Knife of Dunwall: Kill the whale?

[Sabaithal]

Does killing the whale count as a chaos increasing action? Because I want to avoid that. Also it seems ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ impossible to find this info anywhere.

[Pafti]

It doesn't. It shouldn't either, it's a near dead whale in a slaughterhouse, its death is expected. Helping it along won't make anyone bat an eye, just cart another whale in to replace the last. Who is even going to care, they have bigger fish to fry once you're done with your mission there.
Heh, bigger fish to fry..

The Chaos system is generally just a morality system. Do good = lower chaos, do bad = higher chaos. Killing the Whale is a mercy and will be seen as a good thing by nearly everyone. It's meant to be the right thing to do.

As for finding info about this, your question was too specific. You could have looked for a list of all the things that increase or decrease chaos and checked if your whale is on it.

https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Pafti:

It doesn't. It shouldn't either, it's a near dead whale in a slaughterhouse, its death is expected. Helping it along won't make anyone bat an eye, just cart another whale in to replace the last. Who is even going to care, they have bigger fish to fry once you're done with your mission there.
Heh, bigger fish to fry..

The Chaos system is generally just a morality system. Do good = lower chaos, do bad = higher chaos. Killing the Whale is a mercy and will be seen as a good thing by nearly everyone. It's meant to be the right thing to do.

As for finding info about this, your question was too specific. You could have looked for a list of all the things that increase or decrease chaos and checked if your whale is on it.

https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos

Certain actions are not on that list, such as blowing up the factory for example. I'm pretty sure that raises chaos level, as would be expected.

[Pafti]

Factory, you mean the slaughterhouse? That is listed.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Pafti:

Factory, you mean the slaughterhouse? That is listed.

Ah, well that would explain why I couldn't find it.

[olthaen]

Originally posted by Pafti:

The Chaos system is generally just a morality system. Do good = lower chaos, do bad = higher chaos. Killing the Whale is a mercy and will be seen as a good thing by nearly everyone. It's meant to be the right thing to do.

Going by this, killing Weepers should be seen as a mercy killing and a "good" deed, despite it raising chaos.

[Pafti]

Originally posted by Alvin Flang:

Originally posted by Pafti:

The Chaos system is generally just a morality system. Do good = lower chaos, do bad = higher chaos. Killing the Whale is a mercy and will be seen as a good thing by nearly everyone. It's meant to be the right thing to do.

Going by this, killing Weepers should be seen as a mercy killing and a "good" deed, despite it raising chaos.

Weepers can be saved, the cure heals them so there is a better option than mercy killing.
The whale is well beyond saving.

[MadBone12]

Originally posted by Alvin Flang:

Originally posted by Pafti:

The Chaos system is generally just a morality system. Do good = lower chaos, do bad = higher chaos. Killing the Whale is a mercy and will be seen as a good thing by nearly everyone. It's meant to be the right thing to do.

Going by this, killing Weepers should be seen as a mercy killing and a "good" deed, despite it raising chaos.

It's not really a morality system which is why 'merciful kills' don't lower chaos. Many of the non-lethal options for the main targets are worse than death. The chaos system is cause and effect. Killing guards means there are less of them to fight the plague and keep the thugs in check; more bodies (including weepers) means more rats which means more plague; Corvo's allies' complicity in mass murder (in high chaos) begins to weigh on their minds, and they become paranoid and conflictual, and the mood around the Hounds' Pit affects Emily as well; etc. etc.

If it was a pure morality system, why would something like detection or finding unconscious bodies affect chaos? Those aren't 'immoral', but they still have an effect on chaos, such as more guards being deployed in later levels to deal with the threat that Corvo represents.

[Pafti]

Originally posted by MadBone12:

Originally posted by Alvin Flang:

Going by this, killing Weepers should be seen as a mercy killing and a "good" deed, despite it raising chaos.

It's not really morality system which is why 'merciful kills' don't lower chaos. Many of the non-lethal options for the main targets are worse than death. The chaos system is cause and effect. Killing guards means there are less of them to fight the plague and keep the thugs in check; more bodies (including weepers) means more rats which means more plague; Corvo's allies' complicity in mass murder (in high chaos) begins to weigh on their minds, and they become paranoid and conflictual, and the mood around the Hounds' Pit affects Emily as well; etc. etc.

If it was a pure morality system, why would something like detection or finding unconscious bodies affect chaos? Those aren't 'immoral', but they still have an effect on chaos, such as more guards being deployed in later levels to deal with the threat that Corvo represents.

What mercy killing are there though? Killing a main target instead of forcing them into a worse fate doesn't make it a mercy. It's still just murder. You could have also turned around and walked away.

Obviously the system is supposed to be more than just a morality system. I'm saying that in effect it is little more than that. Apart from being detected yourself, every single action that raises chaos is clearly morally wrong. With a lot of actions not having an effect on chaos one way or another. Unconscious Bodies for example don't matter at all. Similarly, every chaos reducing action is clearly morally good, with the exception of Non-Lethal ways of dealing with main targets.

Simplifying it that way in my original comment was meant to make it easier to understand why killing the Whale doesn't raise chaos, and how that will correlate with other similar events in the game, should a similar question come up again.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by MadBone12:

Originally posted by Alvin Flang:

Going by this, killing Weepers should be seen as a mercy killing and a "good" deed, despite it raising chaos.

It's not really a morality system which is why 'merciful kills' don't lower chaos. Many of the non-lethal options for the main targets are worse than death. The chaos system is cause and effect. Killing guards means there are less of them to fight the plague and keep the thugs in check; more bodies (including weepers) means more rats which means more plague; Corvo's allies' complicity in mass murder (in high chaos) begins to weigh on their minds, and they become paranoid and conflictual, and the mood around the Hounds' Pit affects Emily as well; etc. etc.

If it was a pure morality system, why would something like detection or finding unconscious bodies affect chaos? Those aren't 'immoral', but they still have an effect on chaos, such as more guards being deployed in later levels to deal with the threat that Corvo represents.

Finding bodies affects chaos? Well, must be a pretty dang small number then, because I usually don't both hiding them. And if they do get discovered, I just neutralize whomever happened to discover it as well.