Empire of Sin: Character recruitment and relationships guide

There are over 50 unique characters for you to recruit in Empire of Sin. Here’s our character recruitment and relationships guide to help you out.

Note: For more information, check out our Empire of Sin guides and features hub.

Empire of Sin: Characters guide

Recruiting crew members

Recruiting new members of your crew in Empire of Sin is just a couple of clicks away. All you need to do is open the Black Book at the upper-left corner of your HUD.

Of course, you have to take note of your boss’ notoriety. At the start of Empire of Sin‘s campaign, you’re just a fledgling criminal in Chicago. But, as you progress further, you’ll increase your notoriety by taking over more rackets, eliminating rival syndicate leaders, killing enemies, and outright executions against bleeding foes.

Once you’ve reached a particular notoriety threshold, you should see that certain characters can be recruited to your crew. However, many of them would require payment upfront. Likewise, better characters have higher salaries. In most cases, characters can easily get hired via the Black Book. But, there are a few instances when you might encounter them while exploring the streets and buildings of Chicago.

Furthermore, some character sidequests might task you with meeting up with that character’s lover or friend (more on these relationships later). These objectives allow you to recruit them to your crew. For instance, Maria Rodriguez’s lover, Bruno Baldini, can be hired after you finish her sidequest.

Note 1: You are limited to 10 crew members in an entire Empire of Sin campaign regardless of how much your enterprise has expanded. This includes anyone who’s been assigned as a mole or those on the injured list. The only way you can recruit extra underlings once you reach this limit is by getting rid of those you don’t need. You can either fire them or get them killed (the game has perma-death enabled).

Note 2: Because Empire of Sin‘s characters are locked behind notoriety levels, you’ll likely end up with the same folks in multiple campaigns regardless of the boss you choose.

Empire of Sin‘s character relationships: Friends, lovers, and enemies

A few things you might’ve noticed in Empire of Sin‘s Black Book are unique symbols. These pertain to character relationships:

• Friends – green thumbs up
• Lovers – red heart
• Enemies –  red thumbs down

When you battle other bosses in Empire of Sin, there’s a chance that the AI already hired unique characters. If they are the friend or lover of someone in your crew, killing that person has a chance of making your crew member leave the faction. This is something I’ve criticized in our official review. As far as I know, this has nothing to do with the loyalty mechanic and it seems to be purely RNG-based, too. Likewise, there’s no way to poach that person or make them surrender, so you have no choice but to kill them. You might find yourself reloading your save when characters you’ve built up leave the group due to these incidents.

As for enemies, they prevent characters from joining your crew. You’d need to fire someone (or get them killed) if you want their enemy to join your faction.

Moreover, it’s possible for relationships to develop among crew members over time. Characters who have been in your crew for lengthy periods might become lovers. Alternatively, someone might fall in love with a person’s partner. This causes a rift and a crew member might vow to kill their rival to end the love triangle. I actually haven’t seen this threat reach its conclusion since I usually finish my Empire of Sin campaigns before that spiteful crew member could act.

Anyway, let’s go ahead and discuss Empire of Sin‘s character classes, skills, and assigned roles.

Empire of Sin is available via Steam. For more information, head over to our guides and features hub.