Inevitable Chaos

Zsolt David
9 min readOct 18, 2023

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The Dishonored series depicts the aristocratic stratum of a feudal society going through industrialization. It is occupied with time and inevitability in a sense that Jameson refers to as a “prodigious anticipations of the thought mode of a social formation of the future” in “The Political Unconscious” relating to Marx and Engels’ “Communist Manifesto”. He purports that such attempt is to “formulate [a] vision of “historical inevitability” by way of a mechanical alternation of older ethical categories.” It is to anticipate “which has not yet come into being” based on present social formations.

Dishonored starts with the murder of the head of the aristocratic ruling class, whereas Dishonored 2 depicts the usurpation of the throne, from where the player must go through elaborate ways and means to restoring the rule of law. The means in which the player carries out the reestablishment of order is where the game attempts to offer ethical quandaries that come down to whether they spare lives on their way to the rule of law, or not, corresponding with the outcome of either ‘low chaos’ or ‘high chaos’.

Such outcome is alluded to throughout the narrative of each game, and are explicated in various user interfaces. Chaos is each game’s point of inception as well as their resolution. It is inevitable. Yet, the ‘low’ and ‘high’ modifiers of these inevitabilities aim to differentiate what is inevitable. If one knocks a character unconscious or leaves them alone, it leads to the ‘low chaos’ outcome, whereas if they elect to murder them, then we shall see the ‘high chaos’ outcome. Leaving witnesses after a murder or suffocation is no different from revealing the player character, in effect, making their mere presence negation incarnate. The negation of human life is the only operation that influences the inevitable chaos. If we consider this outcome as the reestablishment of the rule of law, then such outcome is not contingent on bare life, but on the inevitability of chaos, or a narrative that reaches this conclusion. The player character then is a mere negatory force that deals with bare life, or inevitability incarnate if we approach it from the standpoint of narrative.

If chaos is as inevitable as the conclusion of the game’s narrative, then so is the dissolution and reestablishment of the rule of law. It is suspended by the murder of the empress in the first game, by a coup d’état in the second, which then are reestablished by the coronation of a new empress in the former, and by the suppression of the usurpers in the latter. Chaos is as circular as the rule of law. They never stop repeating and following one another as they appear in a narrative that inevitably reaches its conclusion, affirming circularity. Perhaps this conception of a ‘narrative’ leads us to conclusions about inevitability.

Let’s circle back then to the idea about negating life as it relates to the rule of law. If the narrative outside of this negation leads to chaos as well as the rule of law, like we proposed earlier, then these conceptions relate to one another via the outside, such as the player conception which is part of the narrative. This doesn’t exclude the idea that our proposition can be true even if we don’t conceive a separation of an outside from the inside, that is, we only conceive a text that may be read. In this understanding, one may look at what each games’ text offers for reading, such as how bodies are devoured by rats in the first game, or incubated by bloodflies to hatch in the second. Vermin use dead bodies in each game as sustenance for repopulation, which cadavers then pose danger to human life. This then becomes part of the circular movement of the rule of law where life follows death and death follows life, as well the opposition and unity between nature and culture. One cannot be conceptualized without the other, be it life or death, nature or humanity, which inseparability may be referred to by either chaos or the rule of law.

The conception of ‘low’ cannot be conceptualized without its counterpart of ‘high’ either as these denote a perpetual state of chaos or the inevitable rule of law, which are the same in terms of circular totality. They follow one another as well as describe a social reality in its entirety, separate from one another while being the same. This reasoning is to show how the series presents this dialectic as differentiated outcome of events with the conceptions of chaos and the rule of law. But this representation goes further by appealing to the moral implication of murder and the absence of such outcome. One may harm people by suffocating them or smashing bottles upon their head, but as long as the outcome of these actions render them unconscious, chaos remains low. Murder is evaluated in a similar manner, that is, it is considered as such if it leads to the sudden death of a person. Evaluation of the morality of an action thus always takes place after the fact, which would then lead to either ‘low’ or ‘high’ chaos. This becomes not a matter of bare life then, as rats, hounds and other animals may be slaughtered without any effect on the outcome of chaos, but a matter of human life, where nature resolves the deficit of death by either devouring cadavers or laying eggs in them.

Chaos then becomes the rule of law that each citizen must abide by staying alive, where staying alive follows living, as an evaluation of whether one is alive or dead no matter their circumstances. Because staying alive follows living, one must self-evaluate as they live and decide how they act before living. This is an untenable proposition as one cannot act according to a set of rules that derive meaning from the act after it has been carried out. Hence the conception of intent that aims to preconceive the outcome of a deed. Living a good life then is about dealing with its preconditions. This contemplative self-evaluation and self-adjustment is a ceaseless activity one may call faith and the set of rules that define it are its ethics.

The Dishonored series’ conception of the rule of law then is a system that regulates the human condition of staying alive by prescribing it as an act one must carry out through the player character who comes alive by taking action. We may say then that the series’ ethics are conditioned by individual action with which one may draw a conclusion to the games’ depiction of citizens and collective, akin to Hegel’s “Absolute Spirit” and Leninist voluntarism, as they “fatally project the afterimage of the individual consciousness”, according to Jameson in “The Political Unconscious”.

