Delilah's motivation

[Velorien]

I must have blanked it from my mind after finishing the game, but now I'm replaying it, is the root of Delilah's motivation for murdering a whole lot of people, delving into dark magic, and trying to take over the world really "A girl too young to understand consequences once blamed me for breaking something valuable"? I get that her worldview is defined by a completely understandable rage against an unfair world, but the actual grudge she's been nursing for 35-odd years, the reason for trying to petrify/murder Emily that's so central to her existence that she'd invade Emily's dreams to rant about it, is kind of... pathetic.

[ThePugHybrid]

Have you played the DLC of the first game? Delilah gets more of an introduction there. You also have to remember that she lost her mother as a result of that who was the only person who really cared about her.

Edit: Forgot to mention that she is also technically a Kaldwin, although a bastard from an affair, which makes sense why she would target the throne.

[Velorien]

I do think Delilah's grievances against society in general are legitimate, and against her long-dead father as well. But she doesn't seek ultimate power in order to reform society, or even get revenge against it. She wants the life and the throne of the woman whose mother blamed her for breaking a vase or whatever once.

[ThePugHybrid]

She wants control and power. I highly recommend playing 'The Brigmore Witches' for more information as there is stuff in that which would help explain a few things that I won't say because of spoilers.

[Raider Deci]

Originally posted by Velorien:

I do think Delilah's grievances against society in general are legitimate, and against her long-dead father as well.

Was my take as well, have not played the dlc for the first game, but she does take it very far away from any kind of reasonable proportions. She simply wanted absolute control & power through magic. I have no sympathy left at the end.

[Velorien]

Originally posted by ThePugHybrid:

She wants control and power. I highly recommend playing 'The Brigmore Witches' for more information as there is stuff in that which would help explain a few things that I won't say because of spoilers.

I did play The Brigmore Witches, and I can't say I'm left much more enlightened. Would you mind telling me what you're thinking of?

[ThePugHybrid]

The Brigmore Witches shows that it is more about gaining power than necessarily seeking revenge on Emily in my opinion.

[Kuma]

Her sister was to blame but really she was exiled and tortured by the emperor (her father). Forced to live in extreme poverty in an unfair and corrupted world ruled by her father and having only her mother as a last slice of hope was bad enough, but to also be forced to witness her mother's slow demise in prison at the hands of a guard was probably the last straw.
She has more than enough reason to hate the emperor and the corrupted kingdom he created, her motivations are not only revenge but also to changed things in her own way that's why she seeks power, to her the ends justify the means.

Now for Emily, Delilah doesn't actually care about her, she sees her as no more than a spoiled brat which is why in the canon story she leaves her unpetrified, she believes she won't even be a nuisance to her plans (and maybe partly because she was still family).

Now if you pick corvo as the main character, things really don't make sense and several plot problems will pop up like you mentioned, which is why his story isn't canon, it was more of a gameplay feature, the whole story of D2 was designed around Emily as the playable character and Corvo being petrified since he was a thorn in Delilah's plan from the start.

By the way, your motivation is pretty similar to Delilah throughout the game, you want to fix a kingdom that is corrupted beyond salvation from the start and you also resort to dark magic to attain it. The only difference really is that Delilah is already following the highest chaos possible way to reach it and being blinded by rage while in the canon story you manage to do the same without resorting to so much evil in the process.

[SmellofNapalm]

Delilah is just your typical villain. The story tries to pretend that there is more to her than that, but fails on account of the writing being a bit on the weak side this time around. Every villain needs to have a reason for being bad nowadays. What about good old narcissism? Maybe she's just a sociopath.

I mean don't get me wrong, it might have worked if they had put in the legwork, but it's literally just one cutscene and our character also has no real reason to care. "Oh, so you had a bad childhood and that somehow justifies your people murdering half of my guards and quite a few civilians?!?" How cute.

[Laicus]

Delilah's character demonstrates very well how evil, power-hungry people justify their actions by pretending to be victims or heroes, they will find any reasons and denigrate everyone around in order to achieve their goal and maintain a good reputation. Most of the managers I know personally have such character traits and do exactly that, except without killing.)

[SmellofNapalm]

That may very well be the case sometimes, but that doesn't adress the weak execution of Delilah's narration. It's basically a cutscene in which she delivers that particular story in a one-sided way. It's a familiar way in which writers try to add more depth to a villain, but's it's just not done well here. There also just isn't a lot of narration on Delilah's motivations in general, so that particular bit stands out even more.

At best the attempt to portray Delilah as ambiguous is just another little element for the character development of Emily. There were similar problems with Daud in the first game and DLCs. He wasn't sorry about Jessamine's death because that was in his character, but since the player/Corvo needed to have a choice other than killing him. And because his other victims didn't feature in the game at all.

[Velorien]

Originally posted by SmellofNapalm:

There were similar problems with Daud in the first game and DLCs. He wasn't sorry about Jessamine's death because that was in his character, but since the player/Corvo needed to have a choice other than killing him. And because his other victims didn't feature in the game at all.

I felt like Daud wasn't so much regretting killing Jessamine as killing the Empress. It didn't escape his notice that her death was the point at which things went from "city struggling to cope with a plague" to "apocalyptic hellscape which the people in power are actively making worse with every decision".

