Dishonored 2: Mission 7, "A Crack in the Slab"

"Like the ore he mines, there is something of value underneath that gruff exterior."

Time itself is shattered at Aramis Stilton's mansion, and so is the owner's mind.

Having solved the Jindosh lock that seals the way to the Karnacan silver baron's residence, he can be found inside, playing the piano tunelessly and raving to himself. The place itself is in disrepair, unlit and unkempt, no staff or guards, overgrown with Bloodfly infestations and mould.

We will now get a chance to see who Stilton really is, and what's more to understand how Delilah has returned, in another well-known level that will change how the player interacts with the world completely.

In 1849 Duke Luca Abele and Breanna Ashworth, having heard Delilah whisper to them of her return, planned a seance to bring her back from the Void. They were joined by Alexandria Hypatia in her Grim Alex alter-ego as well as Kirin Jindosh, and held it at Aramis Stilton's manor who they involved because of his closeness to the old duke. What happened that night was the catalyst for Delilah's coup and the events of Dishonored 2, while the experience of the seance itself broke Stilton's brain and he has never recovered.

Replacing the player's powers with a new mechanic

On their arrival at the mansion Corvo or Emily will find that their Outsider powers aren't working, and will have to walk through the building to initially find Stilton. Then the Outsider will equip the protagonist with a timepiece that allows them to instantly move between 1852 and the fateful night in 1849 to investigate the seance. 

Mechanically this means that you can now shift instantly between two versions of the same level at any time. There are in fact three maps that can be explored and which are loaded at the same time, with two versions of one of them, providing a seamless transition between time periods. You can see into the other time - it is actually rendering two instances of the map simultaneously. 

This is extremely impressive on a technical level and replaces the usual power set in terms of stealth and combat verbs. Rather than using Blink and Bend Time to avoid guards you might cross a space by switching time periods to always be in an unwatched part of the room, or if a fight kicks off evaporate into the future before an enemy's eyes to reappear behind them and take them out.

The level encourages repeated travel between time periods by immediately making this approach the key to progress. The only way to exit the room where Stilton sits at the piano in 1852 is to go into the past before the doorway is barricaded, then back into the future as the door itself is no longer there, taking advantage of the small space you can stand between the two obstacles. By doing things like this you can acquire items and information you need without being seen, whispering between the two times like a ghost, getting under a table and traveling into the past to steal a key with the guards completely unawares.

The original game used the "all your gear gets taken away" trope to make sure you were using your power set to its fullest as you navigated The Flooded District. Here, after six missions the player is likely to be accustomed to their power set or at least has settled into a routine, so this new central mechanic requires you to adopt a new playstyle. Less mobile perhaps as you can no longer cover great distances in an instant, and maybe more observant but potentially more daring as well as the consequences for being seen or chased can be removed with a single button press by going back to the future.

Actions in the past will change the present

Your actions also affect the present and may transform the world around you when you return to the present. One example is a Bloodfly infestation that can be removed by going into the past and burning the dog carcass that started it, providing access to a safe that was previously overgrown. 

What it means for how you proceed through the level is that you are repeatedly thinking, what is the best way to do this? What path do I take? How and when should I enter that doorway, peek out of that window, what will have the best result? The level plauys into this with lots of openings, especially doors and windows, that are in different states in the two time periods and offer various benefits and disadvantages to entering or interacting with in each. It provides a temporarily much shorter feedback loop on how good your decision was than the meta-structure of the Chaos System and the emergent narrative your approach to stealth and combat usually causes.

However there are far more profound ways that you can influence the present with your actions in the past, which will come up later.

The level requires you to acquire a key and code, provoking exploration and experimentation with the timepiece, and you then need to make a decision about the mansion's owner after walking through a literal museum to his work and hearing about him in his words and the words of others. There is a huge amount of flavour text and an abundance of heart quotes in this level. The designers really want you to actually know about this man before you decide his fate. Like the Duke, Delilah and Jindosh, Aramis Stilton's presence is felt very strongly in the environment. 

And he is different to many of your targets. We already know he is a more sympathetic figure based on how sorely he is missed in Batista and his connection to Lucia Pastor who has been presented as being very much on the side of right and of the working class throughout. Like Jindosh he is encountered immediately upon beginning the level, but where the inventor's confident voice harangued you and challenged you, the mine baron is a broken man mumbling to himself.  

