Criminal Profile

Both playable characters carry their own Criminal Profile, a running record of how that character goes about the work. Rockstar has gone out of its way to say what it is not: this is not a morality meter, and there is no virtuous branch to steer toward.

The distinction matters because Grand Theft Auto has been near the centre of the argument about morality systems in games for two decades without ever really having one. Previous entries handed you a wanted level, which measured how much attention you attracted, and left it there. A profile that tracks method rather than outcome is a different proposition.

What it appears to track

The system sits next to the evidence-based wanted system, and the two are difficult to talk about separately. If the police build a case from your face, your car and your weapon, then the way you choose to do a job leaves a trail that describes you. Somebody who takes hostages, somebody who goes in masked and quiet, and somebody who shoots their way back out to the car are three different criminals, and the game now has somewhere to write that down.

Two profiles, not one

Because Jason and Lucia hold separate profiles, the pair can diverge. That is a meaningful design choice in a game built around switching between two leads who are in a relationship rather than a business arrangement. Grand Theft Auto V had three protagonists with fixed personalities and separate skill bars. Here the characters are the same people whatever you do, and the record is of what you did with them.

What is not known

Rockstar has confirmed the system exists and what it is not. It has not published what feeds into it, whether it is visible to the player as a number or a description, or what it changes. Anything you read describing specific thresholds or unlocks is somebody's guess.

Related: the wanted system, character switching.