The Only Time Murder is Okay

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Who doesn't love a good revenge plot? It's hard not to get behind someone seeking justice... even when they're doing some pretty deplorable stuff in the process?

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[RealCirnoFumo]

Well say if you destroy the entire universe because your favorite donuts were put of stock who will be left decide how evil your actions were?

[highgrove]

To play the devils advocate for Dishonored:
You can kill all your targets and still get the good ending. as long as you avoid killing other npcs. Once you kill enough to pass a certain threshold you get a "high chaos" marker for the level. Do so for enough levels and you get the "bad" ending.

I would also like to point out that the game does not label the endings as "good" or "bad", but instead as High and Low chaos.
The logic being that if you kill a lot of people it would naturally make the world more chaotic

[rondamon]

I hate revenge stories when the antagonist is clearly evil, and needs to be gone. But the moral is always “revenge bad” but then when the protagonist decides to be an angel at the last second and spare the antagonists life, it 99% of time bites them in the ass, rendering the “revenge bad” message a moot point, because even after being spared they don’t change, i like revenge stories that instead of making revenge to be bad in and of itself, they say “they may deserve it, but at what cost?” Like god of war, or vinland saga, where you may achieve (or not achieve in Vinland sagas case) your revenge, but what of collateral damage? The people you kill directly or indirectly along the way? What of yourself? Will you truly feel relieved of the anger and hatred? You won’t, if the antagonist is to be spared, the antagonist should 100% show some sort of change, otherwise telling us that “its wrong to kill them” doesnt make sense because then you just have to kill them anyway in self defense… but only after they kill 5 more of your friends because you decided to spare them of course.

[darwinskeeper]

I once heard someone say that Shakespeare liked to create his tragedies by placing contemplative characters where men of action would have been effective and men of action where contemplative characters were needed. Imagine what would have happened if Hamlet and Othello had exchanged stories. Othello, the general would have killed his father's brother early sparing the collateral damage that the uncertain Hamlet created. Hamlet, the thinker would have been able to figure out that his wife wasn't cheating on him, and spoiled Iago's plot. The thing is that by placing the "wrong" man in his stories, Shakespeare probably made his plays more interesting than they would have been if he'd followed my advice. Conflict may be nothing as much as things going terribly wrong for the story's characters.

[Jasonwolf]

Justice is not the true goal of revenge. It can be a biproduct. Inigo kills the six fingered man for revenge, but in doing so he kills a cruel man with much more blood on his hands and weakens prince humperdink. He didn't care about the grander goals, about stopping corruption, he just wanted to kill one man.

[dionettaeon]

Since you brought up Avatar: The Last Airbender, one of my favorite series, there was another character, Jet, who was also consumed by revenge. Unlike with Katara, though, Jet's revenge was indiscriminate and relentless, attacking Fire Nation soldier and civilian alike, even flooding an Earth Kingdom town in an attempt to eliminate them. There's also a point in Season 2 when Aang, normally the peacekeeper in the group, nearly succumbed to revenge after Sandbenders kidnap his skybison Appa, until Katara was able to calm him down before he did something drastic.

[xyan]

I have to point out that in Dishonored, if you kill your targets, and just your targets, and are otherwise very clean about it, you'll still get the good ending or at worst the sorta "meh" ending. It's only when you start to indiscriminately kill anyone and anything in your way that you actually get the bad ending.

[ChaserNeos]

When you mentioned revenge via catharsis, it made me think of the poet Dante Alighieri. He was a man who was wrongfully exiled from Firenze, the city he was born in and loved, by his political enemies while he wasn't even there. So what did he do? He wrote an epic poem that condemned these people forever to the depths of Hell. Not just in literature but in the memories of anyone who has read it. The most subtle way of vengeance, in my opinion.

[raistlin]

The sad truth is that justice is often elusive, even when the system isn't corrupt or broken. Revenge seems more attainable in comparation.

[TheGallicWitch]

Dishonored is my favourite video game of all time. I think one of the things that make the revenge plot so compelling is that, not only is Corvo falsy accused, he's falsy accused of the murder of the one person he was sworn to protect, whom he dedicated his entire life to protect, and on top of that this person is the mother of his child (even if no one else but the two of them know that). That makes for an incredibly gripping hook. But what kept me invested, what convinced me that his revenge was not only necessary but righteous and that he could not under any circumstance "forgive and forget" is because of Emily.

I think Arkane made a brilliant move in adding Emily. Not only does it fleshes out the relationship between Corvo and Jessamine, adding to the weight of Corvo failing to protect the Empress, but as a player who already failed to protect one person, it gives you an incentive to keep playing. Because after all, if you stop now and abandon your revenge, you leave Emily, not just a child, but YOUR child, to the hands of the men responsible for the murder of her mother and your lover. It's like a ticking countdown in the back of your mind, because "normal" revenge plots aren't on a time crunch. You have all the time you need to complete them (see: le Comte de Monté-Christo, which takes place over decades).

But in Dishonored, you're in a hurry: the longer you take to go through the co-conspirators and men responsible, the longer you leave Emily in a vulnerable and dangerous position. And what ties a bow to the perfection of this revenge plot is the Chaos system. If you try to only kill the men responsible, if you spare civilians and soldiers and watchmen, if you even try to find non-violent solutions to get the co-conspirators out of the picture without killing them, you keep your Chaos score low. The city slowly gets better around you, less guards, less rats, less people sick with the plague. Emily actually responds to your actions, becoming kinder and more compationate.

