Swordmanship Veteran's Game Stream - Chapter 12

I’m guessing that the city guard are the foot soldiers of one of the factions controlling the city from the shadows, and thus only go after any public criminals unaffiliated with the other three factions (such as “the player character when they’re publicly pickpocketing in an obvious way”). The “master of the Mage Tower” would obviously rely on his student mages for the gruntwork just like Drake relied on the alleyway thugs to control the Low District from the shadows, so that just leaves the “Leader of the Royalist faction” and “the Queen”. My money is on the Royalist leader controlling the city guard, while the Queen controls the knights/army.

Also, the reason why Rampage has a different ending than a standard Assassination is simple: thoroughness. With an Assassination, even if you manage to kill more of the enemy faction than just the leader, there’s more likely to be escaped survivors, and no one in the city would know enough about the player assassin to fear them. At best, the player would be a silent shadow that no one had ever seen and lived to tell the tale. At worst, your reputation would be that of a cowardly little rat constantly running and hiding from guards, who only managed to get lucky through the targets’ complacency.

With a Rampage, you have thoroughly killed all the most diehard members of that faction, and caused enough of a scene while doing it that everyone in the city is going to hear rumors of your strength/actions. That means that any remaining foot soldiers scattered around the quarter are more likely to lay low and go into hiding rather than stick their necks out trying to become the next leader of the faction you beat to a pulp.

I imagine that the Queen’s special gimmick might allow her to add some improved mobs from each of the defeated factions to her forces (since I don’t see how you could ever target the Queen more easily than all 3 other faction leaders combined), although the number of people she’s able to recruit from each faction might be smaller during a Rampage playthrough.