Beggars and Fists

I'll nerd on a bit more about Assassin's Creed, because I've spent a fair bit of time playing it the past few days. I've learned something pretty fun today. First of all, if there are any amongst you who do not know this yet, in AC you play Desmond, who is playing Altair. Instead of a health-bar, you have a synchronization-bar, designed to show you how in tune with Altair Desmond is. This goes down if you do things that Altair didn't do, such as get hurt, or stab civilians in the face. The interesting thing here, is that my favorite occupation of stabbing beggars to death costs Altair about a third of the sync-bar. If, however, and this is what I've just learned, you instead decide to put down your blades and elect to beat the poor woman to death with your own hands, a process taking several times as long, and involving, I presume, quite a bit more emotional stress on the part of the victim, the cost is only about a tenth of the sync-bar.
This has endeared me to Altair somewhat, because I can only assume that he hated these women as much as I do, and wanted them to know it when he killed them, he wanted to make it personal, perhaps to make a distinction between his working hours and his spare time.