But if you loose yourself in the revenge, kill civilians, innocents, do massacres in every mission, the city gets plunged into Chaos, literally. Guards everywhere, wearing masks against the plague, piles of corpses ravaged by the sickness, swarms of rats attacking you and devouring citizens and watchmen alike in seconds, gangs taking over the streets. And Emily becomes bloodthirsty, saying "Good" to you when you come back from killing everyone. If you take it to this point, you're putting a child-Empress on the throne who learned from her father and lord protector that revenge solves everything. And if you take it too far, Emily dies at the end, this child who wears white through the entire game killed by your own bloody hands. Man, I love Dishonored so much.


And if anyone reading this speaks French and likes revenge plots and Sci-Fi, I highly recommends "Le Roi Sombre" by Oren Miller. It's a re-imagining of the Count of Monté-Christo but in space in a dystopian Sci-Fi setting and it's one of my favourite books ever written.

[Nyghtking]

On the topic of choosing Mercy over Violance, there's also Aang, specifically during his final fight with Ozai, specifically how Aand dealt with him and how it could be argued what he did is worse then if he killed him.

See Firelord Ozai cared only for two things, himself and strength, he was proud of his strength and he was proud of what strong people could do, he reveled in being able to force others to do what he wanted and to be able to incite fear.
Aang took his bending from him, the source of his strength, rendering him not but a normal man, which basically takes everything from him, why would his people continue to follow him? he can't make them anymore, he can't fight back against anyone who would take his seat, and no one is afraid of him anymore, it's the worst fate he could imagine, being made weak.

[ShawnRavenfire]

I notice that movies will often differentiate between "good" revenge and "bad" revenge, based on what the characters do in addition to revenge. For example, in "The Crow, " Eric is clearly framed as the good guy, because he comes back from the dead to kill his killers (plus the gang boss's henchmen, who are about to do other bad things), but also cures a woman's drug addiction. In contrast, in "Nightmare on Elm St., " Freddy is clearly framed as the bad guy, because he comes back from the dead to avenge himself against the people who killed him in revenge for having previously murdered (and probably molested) children.

[Edge-wxhv]

something to consider about Dishonored, is that, especially in a low-chaos playthrough, the people you are targeting are an active threat to the well-being of the city, and the empire. shutting them down isn't simply a matter of personal vengeance, but also of stopping them from causing more harm, and making sure you can undo the harm they've already done. (if in low chaos). it doesn't become a more classic tragic revenge tale unless you throw all morality to the winds and cut your way through everyone in your path, leaving nobody behind to keep the rats and the plague from killing the city.
I especially like that Two lets you take an aggressive approach to combat but still be nonlethal about it, Meaning you don't have to kill your way through everyone even if you do want to bull your way through your problems, and incidentally indicating corvo thought about what happens next time and made sure he and emily have better options in a tight spot than kill everyone around them.

[MrClickity]

I like that the only nonlethal option that isn't particularly cruel in Dishonored is the one against the assassin who actually killed the empress.

As you play, it becomes clear that he was just a pawn and was actually fairly honorable by that world's standards (as well as Not So Different from the player character). So the nonlethal option is to simply pickpocket him. The idea is to send a message: "I'm bettter than you. I could've killed you at any time, but I didn't".

It humiliates him and doesn't give him the warrior's death he wants, but otherwise leaves him be.

[silaschester]

I think revenge is often very understandable but often not moral and that's what I like about it. you have to choose between retribution or acceptance. edit: yoo this is one of my most liked comments, thanks yall! :D

[shadyguy]

One of my favorite types of monsters are revenants, undead who have been resurrected by their by their hatred and desire for revenge on the one(s) who killed them. Revenants are often just a name for a standard undead in media that includes them but the revenge focused one fascinates me and I would love to see it explored more.

[ДавідБорґ]

A film called "Hard Candy" literally depicts a child feign vulnerability so the samed predator that she believes kidnapped and killed her friend would do the same for her so she can trick him and exact revenge.

The remainder of the movie is her torturing him, movking him for his perversions and covering up anytime someone comes by the house. It felt so vindicating watching a fully grown man and alleged predator be tortured and have all his autonomy stripped away just like what happened to his alleged victims.

It's a great movie with a nice if somewhat predictable twist. I reccomend it, but not for the squeamish especially if child predation is something that triggers you.

[Armoraxis]

something I would love to see is a revenge story with an asshole protagonist, who accidently gets revenge on the wrong person, ruining this innocent person's life and facing the consequences of that - I think it's fine for the protag to later get revenge against their real target, but the important part is either them willingly facing consequences, or have someone else avenge the innocent person and harshly punish the protag

[AFK]

Actually, all those stories where we root for the revenge to happen, even if cruel or disproportional, have one thing in common:
Executing the revenge is most likely to spare more people in the long run by either killing bad guys directly (John Wick, Punisher) or just by presenting a horrifying example of what could happen, if you treat others poorly (Carrie).
So, at the end, the scales of fate might have been tipped in the right direction – even by an act of evil.

[gamewalker]

For lady boyle on dishonored, the story doesn't end here, and you can find the following of it in the novel "the corroded men", wich take place beetween the first and second game.

In this book, we learn that the lady you kidnap quickly murdered his kidnaper after their wedding, and inherit a collosal fortune on her own, that she manage alone without problems.

On the other side, one of her sister, who was for nothing on the murder of the impress, fall into madness after the disapering of her sister, and the third sister was forced to condamned a whole wing of the manor cause nothing can bring her to reason. In conclusion, your revenge had a not so bad impact of the target of her, but her whole innocent family suffer a lot of it. The reputation of the family is ruined and one poor woman will finish her life alone and mad because of it.

(the book is pretty wild on the consequence of Dishonored 1, showing too that if the impress was not kill in the beginning of the game, the whole population will have suffer a lot more, with her daughter growing up in a pestilence ravaged city before becaming a tyrant)