"We want people to try and outsmart the game": No Law aims for Arkane-style reactivity within a dangerous walled city

Peronally, I'm going to outdumb it

Port Desire, the hemmed-in city setting of immersive sim No Law, is hard to place. At points, it reminds me of walking around Lisbon. It shares that Portuguese city's verticality, where hill-straddling streets shouldered by colourful houses and corner shops can feel like tiers on a wedding cake. The strong sunlight and bursts of foliage reinforce the mediterranean vibes. Yet, the port city's structure and history is much closer to Kowloon Walled City, the ungoverned Chinese enclave that existed within British-owned Hong Kong.

Through the 1900s, with the British government taking a hands-off policy to the tiny district and the Chinese government exercising no control over its citizens, Kowloon became the most densely populated city on earth, with 33,000 citizens living in just 2.6-hectare borders. With virtually no official police presence, the city attracted anyone looking for a less-observed, less-regulated life – gangs, refugees, and a surprising number of unlicensed dentists.

As one of No Law's creative directors, Tor Frick, tells it, Port Desire is very similar. Not specifically the dentists bit, more the general, isolated lawlessness.

"The city is surrounded by deep seas and a border wall," Frick says. "This is a lawless city set between three neighbouring countries. This is like no man's land." There's a peacekeeping force that maintains the status quo and, as Frick puts it, "make sure it doesn't explode." None of the neighbouring countries wants to take over the city, but nor do they want it to disappear.

"This is a very convenient playground for all kinds of powers," Frick explains. "The neighbouring countries can do shady stuff here. There's illegal medical research, all kinds of vices and smuggling. This is a perfect scapegoat place."

Into that tinderbox, finely balanced on a tightrope above an open fire, you enter. Grey Harker, an ex-military hardcase just looking for the quiet life. Frick won't go into detail about exactly what happens at the start of No Law beyond saying "Essentially, you were wronged by the [city's] four mayors and you're going after them." From that fixed starting point, you are free to tackle the mayors in whatever you order you want.

Though, Frick says, the order you choose will "change their relationship to each other, their narrative, and also change the game systemically." He uses the example of finding a mayor who eats at a particular restaurant. Early in the game, they may be virtually undefended, but if you've knocked off a couple of their fellow magistrates and will find them much more heavily defended – "they know he's coming for them so they arm up."

But, this is getting away from what I saw of No Law – which didn't include any mayors or hint of the inciting incident that kicks off Harker's rampage through Port Desire. Instead Neon Giant co-founders Frick and Arcade Berg show off a lower stakes mission. There is a hotel and in that hotel is a room and in that room is a safe and in a safe is some intel that Harker needs. And they're going to show me two-ish different ways to get it.

The first approach is meant to be stealthy. Frick approaches the hotel forecourt, which is dotted with gang members whiling away their time patrolling and generally blocking the way to the front door. As he approaches the threshold of the forecourt he's warned to back off, which he does, but not before trying to pick the pockets of one of the guards. Now, Berg assures me this run was meant to be stealthy, but one of the other gang members spots Frick with his hands all up in his friend's business and sounds the alarm. The gang comes on in a wave, wielding clubs, throwing grenades, and generally being mighty violent. Frick takes them down with a taser and grenades of his own.

With the gang subdued rather than stealthed past, Frick enters the hotel.

On the second playthrough, which was supposed to be the violent one, Frick shows me what he would have done the first time. He piles up some crates next to a blind spot on the forecourt perimeter, climbs up them and hops from the teetering tower to a ledge that runs along the back of the yard. He crouch walks along that, behind where the guards obliviously stand about chatting, and drops down next to the front door to the hotel.

Inside, Frick is met by a receptionist who looks like they would be more at home on the Sopranos than Mad Men. Commenting on the commotion outside, Renn, the heavyset mobster behind the desk, refuses to let Harker through the locked door into the hotel block without a password. Back on playthrough one, Frick gets to searching around the lobby and in the adjoining laundry room, finds a piece of paper with the password written down. He gives it to the receptionist and is waved on through. In the second playthrough, Frick just shoots them in the head and pops round the desk to unlock the door himself.

To confuse this back and forth structure I've adopted for this write up further, there is also a hypothetical third playthrough. Earlier in the demo, Frick and Berg told me that every named character in the game has a home somewhere in Port Desire's open world. So I ask what would happen if I visited Renn at his home ahead of the mission and killed them there. "Well, then you could take the key from him in his apartment," Frick says. "There are plenty of cases like that. You can't sequence-break the game because it's built to not have a sequence." He then expands it out, saying "If you know where one of the mayors is you could just go there. It's not going to be easy necessarily, because often he's heavily guarded, but it is possible. Especially as you know more about the games. We want people to try and outsmart the game. It's a single player game, so if you managed to find some combination that is over the top, hilariously overpowered, cool. It's not competitive. If you have figured something out you should be rewarded."

Okay, leave that hypothetical playthrough behind, we're now back on the sneaky playthrough, Frick climbs the stairs, sneaks past two guards, and lockpicks his way into one of the rooms. Accessing the room immediately nets him some XP. Berg is keen to point out that it's not the lockpicking that earned the XP, but accessing the room itself. Neon Giant don't want to incentivise particular kinds of actions – lockpicking your way into the room, climbing in through an open window, or blowing the door off its hinges are all equally valid approaches. "There is no wrong way to play the game," Frick adds. As if to emphasise this point, on the violent play through, Frick snaps the neck of one of the guards and shoots the other in the face.

Guards avoided/disposed of and room accessed, Frick goes through the safe, nabs the intel and leaves the hotel through a window. On the sneaky playthrough where he accidentally killed all the guards, Frick is free to walk straight through the forecourt. On the violent playthrough where he was sneaky, Frick throws a grenade into the forecourt and it explodes into a bubble of slow time, making every enemy caught inside move like they leave in a world of treacle. He kills them all while they struggle to make sense of the bubble of slow-mo they're trapped within. Considering up until now I'd seen lockpicks, tasers, and handguns, this hints at a whole other sci-fi side to the armoury you can acquire.

I left the No Law presentation deeply impressed by what I saw. Its densely detailed, systemic sci-fi world reminded me of Arkane's best work, Hitman, and Cyberpunk 2077. Neon Giant say the game is the work of just 24 people, and it's hard to believe because similar games come from much larger teams. Still, in the weeks since I saw the game, I've read other previews of No Law and it's clear the playthroughs were tightly controlled. We were all shown the two runs of the same mission (though, it seems only mine descended into an accidental gun battle). I wouldn't read too much into this – in a busy conference you need to have some control over what a journalist sees – but, it means I'm reserving some judgement on just how much systemic variety No Law provides until we can play it for ourselves.

And you should know that I will be going from door to door in No Law's open-world, ransacking apartments and killing bouncers, just to see how much it breaks the game. I don't know if that approach should be labelled outsmarting, but I'll happily try and outdumb it.

Travel and accommodation to Gamescom was provided by the conference organisers.