I wanna pick someone’s brain at Arkane for how they chose to make the Dunwall setting in the specific time frame it’s in
Specifically that it’s late Victorian to early Edwardian, but they’re starting to run electricity (powered by supernatural whale oil), and they very specifically and explicitly do not have anything approaching germ theory.
Clearly they have some idea that inhaling fumes is bad (see: Whalers), but I can’t find any hint that they would have miasma theory either. What DO they think causes disease? In game several people are investigating the cause of the rat plague but the closest they’ve gotten to a causative agent is “rat parts???” like not even the droppings or fluids of a rat, just “rat.”
I know that is supposed to resemble the bubonic plague, but there’s no mention of fleas on the rats we can find being studied. If the plague is closer to my personal guess that it’s some sort of turbo hantavirus, then Sokolov has no chance of figuring it out if he doesn’t know that germs are a thing.
Did the Abbey of the Everyman decide that germ theory was heresy or something and that’s why they don’t have it?
Yeah how WOULD Galvani have known that??? Maybe there was a sudden dramatic change in symptoms and he’d been meticulously tracking them since the plague first showed up… But he doesn’t seem like the kind of John Snow shoeleather epidemiology kind of scientist to have gone and tracked down the Dunwall equivalent of the cholera pump.
None of the science assholes whose labs we can visit have microscopes, which Galvani and Sokolov certainly would have been able to afford, even just to show off how rich they are. No one is looking at anything on a scale smaller than what can be seen through a magnifying glass.
We also keep coming back to the text of the game saying yes, it’s the rats themselves that cause the plague, specifically the fat bastards from Pandyssia that were imported as part of the Regent’s poor people extermination plot (sorry about spoilers but this game has been out for 11 years now). We also know that Sokolov is one of the few people who successfully went there and came back with research. So how would he have known the rats cause the plague? Did he see it himself on the voyage back? Argh I wanna grab him and shake the secrets out of his pockets.
The Doylist explanation is that Arkane wasn’t really thinking about how people studied epidemics in the time period they wanted to use, and definitely wasn’t expecting a bunch of epidemiology nerds to get on them about their setting.
I’m still poking the Watsonian explanation with a stick though, because they give us so much information (I was joking to my friend that you need to do a lot of reading to be able to play Dishonored).
They’re beautifully and incredibly consistent about so many things, like how the things you can read are all written from a perspective that props up the status quo, and how short-term self-interest is immediately rewarded but repeatedly creates long term collapse. So the fact that they’re inconsistent with one of the major plot drivers, the plague, really bothers me.
I’m just going to throw words out now because I have many a Thoughts about this. I did some research months ago for a fic but here I am booting up the game for some clarification
What’s neat is that the Whalers were originally supposed to have bird plague masks from ye olden days but instead got whaling outfits with gas masks (that are pretty modern looking but whatever). Other than fanfic, I can’t find anything that says if they had masks pre-plague or not because if they didn’t, they’re not alone in thinking that the plague spreads by dangerous air. Or “wind” as this guy thinks. Some of the Watch even wear stylish masks (with stylish holes which?? Aight then) but I mean they sorta have the right idea. Have you ever seen a weeper with a mask?
Your typical 17th century plague doctors had the right idea with PPE too honestly. If I ever suspect a zoonotic pathogen at work, I’m supposed to suit up head to toe and isolate the wee beastie after getting a sample from idk I don’t have every textbook memorized. From blood or pustules or something. But anyway a check under a microscope is supposed to tell me what’s up, if it’s the plague, etc
All this to sayyy. Galvani’s office has microscopes. They’re really clunky but they’re there. He was also a lecturer at the academy, generally talking “about blood-borne diseases transmitted by Serkonan fauna” (This doesn’t have a source though so I’m skeptical but if we assume it’s right…)
How has no one figured out what causes the plague?!?! Oh my GOD. How many people are looking into this? WHY is Galvani only researching rats’ feeding habits and intelligence? If he taught about blood-borne diseases at the academy shouldn’t he at least suspect that little things are in blood and can cause diseases? When you get to the floor with Galvani’s lab, there’s even a maid and guard who talk about rats’ “vital essence” and since the guard touched the door handle, he has to scrub with rubbing alcohol and vinegar. I don’t know whose idea that was but like! They’re this close!!
UNLESS. (i wrote out a whole thing about how the mark = immunity and shouldn’t granny rags get the plague (?) because the cameo only keeps her alive and weepers are technically alive because again. i’ve read a lot of cool fanfic with a lot of cool ideas. but then i remembered that i talked about this idea years ago with a friend and what do you know the lonely rat boy died from the plague so there goes that idea)
Which brings me to the fact that Sokolov made the elixir and Joplin made the remedy. Even watered down, those prevented the plague (unless someone messed with it. Corvo). Then combining their efforts lead to the grape cure so there has to be something in the infected that’s not totally magical and welp. Video game logic. One of the english papers I read goes into how they developed a cure but it’s really convoluted and my english isn’t nearly good enough to understand all that science gibberish so I’ll just leave you with a parting thought
In 1894 Alexandre Yersin found the plague using a microscope. Cmon Galvani you’re so close man
Fun facts:
Galvani gets shipments of white phosphorus which after a bit of digging online apparently it be used as rat poison but is super dang dangerous
A poem translated from old Serkonan mentions a “disease from the East”. Fancy that huh
We got a shoddy plague antiserum in the late 1800s and dishonored takes place decades before that. Enough penicillin can kill Y. Pestis (the bacteria that causes the plague) in mice but it’s useless in humans??
Sokolov is going off “celestial alignments” so hey maybe natural philosophers really are bullshiting everything. Or are they hehe. Maybe there really is some magic tomfoolery going on
Thank you for your words!!
I was going off of my memory of the Galvani mission and didn’t look up anything because I was also just Yelling. I totally forgot the the maid tears up that guy for just touching stuff in Galvani’s office and makes him wash his hands real good.
Yeah there’s the whole “Outsider magic plague” angle but I don’t like it because there are NPCs who just don’t get the plague, regardless of access to elixir or magic, and have voice lines about it. That’s also just not the Outsider’s style. The cryptic bastard is interested in human choice and connections, not disease.
Regardless of whether or not the natural philosophers are completely full of shit (and I really want to know how much of that is the Abbey’s influenza, the Overseers LOVE them some calendars and portents), it’s really funny that the Outsider explicitly calls Sokolov out for being boring and cliche.
Your points also make me think that the plague is probably meant to be bacterial, with Sokolov and Piero individually accidentally coming up with an antibiotic and then a better one to cure the plague. But I still like my “turbo hantavirus” wild ass guess hmph lol
