I find it a bit odd, to be honest, I mean, if some writer came up with such a great setting, he should have been able to come up with a better plot, right?
Do much pen and paper roleplaying? To me it's easy to build an interesting, evocative setting. You string together cool details and you have a setting It's much harder to design a plot that's engaging and doesn't fall into over use of well-trodden tropes, where people demand a level of logical consistency. Especially hard in an action-driven game where people want bad guys doing bad things so they can be righteously punished.
You might be right there, I just thought that the plot was a bit too predictable at times.
If I could rewrite the plot I would have gotten rid of the Outsider and the whole conspirators business and make Corvo do the whole thing on his own initiative. Have someone from the assassin gang get captured a few days after the empress was assassinated and have the spymaster put him in the cell beside you to rile you up. He could teach you blink eventually, after being imprisoned along you for months when he has to concede that it's the only way to avoid execution. You then use blink to escape from prison.
Well the only problem I'd have with that is why didn't he just use blink to escape right away? They can blink through walls if they know what's on the other side, so it should be easy enough to blink through a pair of bars and escape. There's also the question of why the assassins would leave their compatriot in jail. Is he some kind of traitor? If so why wouldn't they have killed him to prevent their secrets from leaking out? That kind of rewrite could be done, but you would have to fill in a heck of a lot of plot holes.
Yes, naturally it would have to be thought over bit more, that's just something I made up in 10 minutes or so. My main point is that I don't really like the whole conspirators thing. That, coupled with the fact that you are a mute protagonist makes Corvo feel like a total puppet. Until the last two missions, he never does something on his own initiative, he's always ordered around by someone else and doesn't seem to question the agenda of the guys he just met a few days ago at any point.
I also agree about the assassins. I thought they would have some kind of agenda, when you sneak around their base they have a bit of a secret ninja monk clan kinda air about them, with entrance tests and an almost revering respect for Daud.
Also: If the Outsider is gone, how would the assassin have blink in the first place?
Sorry, I should have been more clear on that, I don't mind the Outsider as a concept, I just dislike that he's some dude that speaks to you directly and choses you for some task. The plot doesn't come across of as the sort of task that would need a chosen one from some godlike entity to fix it. For me Chosen Ones are for saving the world, or at the least humanity, we're just saving an empress, and it's our job at that. The Outsider as a concept is actually quite needed by the game, not only because of the supernatural powers, but he's necessary for the Abbey of the Everyman (Overseer church) to have a reason for existing. As far as I can tell, they don't really worship anything, they're just anti-Outsider. And with the way the Outsider is, I think they're actually right about what they do, at least in principle. That they have become corrupt and zealous in their task is another matter.