You mentioning Dishonored there is an interesting rebuttal to your own critique of DEMD. Dishonored is probably my favorite FPS/action/whatever game. And it has a very bad story. And characters are even worse. It was obvious you have to care about some of those characters. It was obvious you have to be involved in the story for twist to work. But every character out there was wooden and inhumane. Maybe there was their way to copy Victorian atmosphere. Maybe they concentrated on a kitchen-sink lore. I remember attacks on women portrayal as objects felt laughable to me because probably the only character who was not the object there was the princess.