Dishonored: Mission 9, "The Light at the End"

The Loyalists is such a short mission I just had to wrap up this playthrough. Half an hour of Dishonored in a week is such a meagre amount, after all. Everything has been building up to this final, real rescue of Emily, and this involves scaling one of the most striking lighthouses in media. The lighthouse on Kingsparrow Island is a brutalist, steampunk horror, a utilitarian fist of steel looming impossible high overhead. In a game enamoured with vertical level design this is the tallest edifice Corvo will ascend.

"Maybe after all this is settled, we'll see each other again."

This level seems to be built in an extremely inviting way regardless of your playstyle. My first time ineptly bumbling through, this was nowhere the difficulty wall that The Royal Physician's bridge was, though I certainly recall spending a lot of time by all that cargo piled up by the beach. Returning to it I feel as if it is just crammed with hiding places, lots of security systems that can be turned against the guards or not, four or five levels of escalation just in the outer area so that Corvo can always quickly get away from the wrong kind of attention, and a sprawling open area in front of the gatehouse in case you fancy a proper brawl. I was low chaos this time but not particularly stealthy in the back half of the game, as I wanted to mess around with powers and have a slightly faster pace of play than my extremely sneaky playthrough of Dishonored 2 in January. As such there were plenty of Benny Hill moments to be had in the outer areas of Kingsparrow Island.

Also, reloading the level after I beat the game, I was able to reach Emily's room with the key in under seven minutes from stepping off Samuel's boat with a mix of Blink, Possession and of course Stop Time to help me just run past everything. I'm no speedrunner and I had only played through twice, but the shortcuts provided made it clear how to very quickly get to and up the lighthouse. It seems like a very good philosophy for a final level in what is already an extremely permissive game, essentially allowing players to spend as long as they want in the level. You're familiar with the guards, you know all the security systems, you even know whether or not you're interested in the lore at this point - do you want to explore every crevice or go straight to the final encounter and see a gorgeous final cinematic?

This is all on low chaos of course. In his video Dissecting Dishonored, Noah Caldwell-Gervais pays special attention to The Light at the End for how it delivers on the game's chaos system. Low chaos gives you clear skies and a final encounter that sees Havelock basically crumble in front of you, distraught at the imminent arrival of the perfect infiltrator that he has nurtured and foolishly turned on. You simply take the key and go to Emily's door, and are rewarded with an optimistic final cutscene with a retired Samuel pouring pints as Corvo leans on the bar. Bloody heartwarming it is.


"Out, Corvo."

High chaos shrouds the island in stormy weather with the loyalists having turned on one another, and (when I played it that way last year) involved me desperately rushing up to the pinnacle of the lighthouse and snatching Emily from Havelock where he was holding her over the abyss below. What I didn't manage to get, as some high chaos players have, is a truly incredible animation where Corvo, having rescued Emily, stabs the unhinged Havelock in the arm and pulls his gun up under his own chin to execute him, in a final bravura demonstration of why the character style Arkane settled on for this game works so damn well*. Also, how crazy is it that Dishonored has not just one, but two of the coolest endings in video games?

As well as saving some of the best imagery for the climax to their story, I also think the way the level plays out is not so much as a challenge but as a reflection on who the player has chosen to be. The chaos system has a point to it, and it has been watching you. By this juncture you've either settled for being a basically good man who kills only out of necessity (or not at all if you're a pro, or quick-loading a lot, to which there is no shame), or a brutal killer who'll brook no challenge. The less violent player finds a somewhat easier experience with your antagonist basically giving up, unable to answer the fact he stooped to every imaginable level of brutality and villainy to achieve his goals and is still terrified of Corvo. The chaotic player finds their approach to the game answered in kind, with the encounters a bit tougher and the island already in disarray when they arrive.

It is a masterpiece of design, both in its narrative and how the one environment is repurposed for two quite different feeling denouements.

If you favour the Dishonored levels that are like chunks of city, giving you a district to explore and cause trouble in, you might prefer the top half of the game with missions like High Overseer Campbell and House of Pleasure. The later parts of the game present Corvo with single, imposing structures in missions like this one and Return to the Tower, as well as one last sprawling city level in The Flooded District. There is a huge amount of variety in the game and incredible detail in the design, exacerbated by the chaos system and the amount of optional interactions and content. These missions are created to be large digital environments, but also truly enormous possibility spaces. The sequel takes this even further with truly gigantic levels and strokes of real genius in the concepts, and I'm looking forward to returning to it once I've played the Daud DLCs.

*There are 30 or more ways to finally kill Havelock, as shown in this compilation.