High Chaos — A Compelling Descent Into Villainy
At the beginning of the game, Emily is presented as feeling stifled and constrained by her responsibilities. She frequently escapes her role via her rooftop jaunts and with her partner Wyman. Random bits of voice lines from the first level also indicate a sense of boredom and dissatisfaction with her role. However, at the start of the game, she is deposed by her aunt, Delilah and is forced to flee the city, and decides to go to Karnaca to get answers to what happened.
But wait — something’s different now. She kills her way out of Dunwall Tower, and kills some more on the way to the Dreadful Wale. But it’s OK. These people are ‘traitorous dogs’, they sold her out. They deserved to die, right? Once she’s in Karnaca, the killing doesn’t stop. She keeps going at it, on and on and on, piecing together how to kill Delilah, and once Delilah is disposed of, this time for good, she takes her rightful place as Emily the Butcher, ready to mete out to her subjects exactly what they deserve.
Emily’s High Chaos route is compelling and fitting to me in exactly all the ways that Low Chaos never was. An Emily bored and stifled by her roles, learning through the game to acknowledge her privileges and become a better ruler? The game didn’t pull it off convincingly enough for me to buy it. But an Emily bitter and resentful about her position, getting screwed over by the same people she had sacrificed her personal freedoms for, now being handed the perfect excuse to enact her revenge on them all? It makes sense to me. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near this Emily, but I buy this. The High Chaos route works so well for me, perhaps because the game did too good a job of characterizing Emily’s dissatisfaction in the game’s opening. That unhappiness was too convincing for weak developments in the Low Chaos route to believably turn it around. Instead, letting all that resentment burst out after the perfect opportunity to ‘break bad’ gets handed to her feels much natural as the next step.
This theme of ‘breaking bad’ also comes through very cogently in the progression of Emily’s voice lines through the game, a progression that I felt her corresponding Low Chaos lines lacked. The lines get steadily more and more violent, from “I’m being hunted by half the Empire. Part of me is excited about what happens if they find me.”, to “If I had eight arms, I could choke eight men at a time”. You could argue that the lines are one-dimensional and hammy, but unlike the Low Chaos route, it doesn’t affect pretensions of depth. Unlike the promises to do better when she’s Empress in the Low Chaos route, which feel hollow, when Emily promises death in dialogue, I believe it, because her words are backed up by actions, something that does not convincingly happen in the Low Chaos Route.
This difference between the routes is encapsulated best by the High Chaos version of the ‘If I’ve learned anything in Karnaca’ dialogue Emily has with the piece of Delilah in the Heart. In the High Chaos version, she says ‘You only deserve to keep your throne if you’re ready to roll out a red carpet of blood to keep it.’, which completely fits with her actions through the game. Based on all the murder she did in Karnaca, this is a perfectly natural conclusion to arrive at.
This route is not without its flaws either, though in my opinion, they’re less damning. One is that the game uses the same dialogue for being ferried into levels regardless of chaos. This means that, yes, the conversation Emily and Billie have where she says Karnaca has given her perspective is still here. It’s still appalling and amusing, but in a completely different way. If you’ve left a trail of bodies behind, there’s really very few ways to interpret the perspective she gained in Karnaca. On a more serious note, I wonder if the game intentionally used vague dialogue during these common scenes so that they could plausibly fit in both routes. If that was the case, it didn’t work in this scene, and I think the game would have benefitted by changing it for High Chaos, or better yet, changing it completely for either route.
This route also ultimately ends up having the same Empress problem as the Low Chaos route, however. A feral Emily cutting down anyone in her path really has no motivation to get the throne back beyond thinking about all the murder she could do once she gets her throne back, which is almost exactly what the game insinuates. Rescuing Corvo is not that big of a draw in this route, since Emily has the option of not freeing him from being trapped in stone. Emily talks about all the mass executions she’s going to do when she’s Empress again. She’s utterly deranged, and I love it. It’s also a very twisted evil mirror-image of her Low Chaos route. Emily wants her throne back in this route because she comes to realise it’s the perfect route for her to achieve her ambitions of mass murder.
However, I will say that fondness for the High Chaos route is not even remotely based on any objective facts, but my interpretation of how events progress in that route. Given how bloodthirsty Emily becomes in that route, it’s perfectly natural to not want to see a character you like become that kind of person. It’s very unexpected that I wound up preferring this route considering I’d only ever completed Clean Hands runs of Dishonored and Dishonored 2 up until the point that I first decided to give High Chaos a try. My justification for enjoying such a cruel violent route is that it fits Emily’s characterization more believably and the dialogue in that route, if nothing else, at least doesn’t ring hollow. It’s also a bit sad that the route that makes more sense to me is the one where Emily becomes a deranged, remorseless killer. But at least I got one compelling story out of this game.
Conclusion
There’s a lot more I could say about Emily’s character, especially about the way she’s characterized in the first game depending on chaos and the effects that has here, or how her stereotypically evil-person powers come across in different routes of the game but this piece is long enough as it is. I feel that Emily’s Low Chaos character arc falls flat because of a mismatch in dialogue and actions, muddled motivations, and an absence of pivotal events that make the conclusion of her arc at the end feel earned and meaningful. In contrast to this, I feel that her High Chaos arc is able to overcome these flaws, mainly through dialogue lines that match her in-game actions and characterizations and that fit the tone of the game better. I really do think it might have been better for Emily to abdicate the throne in either route, and that the games insistence on her reassuming her position as Empress hamstrung her arc.
In the next piece, I’m going to be comparing Emily’s character arc from this game to Daud’s character arc from the DLCs, and argue that Dishonored 2 has more in common with the DLCs than with the base game, and why that’s not such a good thing.
