Playing with everything (GPS etc) on it's default state of "on", it seems the game is crammed full of great concepts that are completely pointless, because there's no reason to do anything but go from point A to point B on your map. I mean, why have all these fantastic visual and audio clues about informants etc then make them redundant because they appear on your radar anyway? It's like the game once existed purely in the form that the player can make it (GPS off etc), the whole game seems to have been designed to be played that way, then someone has come along and said "no that's too much work, people like big green arrows pointing them to their next destination so let's shoe-horn in a GPS and not even talk about the gameplay elements that the game was originally designed around". This of course makes the majority of the game's content redundant, with the cities being useful for nothing more than flag hunts, as everything else can be accomplished simply by following the proverbal "big green arrow". It's a completely different experience if you turn that crap off.
It makes me wonder what the response to the game would have been like had the game shipped in the way the player can make it. Maybe it'd have been too "hardcore" and the game would flop. Thankfully, while the game is IMO "broken" in it's default state, it can be fixed by the player. It shouldn't have to be... it's almost insulting that I have to "fix" the game myself... but better a broken game that I can fix with a couple of menu option changes than one that's broken completely.