I understand the concept. Police chase you. What I do not understand is how it works as a system and what the stars mean in practice.
Also people keep saying this one is different and I do not have a baseline to compare it against. Explaining it as if I have never played one would genuinely help.
Accepted answer
Short version. Commit a crime, the police become interested, and the level of interest is shown as stars. More stars means more police, better equipped, more persistent. You escape by getting away and staying unseen until they lose interest.
The change this time is that the police have to find out first, and what they find out becomes a description of you. That is the part that is new.
Worth adding for a newcomer that the stars are not a difficulty setting. You choose them by what you do, and most of the time you will not mean to.
That is the clearest version I have read, thank you. The description part makes sense now that I understand what it replaced.
coming to this from the future, i wrote a whole explainer for the newcomers group because this question deserves a proper answer rather than six half ones
Getting to a high star level by accident and having no idea how to get out of it is a core part of the experience and nobody should skip it.