Popular Culture Review Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2018 | Page 61

Popular Culture Review 29.2
rule and were exacerbated by those who staged the coup . As fear of the plague spreads , the authorities begin to post notices that read , “ Report any sickness . Hiding the plague is punishable by death .” Everyone is well aware that there is no cure for the plague , and the city streets�at least in the poorer areas�are littered with sheet-wrapped corpses . The homes and properties of plague victims are on lockdown , barred by imposing barriers and posted threats to others to “ stay away .” Presumably , the families of these victims experienced the same fate , evicted from their homes and divested of the meager property they had possessed . One certainly can infer that this property becomes the chattel of the state and will not be returned . The player can find documents relating the heightened sense of fear and paranoia gripping the city . One such document is a diary kept by a wife and mother whose husband and children have contracted the plague . She notes , “ The city watch comes and goes , knocking on doors and asking for signs of the plague . Even neighbors cannot be trusted .” It is not enough for Dunwall ’ s citizens to be besieged by the horrors of the plague . The lower classes especially must also contend with being reported to the authorities by their neighbors , perhaps even those considered friends . The plague surely cannot be allowed to spread unchecked , and those who are infected will become a problem if they are allowed to remain where they can infect others . However , the darker implication here lies in the confiscation of goods and possessions : one envisions , given the bleak lives the poor of Dunwall lead , jealous neighbors or covetous members of the Watch using the fear of disease to steal from the powerless .
Dishonored 2 continues this exploration of poverty , disease , and exploitation within its setting of Serkonos , the southernmost of the world ’ s four inhabited lands known collectively as The Isles , to the south of Dunwall and often referred to as
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