San Andreas had better pedestrian interaction than GTA 4 or 5.
The phone hack in WD didn't get old for me, and it became especially fun in online when you and friends had ridiculous funny bios. It made the people in the game more alive, just by letting you know more about them, what they do and what their hobbies are. Made everyone seem like individuals and add richness to the world.
But thats not all i'm talking about. You had those times where you could spy on people in their homes or eavesdrop on conversations through camera or server hacking. You could bounce from cameras block to block and always find people doing something or other. Peds would crash into each other on the roads and then get out of their car to fight about it. Random theft would happen at atm machines, as well as other crimes you could decide to intervene on or not. You could steal people's money, and the game would give you context for it too if the person was rich or poor, bad or good. Its the peds that would have to call the cops on you (which you can disable through hacking) instead of you triggering a random wanted star.
And like GTA there were always those details, like people trimming hedges, playing with a soccer ball or toy helicopter, etc...
But also when it came to NPC enemies you could interact with them outside of just shooting them up. You could hack the radio in their helmets and make it blast static, or trigger explosives they have on their bodies. You could disrupt communications so they couldn't call for backup or coordinate with each other.
I just felt the level of interaction in Watch Dogs was higher, while keeping a similar level of detail.