I agree entirely about his other victims. There's a note from him in the Flooded District in the first game which straight-up says "Here are some sleep darts, but don't waste them on limiting collateral damage".

[Kuma]

Originally posted by SmellofNapalm:

Every villain needs to have a reason for being bad nowadays. What about good old narcissism? Maybe she's just a sociopath.

Because there was never such thing as "just a sociopath".
Only lazy writing depicts villains doing evil for the sake of evil, this is an easy way to create a character that everyone hates but they simply do not exist. Every single villanous leader in history was justifying their acts and had normal people following them and their ideals. Good writing always goes the extra mile to also create a realistic villain on top of everything.

Originally posted by SmellofNapalm:

I mean don't get me wrong, it might have worked if they had put in the legwork, but it's literally just one cutscene and our character also has no real reason to care. "Oh, so you had a bad childhood and that somehow justifies your people murdering half of my guards and quite a few civilians?!?" How cute.

In this quote you are oversimplyfing the game plot and backstory into a shallow and misleading strawman argument, there is a lot more that goes with it and the world corruption is spead even through "innocent" civilians as the black heart shows even them are lost, the point of the whole franchise is to dwelve deeper in corruption and what it means to be dishonored.
The game does not rely only on cutscenes to deliver the plot, you have to listed to ingame dialogues, do side quests, dlcs, and even read notes you find throughout the game to properly follow everything and understand the story and characters on a deeper level.
Sure you can play the game skipping everything and ignoring the plot but just don't complain the story feels shallow if you do so.

[Kuma]

Originally posted by SmellofNapalm:

He wasn't sorry about Jessamine's death because that was in his character, but since the player/Corvo needed to have a choice other than killing him. And because his other victims didn't feature in the game at all.

Daud represents redemption, he only started to feel bad about what he did later on after opening his eyes to the fact that he was ultimately being manipulated by external forces including his mark.
Which is why he went on his redemption arc (the first dlcs) to try and fix past mistakes and find some solace.
Even later in life he still blames the outsider strongly for what happened to him and still seeks revenge for it (further explored in Death of the Outsider).

[Velorien]

Originally posted by wishIwasabear:

In this quote you are oversimplyfing the game plot and backstory into a shallow and misleading strawman argument, there is a lot more that goes with it and the world corruption is spead even through "innocent" civilians as the black heart shows even them are lost, the point of the whole franchise is to dwelve deeper in corruption and what it means to be dishonored.

I personally consider the games to have handled that badly. It breaks my suspicion of disbelief that 90% of the population of the Dishonored universe are either "kick puppies as a hobby" corrupt or literal murderers, especially when there's no external cause for it (like a curse or a deeply-embedded culture of immorality that gets referenced even once in the games) and when that ratio isn't reflected in the actions of in-game characters (who are spread realistically across the moral spectrum).

Originally posted by wishIwasabear:

The game does not rely only on cutscenes to deliver the plot, you have to listed to ingame dialogues, do side quests, dlcs, and even read notes you find throughout the game to properly follow everything and understand the story and characters on a deeper level.
Sure you can play the game skipping everything and ignoring the plot but just don't complain the story feels shallow if you do so.

You're not *wrong* about any of this, but precious little in the games (including the DLC) addresses Delilah's motivations other than what she personally says. She writes no notes, has no biography, and lets nobody (not Timsh, not Sokolov, not Abele, not Brianna, not her witches) get any truly meaningful insights that the player could then be told about or overhear being discussed.

[Kuma]

Originally posted by Velorien:

I personally consider the games to have handled that badly. It breaks my suspicion of disbelief that 90% of the population of the Dishonored universe are either "kick puppies as a hobby" corrupt or literal murderers, especially when there's no external cause for it (like a curse or a deeply-embedded culture of immorality that gets referenced even once in the games) and when that ratio isn't reflected in the actions of in-game characters (who are spread realistically across the moral spectrum).

But there is a reason for the population to be corrupt, it is the outsider and everything surrounding him.
If you pay attention everything starts to track back to either him or the powers that created him, even Delilah is being corrupted by this same dark energy which amplifies her hate to extreme levels, they all reflect the corruption happening throughout the game's universe.
It might be that people's corruption are giving power to this energy or vice versa but either way it is not coincidence that things are only going downhill, and this element has been part of the universe since of the first game.

Originally posted by Velorien:

You're not *wrong* about any of this, but precious little in the games (including the DLC) addresses Delilah's motivations other than what she personally says. She writes no notes, has no biography, and lets nobody (not Timsh, not Sokolov, not Abele, not Brianna, not her witches) get any truly meaningful insights that the player could then be told about or overhear being discussed.

A lot of the story also happens between the lines, they could have created a longwinded backstory explaining in detail what destroyed her making you feel sorry about her but really it wasn't necessary as you can extrapolate everything that probably has happened to her for her hate to run so deep. I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of ommited information that would be considered too explicit to be discussed in the game that were part of it but even still the game does a good job of implying even without having to explicitly detail everything, her actions speak louder than any words could.

There is always a balance of how much information should be disclosed:
-Too much and it feels like the game is for kids always oversplaining and repeating every single detail until you get tired of hearing about it.
-But too little and you might leave people behind that can't keep up with the plot for the ride.
Dishonored certainly falls a bit more on the less information side but in many ways this was part of why he story was so enjoyable since you keep assembling the puzzle as you play until everything starts to fit together neatly.