The Dishonored Series as Environmental and Social Commentary
of Empress Jessamine , in the months after his actions . Daud ’ s story eventually takes him , and thus the player , into one of Dunwall ’ s whale slaughterhouses . Given the inherent immersive nature of digital storytelling and the embodiment of the player in the midst of the story , this section of the game risks devolving into what has been deemed “ ecoporn .” Greg Garrard explains of nature documentaries that “ the illusion of unrestricted access into a mysterious or forbidden space produces a relation of subject to object that is structurally similar to that involved in pornography in which the eye / I derives pleasure from an obtrusive gaze that its object cannot challenge or return ” ( 154 ). The sequences inside the slaughterhouse , however , avoid this pitfall of the gaze through their unrelenting emphasis on cruelty and bloodletting . The idea of torture porn stems from studies that indicate that , for some people , certain sexualized forms of violence stimulate the same parts of the brain that pornography does . The scenes of unutterable suffering in the slaughterhouse seem inconsistent with torture porn , as the violence is in no way erotic . Moreover , the sequences place the player in the fundamental roles of both actor and spectator . The player can opt to find a way to euthanize the whale that is being slowly tortured and bled while continually moaning in agony . Yet this action cannot be quickly or easily completed , as it requires careful elimination of the guards surrounding the area . Graeme Kirkpatrick argues , “ What makes a game representation more vivid , then , seems to be the intensity of its interaction fused with the presence in its sequences of symbols that maintain a connection with the subject matter at hand ” ( 209 ). In the case of these sequences , the player exists in the unenviable position of either finding a way to end the whale ’ s suffering or having to both view and listen to its agony throughout the rest of this portion of the game . Aki Järvinen states that “ gameplay , as a human experience , is instilled with emotions , from fierce to
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