I killed Mr Burke, which effectively set me to vilified with tenpenny towers. I then went to the towers, and was able to get in through the intercom with the bribe. However, everyone was already hostile to me because of the reputation system. I killed all the guards and Alistair, then came back a few ingame weeks later. All the other NPCs are calmly walking around and still telling me to talk to the deceased security chief gustavo about the ghouls, and they dont seem to remember me running in guns blazing before.
What current gameplay effects does the optional reputation system have anyway, other than making everyone magically know you killed a faction member even if there are no witnesses?