You are being heavily reductive towards dishonored’s chaos system. In order to get high chaos you need to go out of your way to kill people. Its a stealth game, not assassin’s creed, 90% of guards can be avoided without issue in the first place. You can kill every target and still get low chaos. As long as you aren’t a psycho who can’t control your gamer brain need to kill people with power’s, you won’t be “punished”.

This is not to mention that chaos has in game, dynamic effects on the proceeding levels and outcomes. Dunwall is going through a plague, and so by killing guards or whoever, you are actively further destabilizing the infrastructure that can help people and keep the plague in check. Is it not then reasonable that when you needlessly kill people, it then has a realistic effect which further allows the plague to ravage Dunwall? How is it punishment when its reacting to what you as a player have wrought with your choices? 

Dishonored is a great example of a morality system because the choice is yours to make. Its not hard to get low chaos in the slightest, but if you prioritize your own convenience and power (and dare I say fun) over other’s lives, then of course its going to cause more destabilization and cause your daughter to internalize that having power equates to abuse and convenience. Just because non-lethal is less “fun”, does not devalue what the game is trying to accomplish, which is to give you, the player agency, and with agency comes consequences, for good or ill. 

Feral - claw abilities look cool and extra beasts are helpful, but armor is pretty lame and weak looking which makes for a poor orc aesthetic imo.

Machine - love the industrial theming and copper coloration, but often their tribal armor clashes heavily with class armor leading to weird sleeves and such which can make for weird looks. 

Dark - Dark armor, Sauron statues, and cool tribal armor make for great edgelords, sadly they are also often pretty boring for that same reason.

Mystic - Bone armor and necromancy makes for my favorite tribe and theme, but its effects on the environment are rarely carried through which makes for a very anti-climactic tribe fantasy.

Terror Tribe - some of the coolest titles and most fun personalities. Nipple piercings. 

Warmonger Tribe - best looking tribe armor, most solid tribe fantasy, and in general a fantastic tribe, but like the Dark tribe it can become a bit rote.

Marauder tribe - Gold armor and some of the best tribe abilities, but the legend title is the most boring in the game. 

Outlaw tribe - most unique and fun theming, sadly same theming clashes heavily with every other aesthetic in the game and so makes for a messy presentation.

Slaughter tribe - grinders and cleavers are lots of fun, but the armor is the ugliest in the game and overall the theme is entirely redundant. Worst tribe imo. 

My only issue is they did that cliche ass shit where they flashed a montage of all the scenes they were talking but now hes gone. Like its so unbelievably trite and disrespectful to the audiences’ intelligence. 

/uj unbelievable this is word for word, what a find. 

I mean dude was making an interpretation he thought to be accurate. There wasn’t anything at the time to contradict that take and it seemed plausible. I guess he was being a little bold when stating an interpretation like a fact, but analysis is almost entirely interpretation so its not out of the ordinary. 

Great analysis. Me and a friend, whose almost done with Thousandfold Thought, have commiserated how in any other series, Cnaiur would be a great man, if not a hero. In Earwa, sadly, he’s nothing but a broken, crazed husk. Ironically, and tragically, madness is his greatest strength in Earwa.

Cnaiur urs Skoitha. Hes a degenerate murderer and rapist but when held up against a Dunyain, I can’t help but sympathize and root for him. Its horrible. 

Im from the same state as a man who got arrested due to getting into a fight over the Thousandfold Thought. Safe to say I’m very proud of the Bakker fan presence here. 

You should make this a post lmao.

Yeah like people said, maxing hp invariably means just harder fights to make up for it. Personally I still like the power fantasy of being big a beefy and able to take the extra punishment but idk how much that applies to everyone else. 

I don’t think is is an unpopular opinion, this is just a lack of awareness of people joking among the few idiots who unironically lionize bastards. Its pretty clear that these shows are indictments of their characters and only a minuscule amount of fans are actually making sigma edits of tony soprano and proclaiming him as the based king of the west or whatever and only a smaller part of that are being serious. 

Sadly a very common take, but the continued take that Karlach’s character was done dirty just because she did not have a “good” outcome. I’ve never seen such insane cope over a character like I have for Karlach. Shes awesome, but people are willing to believe obvious lies and false information rather then accept that her story wasn’t intended to have a perfect happy ending. 

Realizing that the entire empire was nothing but another tool was a big wow moment for me. Of course it makes total sense, a Dunyain cares nothing for legacy, for accomplishment, yet my human mind could not fathom that he was willing to just throw away his empire. 

Perfect encapsulation of the Dunyain. 

Really not a big fan of the “nerf strong things to balance” mentality. Obviously power creep is a thing and paladins are strong, but paladin smite is a meme for a reason. Balance changes should almost never harm class fantasy and fun, and these do both imo. Sets a bad precedent going forward.

Chants of Sennar is a great puzzle game that sees you attempting to translate various languages while uniting the disparate factions that reside within a monolithic tower that harkons back to the tower of babel, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game and adored its art style and premise. 

Bakker Brainrot

I remember a old timey commander, probably similar to Marcus Aurelius or something, who was very interested in the purity of water. Jack D. Ripper was his name I think.

This is surreal seeing as I’m a jobless philosophy grad unironically considering going to plumbing…

Fuck just noticed theres a typo 😑

Im a philosophy major and I struggle with the series too so don’t feel like you gotta know everything to “understand and enjoy” the series. Bakker’s whole point is simply to get you to think, to poke at your ideals and your fundamental beliefs, its (mostly) not to get you to ponder the minutiae of his various philosophies and esoterica within the series. 

Slinuk, a level 2 hobgoblin abjuration wizard. He’s a classic wizard with too much hubris and too high opinion of himself while having the charisma of a wet fart. 

Dokkodo, a 150 year old half-elf level 7 oathbreaker and level 2 hexblade. An old, honor-less mercenary through and through, but a needed pragmatist in a party full of hopefuls. 

Zâthra, a level 4 death cleric and level 4 spore druid. A walking plague rat who can heal just as easily as he can infect. Hes a fun guy though. 

I imagine Bakker was worried that he was showing too much of his hand with that passage and hand holding the readers, something he seems heavily against. Whether a good policy or not, Bakker clearly wants Earwa to be a world steeped in obscurity and superstition just like ours, where we can’t be sure how objective any one interpretation is by a character. He basically only gives you what he shows, and even that is often not to be trusted. Would not surprise me at all if he was reconsidering showing so much with the Survivor. 

I mean misery porn, as you seem to be wanting, has never and will likely never be popular. I don’t know why its surprising to be hard pressed to find something that is literally just a dark slog of endless darkness. Contrast is an important narrative tool for a reason, if theres no hope or anything worth fighting for, why even care about all the bad thar is happening?

If you truly are just looking for permanent edge and darkness, you need to start looking for series that are reviewed and known as such. I would recommend authors such as R Scott Bakker, Anna Smith Spark, Micheal R Fletcher, and Anthony Ryan. While they may not fit your criteria of having zero humanity and “complete edge”, they are very dark and heavy. 

If those are still somehow too light and airy for you, you might just need to look up misery porn directly and accept your tastes are too extreme to ever be fully satisfied. 

Interesting, maybe I’ll delve into the glossary after all. Good references, thanks.