Hello Dealers! Today we continue the topic of the police in its early stages of development. We’re all very familiar with being stopped for a search and trying to run away, right? Let’s see how it started.
What you see here is not much different to what you have in the game. The patrols consisting of two police officers spawn and walk along a predefined route. If you behave normally, they won’t be very interested in you.
The trouble starts the moment you seem at all suspicious – if you behave abnormally, like crouch in front of them or run around like a madman, or if you have a big backpack with you. Then they will call you to stop and approach you to perform a check.
If you stop, and if you don’t carry like a ton of crack with you, you should be fine. However.
If you start running away, they’ll immediately start chasing you. It is possible to run away but your chances decrease significantly if you cross paths with another patrol. The patrols have the ability to predict where you’re going to go. If they see you jumping over a fence, they will run around to block your path. They also pass information between themselves about where they have seen you last.
You can hide from the patrols in buildings, however, if the building is marked as abandoned, the police can check it out. If you break into a private building, they won’t enter and you can wait it out while they search the area for you.
After a while, they will lose interest in you but will still remain alert. You’ll get a Fugitive marker for some time. If the patrol which was chasing you spots you again, they will immediately start running after you. A different patrol will not recognise you so as long as you don’t behave suspiciously around them, it is possible to just walk past them. They will, however, be more suspicious of you knowing a fugitive is on the run, so be careful because the possibility of them halting you increases.
At that point in time the patrols couldn’t do anything yet, they would just chase you and stop when they reached you. And yell. The consequences of being caught by the police were added later on.
That’s it for today’s throwback! How many differences do you see between this early look and the current version of the game?
Cheers!