Talk:The Heart/Quotes/@comment-28301411-20160625021702/@comment-64.251.141.5-20160701033132

I think the heart means the civilization at large. Perhaps it sees that the whale hunting is unsustainable and soon to fail, or that the population will never fully recover from the plague, or a combination of these things. I'm not far at all in the game, but it really does feel like you're coming in at the very end of an era of prosperity.

It's an age of transition, a bit like Red Dead Redemption (which takes place in 1911 as the American Western frontier rapidly drew to a close in the face of industrialization), but unlike it, the future in Dishonored seems utterly devoid of hope. You aren't watching the world change. You're watching it die.