The following comes from a Game Informer interview with producer Dominic Guay...

“This is a very personal opinion, but I think that for the past 10 – 15 years, games have been asking me very polarized moral questions. They lack nuance, and I don’t necessarily relate to them. As a random example, if I meet an orphan boy in one of those games, I’ll get the choice like ‘Will you give him all of your money, or will you hit him?’ Those two extreme moral answers to this very nuanced and subtle encounter are not really speaking to me. I wouldn’t do those things, I would do something much more complex. That is the area we want to explore, the gray zone of morality, one in which most of us lie, actually.”

- uses the new Disrupt engine
- allows for more realistic and dynamic simulations
- situations will play out differently every time
- Aiden Pearce can manipulate his environment anywhere, at any time.
- the traffic accident demoed at E3 can cause in-game characters to react numerous ways
- drivers might swerve and passersby might call for an ambulance, or it could be pure carnage with dozens of cars piling up
- when you pull a gun on the street, some people cower and others call the police
- cars can show realistic wear and peeling paint
- The Wards is the in-game representation of real world Chicago’s five poorest districts
- famous landmarks like the Willis Tower are included
- after invading a Central Operating System (CtOS) server (powering Chicago’s “smart city” functions) and installing a backdoor, Aiden is given access to hack more freely
- mobile phones and cameras become fair game
- this system alerts Aiden (and police) to likely locations where crime might happen
- opt to intervene at any time once likely suspects and victims are identified
- moving too soon could cause pedestrians to misinterpret your actions

“The citizens are going to respond to you. They are going to be a reflection of the things that you do to them. They’ll talk about you on social media and on the street. Remember, you can hack into any device and so you will overhear those conversations.”

- example: Aiden is made aware of a man on the hunt for his wife’s attacker
- choose to ignore things, intervene to help or take on the kill yourself
- this will all impact your reputation, based on who's around to see
- all of Aiden’s actions feed into his overall reputation
- this impacts your relationship with different factions

The following comes from story designer Kevin Shortt

“For us it was important that we didn’t just go with the straight ‘he’s a bad guy, take him down’ versus, ‘he’s a good guy, don’t touch him.’ Those are just too easy. We challenged ourselves to come up with issues that we as the writing team had different opinions on.”

- Aiden’s activities will make him a target for the media.
- you could end up on the news
- what is said about you is impacted by what you've done
- Example: Aiden has the misfortune of being in a pawnshop when his face is shown on the news. The shop owner tenses up and hits the silent alarm when he sees he report
- Aiden is addicted to using his hacking to sneak looks into the lives of others
- Aiden uses a public Wi-Fi hotspot that allows him access to any device connected to it in a nearby apartment building
- Aiden views a laptop webcam that reveals a man with an interest in inanimate objects
- this is a romantic relationship you see play out

“I have more writers than I’ve ever had. It’s double what I’ve ever had before. It’s a good size writing team. The game is big, and we had to make sure we had the content to support that. You can hack into cell phones, you can hack into cameras that see into rooms. Those are all encapsulated stories, but they’re stories. There is a lot more to craft in that regard.”

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