Talk:Daud/@comment-209.179.69.93-20121121020520/@comment-3467788-20121212231858

Well, I personally let him live because he said he'd had enough killing and that he was going to retire. After reading his journal, listening to his audio recording, and listening to his speech to Corvo, I believe him. I also let him live because it is the one and only time that Corvo can spare someone without any potential ulterior motive. Every other one of Corvo's targets will go through hell if he spares them. They will be punished, and one possible interpretation of Corvo's "mercy" is that letting them suffer is preferable to simply killing them. If you're cynical enough, even avoiding killing guards and innocents can be interpreted as only being done because it's pretty easy to figure out (even from an in-game perspective) that less collateral damage means fewer problems for Corvo in the long run.

Conversely, allowing Daud to live is a true act of mercy and forgiveness. Daud is the only target I have never been able to bring myself to kill, even in my High Chaos playthrough. Hell, especially in my High Chaos playthrough, where Corvo is actually worse than Daud and, in confronting him, is faced with a man who took a similar path that he now regrets. Killing Daud feels like a waste of a life that could have been redeemed, if he'd been given the chance. I believe that he truly regrets his chosen path, and I thought he deserved the opportunity to take a different one. And in a High Chaos playthrough, killing Daud -- when sparing him is only true, unambiguously merciful act Corvo can perform in the entire game -- feels (to me) like the equivalent of killing whatever humanity is left in Corvo after he's let the streets run red with innocent blood.

And, from a metagaming perspective, I like his character. But that's probably pretty obvious by this point.