the world reflects your actions back at you. it’s not a drastically different game or anything, except perhaps in tone, but chaos level in dishonored has an effect beyond simply reprimanding the player.
it changes the number and types of enemies, npc dialogue and character reactions (particularly emily, sokolov, the loyalists, daud and burrows), and certain map layouts and aesthetics; the flooded district and kingsparrow island in particular are significantly altered by the chaos level.
i think that’s neat.
what you’re describing there is the plot, which is definitely basic. i don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing though? like, you’re also describing the plot to the count of monte cristo there, and that’s a stone cold, bonafide classic of literature. bear in mind that “writing” isn’t just plot though.
what i’m talking about - “what would you do with great power?” - is the theme. a theme is a central topic or subject within a narrative; what the work is about and what the work says about it.
dishonored’s plot, characters, gameplay, aesthetic, and even the pre-release marketing are all concerned with that question in some way. indeed, almost every single character in the game is connected to or affected by that theme: the outsider, emily, delilah, corvo, daud, billie, lady boyle, burrows and his cronies, the loyalists, etc. there is even a game-spanning system - the chaos level - that alters the game based on the player’s answer to the same question.
as it underpins and suffuses the entire game, top to bottom, i think it is a mistake to dismiss it as an “afterthought”. it is demonstrably baked in to the whole deal.
can you elaborate on this a little? you said earlier that:
…which implies that you want to be able to kill everyone and still get a ‘good’ ending. all the videos you post are about the ending too, which seems to further support that reading.
have i misunderstood this…?
no worries. you said:
i’m basically saying that limiting choices to story ones (like at the end of mass effect, the end of death of the outsider or a choice picked from a dialogue tree etc.) is an incredibly myopic way of looking at how games can work. gameplay choices seem like a far more interesting avenue to explore imo and something only video games can do.
i think this is a really reductive way of looking at it, and if i’m honest, a lot of how you’re framing everything is reductive. one can be reductive with anything and make it seem pants. it’s not a useful rhetorical device and doesn’t tend to provide much insight.
for example, i could say “hitman is a game where you kill people” but that doesn’t really cover it, does it? it certainly makes it easier to criticise (“all you do is kill people… how dull!”) but it scrubs away the nuance and uniqueness.
with that said, dishonored offers the same kind of power fantasy every other game offers… then subverts it by making how the player uses their power affect the world positively or negatively. that is a really interesting and pretty unique approach imo (i’m wracking my brain for other examples… infamous, maybe?). it’s saying: “hey player, lotta people around here are abusing power. by the way, here are all these tempting supernatural powers that basically make you a god-like ninja witch… whatcha gonna do with ‘em?”
i think that’s ace!
the amount of kills you get in dishonored 2 also affects the ending/chaos level. the difference is that dishonored 2 adds npcs with different weightings based on their good/evil alignment, which you can decipher via the heart. the chaos system in 2 has a few more variables but is largely an iteration on dishonoured’s existing system.
additionally, what you’re alluding to above is present in the first game too. the decisions you make in dishonored’s side-quests and how you deal with targets impacts the chaos rating too.
one example off the top of my head: poisoning the distillery for granny rags bumps the chaos rating up dramatically. i think there are something in the region of 10-15 of these sorts of chaos-affecting side-quests throughout the game. again, this goes back to my criticism of how opaque the system is. there’s no real way to tell that these have an affect on chaos till after the fact.
god, you’re making me want to play dishonored again… 
