Watch Dogs (video game)

Did You Know?

• A free mobile app was released for iOS and Android devices, with Watch Dogs players connecting with console or PC users for two racing modes.
• In June 2013, Variety reported that Ubisoft Motion Pictures was planning a film adaptation; Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese were later commissioned to write the film.
• An animated series is also in development.

Gameplay

Watch Dogs is a third-person action-adventure game where players step into the shoes of hacker Aiden Pearce. His smartphone is his primary tool, letting him manipulate trains and traffic lights, break into security networks, block cellphone signals, dig up personal data on civilians, and drain their bank accounts. Hacking into larger systems requires solving puzzles. The story unfolds in a fictional version of Chicago, nicknamed the Windy City, which is an open world that players can explore freely. The environment changes with a day-night cycle and dynamic weather, and these shifts affect how non-player characters behave. For close-quarters fights, Aiden wields an extendable truncheon, while ranged combat includes handguns, shotguns, sniper rifles, machine guns, and grenade launchers. Gunfights can be slowed down, and players have access to proximity IEDs, grenades, and electronic lures. Missions can be completed using lethal or non-lethal methods. Aiden can climb walls, hack into forklifts and aerial work platforms to reach high spots, and crouch behind cover to avoid enemy detection. The game offers a wide selection of vehicles, such as motorcycles, muscle cars, off-road vehicles, SUVs, luxury cars, sports cars, and speedboats. The car radio can be customized with roughly fifty songs. Stealing a car may cause the driver to call the police, but if Aiden has a good reputation, the driver might let it go. Reputation improves by spotting and stopping crimes, while committing crimes harms it. Skill points are earned through hacking, combat, driving, and crafting, and are used to upgrade a skill tree. Money buys guns, outfits, and vehicles. Minigames range from fighting aliens to controlling a giant robotic spider. Collectibles include QR codes and audio logs, while ctOS towers reveal map icons and side missions. In multiplayer, up to seven other players can roam the same world, taking on hacking contracts or racing. Other players can hack into your game, appearing as an NPC, and you must find them. Invasions can be turned off, but doing so resets your multiplayer skill rank to zero. Free-roaming with multiple players and the decryption mode, where two teams of four compete to hold data, were not included in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions.

Plot

In 2012, Chicago became the first city globally to activate ctOS, a unified network created by Blume that links every device into one system. During a digital heist at the Merlaut Hotel, hacker Aiden Pearce and his mentor Damien Brenks set off a hidden alarm left by another hacker. Damien tried to locate that intruder, exposing both himself and Aiden. Worried about his family, Aiden pretended to take them on a surprise trip to the countryside to get them to safety. On the road, hitman Maurice Vega ambushed them, causing a crash that killed Aiden’s six-year-old niece, Lena. One year later, Aiden found Vega at a baseball stadium but could not discover who hired him. He handed Vega over to his associate, fixer Jordi Chin, then visited his sister Nicole and nephew Jackson for Jackson’s birthday. There, he learned that someone had been harassing them. With help from Clara Lille, a member of the DedSec hacking group, Aiden identified the harasser as Damien, who had wanted Aiden’s attention to force him to help find the other hacker from the Merlaut job. Aiden refused, but after handling a witness from the stadium, he discovered Damien had kidnapped Nicole to make him cooperate. Aiden set up a hideout in the Bunker, an old, hidden Blume facility with ctOS access. Together, Aiden and Clara tracked down the mystery hacker: Delford “Iraq” Wade, a gang leader and former Army soldier. To get into Iraq’s servers, Aiden snuck into a human auction Iraq was attending and copied his access key. He then blackmailed Iraq’s cousin, Tyrone “Bedbug” Hayes, into working as an informant. Bedbug secured a data sample showing Iraq held files on nearly every Chicago citizen, which he used to keep his gang safe from law enforcement.

Development

Starting with just ten people in 2009, the team behind Watch Dogs eventually grew to over a thousand over a five-year development cycle, with a budget of roughly $68 million. Before its 2012 reveal, the project was code-named Nexus. The original pitch was simple: the power to control an entire city with a single button press. The game runs on Ubisoft Montreal’s custom Disrupt engine, which was first built for a different Driver game. Producer Dominic Guay described Disrupt’s three core ideas: simulating the environment and everything in it, allowing players to affect that environment, and keeping everything connected for a seamless online experience. Director Jonathan Morin credited PlayStation 4 hardware with improving wind, water, and artificial intelligence simulations. To make Chicago feel authentic, the team added local slang and visited the city multiple times for research, photos, audio recording, and interviews with the Chicago Police Department. Landmarks were only loosely based on real ones because securing artistic rights would have tripled the budget. Fictionalizing the city also let the developers pack several distinct district themes onto a single map. Chicago was chosen for its stark contrast between immense wealth and deep poverty. Morin noted that after the setting was picked, Chicago became the most heavily surveilled city in America. The developers wanted to fix a problem they saw in games like Assassin’s Creed, where character movements felt identical regardless of context. In Watch Dogs, they tailored Aiden Pearce’s animations to fit each situation. The in-game ctOS control system was modeled after real SCADA systems, and the story was inspired by the Stuxnet worm’s attack on such infrastructure. The team consulted Kaspersky Lab, the cybersecurity firm that discovered Stuxnet, to make the hacking more realistic. For the game’s hacking factions, like DedSec, the developers drew from the hacktivist group Anonymous, state-sponsored hackers, and stories of corporate espionage.

Reception

Watch Dogs first appeared at E3 2012 to strong critical praise. Leaked promotional materials claimed it earned more than eighty awards and nominations at that event, and G4tv described it as a "truly next-gen adventure." The following year at E3 2013, it picked up over fifty more awards and nominations. In 2014, Ubisoft faced accusations of graphical downgrading after a NeoGAF user compared footage from 2012 with gameplay from 2014.

Ubisoft researcher Thomas Geffroyd stated that studies and quantitative analysis showed roughly sixty percent of players altered their perception of technology after playing the game. Chris Carter of Destructoid appreciated the digital version of Chicago and the level of detail in non-player characters, calling the gameplay fun and singling out extra content like collectibles and minigames as his favorite aspect. Eurogamer’s Dan Whitehead described the car-handling as "slick and intuitive" and the visuals as "dazzling." In Game Informer, Jeff Marchiafava noted that hacking gave combat more meaning, that the shooting mechanics made "full-scale firefights enjoyable," and that the stealth approach was praiseworthy. He found the variety of gameplay and environments in campaign missions to be "entertaining."

Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot considered combat the game’s main strength and appreciated the hacking element’s contribution. He felt the story only worked well when it moved past "revenge-story cliches" and became more attached to supporting characters than to protagonist Aiden Pearce. VanOrd also praised the open world, especially its extra content. At GamesRadar, Andy Hartup enjoyed the set pieces and individual missions, stating that players would enjoy the narrative "in piecemeal, rather than as a whole." He commended the setting’s details, which he felt revealed "the city's true beauty," and called both combat and hacking "satisfying."