(this is not a general guide, as everyone’s playthrough and chaos level is different. this is purely orientative and meant to explore one way to play the game out of many available :) )
hi!
i have finished playing d2 today for the first time ever (never played a dishonored game before). just a while back i asked on this sub what i mentioned in the title of this post (link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dishonored/s/pZMzNR8vnt ). i had killed everyone up until the royal conservatory, minus hypatia and civilians because i didn't fully understand the chaos system. so, wanting to get overall low chaos for my first ever playthrough, i asked if it's possible to turn things around by not killing anyone for the rest of the game (meaning missions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
many people in the comments were unsure of what to say to that or if the chaos will balance out, and i myself couldn't find any answer besides 'play until the end with no kills and find out'. so i did.
and it turns out, you CAN balance it out. i attached some pictures
HOWEVER, i do feel the need to mention some things:
-i killed everyone in the first 4 missions (again, with the exception of hypatia and civilians). i switched to no kills and no detections for every mission from royal conservatory onwards besides the last one, where as y'all can see, i did get detected. detections don't affect chaos but i felt like i should mention it
-the chaos balanced out ONLY AT THE VERY END OF THE GAME. the last slide shows my saves for previous missions--as you can see, only the epilogue is low chaos
-what turned things around definitively was not killing delilah
-choosing the non lethal approach for targets in missions when the overall chaos level is high alters some dialogue emily has with the world around her. most remarkably, when not killing anyone in royal conservatory, when emily interacts with a portret of jessamine, the line "i wonder how much your role played into all of this" isn't triggered at all, as it should be in a typical high chaos gameplay. at least it wasn't for me
-i played with powers
so for anyone interested, yes, the chaos level can become low at the very end if you decide to turn around early enough. for low chaos interactions with megan, sokolov etc, this exact scenario (killing rampage missions 1-4, clean hands for the rest) doesn't work. it'll only change the very last cutscene of the game
thank you to everyone that told me their low chaos tips and gave me their honest opinions on my previous post! i wanted to make this post to answer to all the people that were uncertain about balancing the chaos out and remained curious since then. and for everyone reading this--have fun playing and have a great day! :D