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Gameplay
August 7, 2026 at 10:19 AM
Added slide-while-firing movement and the lockpicking and shooting systems chosen for the public showing
NO LAW is a first-person open-world shooter RPG built on Unreal Engine 5. The game gives players broad freedom to approach each mission according to their preferred style, whether through stealth and planning or open, aggressive combat. The game is strictly single-player.
Neon Giant has emphasized gun feel and physical impact as central pillars of NO LAW's combat. Enemy characters react to environmental collisions and respond dynamically to the player's actions. The game features a bullet-time mechanic that slows the action to allow precise targeting and positioning. Melee combat plays a more prominent role than in many similar first-person games, with the development team drawing attention to impactful close-quarters options such as a powerful kick.
Weapons can be modified and upgraded, and players have access to advanced military hardware and sci-fi tools that support a wide range of tactical approaches.
Enemy AI in NO LAW responds to sound, sightlines, and pressure. Players can manipulate patrols, short-circuit security systems, hack into networks, and use vertical movement to find unexpected routes through environments. The city's districts are designed to support different playstyles: tightly stacked vertical slums reward patience and planning, open thoroughfares allow firefights to spill into streets, and luxurious interiors are layered with vents, service corridors, and hackable systems.
Infiltration is built into nearly every point of interest, and reaching high ground is meant to be improvised rather than signposted. Neon Giant deliberately avoids placing a ladder against every building, so players work out their own path upward by climbing low balconies and side railings, stacking crates to reach a fire escape, or using a low roof as a stepping stone toward a higher vantage point. Taking the high route pays off with something specific at the top, such as an open skylight to drop through, a hidden vent to crawl into, or an abandoned weapons cache.
The environment itself becomes part of the toolkit. Players can shoot out streetlights to plunge an area into darkness, and enemies react to the shift in light, shadow, and sound. Because encounters run on interacting systems rather than fixed scripts, destructible objects and physics-driven effects respond to what the player does, so the same tactic can unfold differently from one fight to the next.
Unlike some immersive sims, NO LAW does not punish a loud, direct approach. Characters may comment on a messy job, but the game frames a noisy run as a valid style rather than a failure, so players are free to control the pace and method of each encounter without being judged for skipping stealth.
Every action in NO LAW carries consequences. Players can choose to help characters or eliminate them, take the tactical route through the shadows or unleash chaos, and forge alliances that shift depending on past decisions. The game features a morality system where choices ripple across the entire playthrough, creating alternate paths and outcomes that reward multiple runs.
A cybernetic user interface highlights threats, routes, and tactical information without breaking immersion.
Neon Giant has described NO LAW as drawing on the immersive sim tradition, with a fully systemic world rather than a hand-scripted one. The studio's stated goal is a believable city whose internal logic is always followed, so encounters and reactions emerge from the simulation instead of being pre-authored. A developer breakdown of building the city illustrated this systemic approach with dynamic lighting, dense moving crowds, and destructible surroundings that visibly react under combat.
Players can kill any character in the game. Some characters are pivotal to the story, so killing one prompts a warning that an important character has died, with the option to reload the last save. Continuing past that point is permitted, but the consequences fall on the player from then on. The developers have framed this as carrying more weight than a scripted dialogue choice, because the world responds to what actually happened.
Actions that draw too much heat feed into a bounty system. Accumulate enough of a bounty and the city turns shoot-on-sight; before that threshold, players have the chance to pay the bounty off and cool things down.
As a shooter RPG, NO LAW uses experience points and skill trees that let players opt into how they want to play. Investing in directions such as lockpicking, hacking, or specializing in particular weapon types shapes the character over a run. The studio's philosophy is that there is no wrong way to build or play, so no single route through the skill systems is mandated.
The story has a fixed beginning, middle, and end and leads to multiple endings, but the branching is deliberately subtle. Rather than splitting into wildly different adventures, the noir narrative is tilted by the player's actions and the world's reactions to them, including mission-givers who respond to how a job was actually carried out.
Grey Harker can be equipped with advanced military upgrades, cybernetic enhancements, and sci-fi tools. Loadout customization allows players to build a character suited to their preferred approach, whether emphasizing sniper precision, close-quarters aggression, or stealth infiltration.
Port Desire is an open-world environment that reacts to the player's behavior. The city is described as alive and waiting to be shaped by the player's choices, with NPCs and factions that remember past encounters and respond accordingly. Vertical movement and exploration are built into the traversal system, allowing players to access rooftops, climb through alleys, and move above street level.
Official stills show Harker sliding while firing, the weapon staying trained on a target through the movement. Combined with the studio's emphasis on vertical routes and improvised climbs, it points to a moveset built for changing position mid-fight rather than holding a firing line.
For its Gamescom 2026 showing the publisher has said the booth will put visitors into a slice of Port Desire to take on lockpicking and shooting challenges drawn from the game's cyber-noir world. Those two are the systems chosen to represent the game to the public, which sits alongside the skill-tree investment in lockpicking and hacking the studio has described elsewhere. The booth activity is framed as inspired by the game's world rather than as a build of the game itself, so it is not a statement about how either system works in the finished product.
