Honestly the consequences for going full chaos mode arent that intense. I've tried both playing nice and going wild and the game pretty much lets you do whatever. Like stealing stuff? Nobody really cares - if you can grab it its basically yours which makes looting pretty stress-free.

If youre wondering about taking out civilians, the police will show up yeah but its not like other open world games where they hunt you forever. They'll chase you around for a bit but if you book it about 400 meters away, they usually give up. The ncpd got a bit tougher with that 2.0 update though, so maybe don't go too crazy unless youre ready for a fight.

Something interesting i noticed is that theres this one side mission later on that can play out differently if youve been careful about not hurting certain people, but its pretty minor stuff. The locals will definitely run away if you start something but they forget about it pretty quick which is kinda funny. Makes sense though since the whole point is giving players freedom to play how they want, even if that means being a bit of a menace to society.

Tip for cars - if you wanna steal the fancy ones youll need some decent tech skills, and sometimes you gotta be pretty strong to convince the driver to find a new ride if you know what i mean.