As you explore you discover that he wore the accoutrements of success awkwardly, self-conscious of how he fit in with pampered nobles whose wealth was inherited and who look down on him for his salt of the earth ways. He writes in his diary that he overheard his staff talking about his dirty fingernails in disgust after his return from a mine inspection and then went to get a manicure, before changing his mind upon seeing his fingernails covered in lacqeur and removing it with turpentine. Clearly he is more at home in the mines where the work is done than he is in high society, where people are more concerned about appearance and gossip. He also looks forward to visits from Meagan Foster, who does seem more of a kindred spirit.

While the first version of the level you arrive at - the default version of 1852 - is the most dreary and depressing setting possibly in the game, the night of the party is one of the more upbeat and cosy. Whether Aramis Stilton is simply well liked or whether the nobility are sponging off his goodwill, the house is lively and full of people. There is neither the sleaze of the Duke's palace nor the backstabbing and venom of Lady Boyle's ill-fated party.

A Crack in the Slab gives a really visible example of how High Chaos and Low Chaos choices affect the world around you as you go. While in the original game this came to a head in the final level with different weather and fates for the main antagonists on Kingsparrow Island, arguably the Chaos System in Dishonored 2 has its big moment as the third act begins. It is based on one choice - how you deal with Aramis Stilton - but its effects are profound.

Heal the man to heal the district

If you choose to be merciful and leave Stilton alive, but choke him out, he misses the seance and never becomes traumatised. If you ignore him he will attend it and his fate remains unchanged, and if you kill him his house is bought by someone else and renovated. There are a lot of guards in the open garden area where Stilton is found, with easy line of sight to him, and I believe this is to make it likely that the player will either kill Stilton or knock him out and then quickly flee back to the present. Because when you do something incredible happens. You emerge in 1852 again, and suddenly hear voices. You look around. A servant is nearby, working and talking to themselves, or perhaps they have noticed you and are threatening to call the guards. The Bloodflies are gone and the house is pristine. In that instant of interacting with Stilton you changed the present, and realising it is one of the most exhilarating moments in gaming. It also works if you killed Stilton, as his house will be under new ownership.

If Stilton was spared both madness and death though, his house in 1852 will display signs of a more confident man living and working according to his principles. He has got rid of statues to himself and instead an immense statue of a proud miner stands in the foyer, symbolising the back-breaking labour that made Karnaca wealthy. The kitchen and billiard room are being renovated, and in the room where in the original timeline he sat tormented the piano is now gone. He couldn't play it anyway, it was an affectation, and in its place is a lecture hall - perhaps providing training and additional learning, so that the miners can eventually become business owners themselves. There is no more grand guard presence, the Jindosh lock is gone and the sun is shining.

By healing the man you healed the district, and the acrid dust storms no longer blow through Batista - which you can now revisit. The workers can be found in the street talking or smoking, reflecting on how things could be worse. Lucia Pastor is able to occupy her flat which in the original timeline she had to abandon because of the dust, and is busy organising. Luca Abele can be heard over the loudspeaker, reluctantly grousing through praise for the mine workers which presumably Stilton and Pastor have coerced him into broadcasting.

This is as close to a happy ending as a Dishonored level gets, with Meagan even getting her arm and eye back. It shows how Corvo and Emily can, through their actions, create a better future for the Empire of the Isles rather than simply seize power again. The Dishonored games provide a heady amount of individual empowerment to the player, but their preoccupation with class and moral choices that matter sometimes leads to the player being able to make decisions that impact the world around them.

"Delilah is a part of me now. And I don't like it."

Before having the chance to re-enter Batista however, you will return to the Void - in a particularly violent fashion, this time. As you reach for the door out of the mansion, you are dragged backwards into the Void and are confronted by the Outsider in another simply terrific moment. At this point he is very open in his motivations. He shows you where his throat was cut and he was made a god, 4000 years ago, and explains that Delilah somehow found him there. Now Emily or Corvo must take back the totem created from the seance that gives Delilah immortality before returning to Dunwall to take her down.