If you stole a car, you wouldn't be allowed to keep it. If you stole a pile of money, you wouldn't be allowed to keep it.
Anything obtained by fraud must be vitiated. Yes, even if it makes them stateless. Statelessness needs to come back.
I've always thought the setting and trappings of Arcanum was not explored enough. That needs combined with System Shock 2, Alien Isolation, Hunt Showdown and while we're at it Gears of War.
So a single player, real time, squad tactics, semi fantasy steampunk RPG FPS. Squad members programmable with a fully codable priority system and customizable with different items and weapons, but never directly controllable. Enemies fight with advanced AI, bifurcated storyteller control systems and detailed callouts to each other, including an advanced, 3-dimensional binaural audio system.
Zero ambient noise unless it is actually generated by something in the world near you. If you hear clanging, it's because there's a wrench jammed in a generator. If you hear a crackling hum it's because there's a magic crystal device nearby. Hear pained moaning, there's a zombie somewhere.
Conversely, the noise YOU make is audible to everything else in the world. Weapons have unique sound profiles based not only on what gun you fire but what ammunition you're using. Fire a gun? Enemies and neutral NPCs can hear it, and depending on their programming might investigate or call for backup, or seal off doors.
And Arcanum's Magic vs Technology system. The further you go down either path, the less compatible the other becomes. Technology relies on the rules of reality, magic breaks it. So spellcaster might not be allowed to ride on a train at all, and if they are they get to be in the caboose car as far away from the engine as possible. While someone loaded down with technological gear and enhancements wouldn't be able to so much as light a candle with magic.
Open ended level design combined with large branching objective pathways, ala Deus Ex, helps to flesh out the branching paths and potential skills/traits/items you might pick up. Many tools available to the player, and when you're dropped into the level it's "here you go, figure it out".
All items are interactable in real time, including the maps as physical game objects. Want to place a marker on the map? You're putting an actual x on it with a grease pen.
Perhaps a hot take, but I refuse to pay more than sixty dollars for a video game. If the rapidly failing industry is going to start trying to squeeze people for their increasingly terrible product, then I sincerely hope that more and more people start outright pirating.
This is pretty on the nose.
A "walkable city" doesn't exist. It's called a small town, and the policies of the left deliberately killed it decades ago. They're selling fake antidotes to their own poison.