Even walking down the street with a loaded weapon feels distinctly awkward, despite (or perhaps because of) Aiden’s wonderfully animated efforts to hide his pistol. If a citizen spots it, they’ll call the police, if you don’t intimidate them or jam their cellular signal first. You can shoot them, too, but it feels unconscionable.

Perhaps the moment I felt most self-conscious, though, was visiting the birthday party of Aiden’s nephew — the little boy who lost his sister. Walking into the party, I saw Aiden staring intently down at his phone, as he always does while profiling those around him. But this was different: I was being antisocial in front of my own grieving family. Embarrassed, I put the phone away, but not before catching a glimpse of my sister’s profile. "Is it right to spy on your own family?" I wondered to myself. But when I spotted the traumatized boy… my curiosity overcame my guilt.

"They go home at some point, they have their normal lives, and you have to process that."

What I wasn’t remotely expecting, even after those experiences, was that I’d feel a similar sense of morality even when confronting foes. They have names and backstories too, and the ways you can dispatch them are so brutal, so cold-blooded that it made me genuinely uncomfortable killing them. Your smartphone not only lets you see enemies through walls as you shoot them precisely in the head, but remotely trigger explosives on their belts, drop massive steel containers on their heads, or even fake a text message from a sick son to distract them while you line up your crosshairs. It practically feels unfair, but it adds a psychological challenge to the game that’s more interesting than your average shooting experience. I found myself trying for nonlethal takedowns whenever possible, because — as ludicrous as it might sound — it didn’t feel moral to kill them.

"We wanted [the profiler] to be something that affects you, where NPCs become characters, they become individuals," says lead writer Kevin Shortt. Unfortunately, Watch Dogs isn't always subtle about its morality, as I discovered the first time I tried to stop a crime before it occurred. When I simply scared away a man who was threatening a woman in an alley, the game not-so-subtly hinted that he’d be back to do worse. The "correct" way to deal with it was apparently to wait until he started choking her, chase him down, and beat him senseless with a baton. You’ll also usually know who the bad guys are, and not just because they have guns drawn. For every newlywed or family man among your foes, there will be a number of ex-mercenaries, drug addicts, and criminals, presumably to make them easier to kill. It serves a purpose in the story ("Who watches the watchers?") but it feels heavy-handed.