Talk:Weepers/@comment-149.159.125.109-20121012163318/@comment-27202257-20121231232545

Holy damn, THIS discussion seems to have been going on for a while.

It seems like the critical point has already been made, though: regardless of whether one deems it morally (which seems a bit shaky to me, personally) or legally "right" to kill Weepers, that doesn't change the fact that it increases chaos. Because the weepers are largely relegated to back alleys or otherwise abandoned areas, their ability to spread the plague is far less than that of the rats. So, while eliminating weepers might have a slight affect on the spread of the plague, it is so small as to be negligible. Therefore, if Corvo chooses to murder the weepers, any supposed good he has done for society is far outweighed by the chaos that he has created.

The developers have said that the chaos system is not a system of morality. It's simply that the more chaotic elements are introduced into society, the more things fall apart. The more dead guards you have killed on the job, the more plague rats there are running around, the more sick people are murdered in the streets, the worse off Dunwall seems to be--and, therefore, becomes. It's a chain reaction from the citizenry, as people become more convinced that they are doomed, and the city collapses in on itself. Emily is the final gauge of that: Corvo can justify the killing of weepers and guards until the cows come home, but she, like the people of the city, is only going to see the results.

tl;dr: Legality and morality don't come into play here. Killing weepers increases chaos because it makes things more chaotic in Dunwall.