This differentiation between individual and collective, chaos and the rule of law, action and contemplation, is no different from the separation of an aforementioned text to what is written (inside) and who writes it (outside) where the player conception as part of the narrative takes on both conceptions by being part of what is written as well as who writes it. But it remains separated as it conceives an intent that deals with both the inside and the outside in a way where meaning may be derived from the separation of the outside and the inside that leads exactly to its own conception, which in our case is the nebulous concept of the player. This player is as much as it is to play and narrative as the writer is to writing and narrative, which is to say that the former must play in a specific manner, while the latter must write in a specific manner to keep this separation intact in a way that constructs a narrative in order with the preconceived rule of law.

This rule of law or order that carries the residue of “individual consciousness” is tangible in the conception of affordance, a popular term in videogame and software design, which describes a possibility of individual action within a set of rules, a playfield, in our case. From this point of view, Dishonored offers options for player action which then contribute to either ‘low’ or ‘high’ chaos that stand for the general notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. But since these deeds are evaluated after they have been done, one must preconceive a set of rules and solidify them in individual action based on these evaluations of good or bad, a praxis, if you will. In context of the game’s affordances, one must abstain from relying on options of player action that offer ways of murder to be evaluated good, while the other end of the spectrum may be reached by indulgence. From these praxises arises an ethic of abstinence in relation to good deeds, and squander in relation to bad deeds.

Yet, each game portrays the player characters as persons from the feudal ruling class dealing with the forces of industrialisation. Such are the series’ attempt to paint a historical picture of the material conditions of Enlightenment, where poverty and excess are contrasted with decay and extravagance and how these conceptions make social classes go through change, where “older ethical categories” and the “afterimage of the individual consciousness” remain, as described in Jameson’s “The Political Unconscious”. Like with the notion of change as it relates to the depiction of time. It is tangible in player character abilities, such as “Bend Time”, to places that are suspended between two timelines.

The latter takes place in Dishonored 2 in the manor of Aramis Stilton, a mining tycoon. Here, a so-called time-piece emerges from the so-called Void where the Outsider reigns, as if from nothingness or outside of what the narrative portrays as reality. By being able to switch between the present and the past, it is to see lavish halls and wealth of the manor that is in ruins. Even though a member of the ruling class is in financial and mental ruin, another member of this class still uses this device to go back in time. If we use this particular case to go towards the general, like we did with the individual (particular) and collective (general), then deriving from the protagonist’s class, we may imagine the aristocracy as wealthy and sane in the past as well as in the present that goes towards toppling the usurper and restoring order, so the future as well. So it is to imagine the ruling class as out of time and place, which is to think of the bourgeois individual as outside of spatiotemporality or what may constitute reality that at once eludes the problems that come with the relationship between the general and the particular. One may call the object of such imagination as wealth, commensurate with Marxist analysis, where the bourgeois ruling class considers itself equal with its wealth as an unconditioned individual, even though this individuality and the wealth in association with it is conditioned by the collective proletariat.

The Dishonored series’ ominous figure of the so-called Outsider embodies this bourgeois ideal by being able to appear in any place and at any time, while showing a striking resemblance to the aristocratic ruling class with their pale skin and petty vendettas, interjecting from out of time and out place. This figure gives power to street urchins and cutthroats looking to make a dime, and persons who seem to show potential for social mobility. It is unlike the feudal aristocracy, who above all aim to sustain themselves as the ruling class. An anthropological read by Hazel Monforton likens this figure to a subject of sacrificial violence, where “victims, ‘pharmakoi’, were required whenever a threat, real or imagined, destabilized the borders and hierarchies of a community to the point of crisis”. These subjects were often selected from “marginalized” members of society, according to Monforton. This interpretation places the individual as its subject of analysis who is transformed by sacrifice to avoid a catastrophe threatening a community, who then becomes a disembodied embodiment of an individual reigning chaos upon society. The conception of the individual remains unchanged, only its effect on an object (society) becomes different, from an unwilling influence (outcast) to a willing one (bad actor). The rule of law in Dishonored also remains unchanged, except when it is considered as an equal with chaos, where the latter’s embodiment (Outsider) is considered as an undying break that shocks a linear understanding of time, or its equivalence in the continuation of the ruling class.

It is in this individualizing sense where ethical conclusions appear to come from the outside as well, where one may self-evaluate and self-regulate to live a good life that entails preparation and adjustment, a ceaseless preoccupation with a self, commensurate with the disembodied embodiment of ideal play in the conception of ‘the player’. Like an affordance, the player comes from outside itself to affect itself as ‘the player’ even though it remains inside from such affective outside. The Dishonored series’ ‘low’ and ‘high’ differentiation emerges from the same place, that is, from the outside. Based on this affective origin, one may deal with opportunity for theft and getting away unnoticed in the former, and regulating ammunition and one’s lifeforce for indulgence in murder with the latter. One may as well call this “chaos” denoting a reality where one may do anything to stay alive, to better their circumstances while the rich are striving to keep the rule of law, going as far as to suspending time to ensure that the system of itself remains outside of itself.

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