Watch Dogs © Ubisoft

The NSA scandal, PRISM, phone hacking, Wikileaks, whistleblowers. All of them have hit the headlines over the past year, and all have them share the same key concern: the value of information.

That very same debate is the touchstone for one of the most anticipated next-generation games on either console. Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs, which has just been pushed back to next year, is a truly ambitious open-world game, both in its scale and in scope: its focus on CCTV surveillance and computer hacking promises to usher in a newer, perhaps more thoughtful style of gameplay compared to your average twitch-reflex first-person shooter.

It’s also proved surprisingly prescient. Watch Dogs was in development well before Edward Snowden revealed his identity to the world, but in the aftermath of the leaked documents, it seems more relevant than ever. And given its focus on the dilemma of privacy in an always-connected society, it makes the perfect step into the world of next-gen (Microsoft famously reversed an always-online requirement for the Xbox One after a huge fan backlash).

"There's always someone, somewhere with access to knowledge, with a new way to pass that knowledge to someone else," Watch Dogs creative director Jonathan Morin tell Red Bull, cryptically.

We're sat in an interview booth at the Eurogamer Expo in London, though for a game that deals with hacking, security and CCTVs looming over your digital shoulder, there are no cameras or microphones. There’s no Big Brother. Or if there, is, he’s cool: Morin’s telling all.

The way he sees it, our paranoia of technology is just a distraction from the real issue: ourselves. "I want players to explore human beings sometimes misbehaving, based on a lot of different external pressures. It’s a nice canvas to put technology in the middle of, to help players realise that sometimes when people say they're scared of violence, scared of technology, in the end, they're a lot more scared of themselves."

Watch Dogs is one of the most anticipated titles of 2014. It's a brand new IP from Ubisoft - always a gamble in the era of full HD graphics and gigantic budgets - but unlike Assassin's Creed which deals with the past, Watch Dogs is set in the near future. In an almost an eerie parallel to today, computer hacking is your weapon in the game: you can even face off against other players on tablets anywhere else in the world if you so choose.

Morin tells us hacking wasn't always on the agenda though. In fact, he says work began on the game five years ago, well before any of these recent scandals. As with all the best ideas, it started with a discussion over a few drinks.

"After a lot of beer discussion about random stuff, a pattern emerged: there was a lot of stuff about social conspiracy. Everybody was getting very into it and we talked about technology in our current societies,” he explains.

“So, we decided to start putting concepts together immediately. Hacking was a part of the picture and pretty quickly it became obvious that was something we wanted to do, so the game became about hyper-connectivity and hacking,” says Morin.

“I think, what's very healthy about the NSA stuff and all that is that it made the debate emerge."

In Watch Dogs, you take the role of Aiden Pearce, a computer hacker with a grudge against the overbearing state. Set in a futuristic Chicago controlled by a Central Operating System (CtOS), coder-turned-vigilante Pearce has access to the system, and uses it to monitor his own family, as well as to hack into various systems across the city for either his own means, or to help others. He’s not an anti-hero exactly, but he’s not a white or black hat hacker either. A grey hat hacker, let’s call him. Morin tell us there have been a few inspirations for the secretive lead.

“He's a mysterious grey guy. He's more a good reflection of great television today, you know, like Breaking Bad. I think people are a lot more capable of swallowing characters that have their own motivations and they're not perfect. And Aiden is that kind of guy. He's flawed.”

Aiden © Ubisoft

Intelligent television proved the inspiration for the city itself, as well as the characters. This may be an automated Illinois, but it’s one full of living, breathing people none the less. “The Wire, we really liked that”, says Morin. “We went to Chicago, we imported all of our dialogue from citizens in the city, we did all those little details - The Wire was an inspiration that we owe to it.”

Many Chicago landmarks including the Willis Tower, the river and even the Chicago Loop transit line have been faithfully recreated, giving local gamers the same déja vu feeling that Californians have had playing Grand Theft Auto V, but there’s more to Watch Dogs than just scale - it’s about density too. “It's pretty big,” says Morin, ”I don't think it's as big as GTA V, but what we really wanted to tackle was density, which I think is very important sometimes.”

Chicago Canal © Ubisoft

“What we wanted to do is let you profile anybody, so in Watch Dogs, you can stay still and there'll still be gameplay going on. There's a lot going on in the city. Before adding more districts and more scale, we always say to ourselves to make sure that we completely fill the space with stuff you can do - that way we can have something that feels a lot more organic, so that we can push the simulation to the next level.”

And fill the city they have: there’s a vast number of buildings and places to check out and explore, as Morin tells us, “We have hundreds of places to visit in the game, but you can also check-in to those areas, a bit like Foursquare, and get information about the place and learn about Chicago at the same time.”

Being under the Ubisoft banner gives Morin the chances to speak to other development studios, including the teams working on Assassin’s Creed lot; some gamers even speculated that Watch Dogs might take place inside the Animus, the time traveling MacGuffin that lets you hunt down Templars throughout time.

Morin says that’s not the case, but he did bounce a few ideas off the folks at Ubisoft Montreal nonetheless. “We definitely talked to them. We asked why they took that model, what they tried before, what was working [and] what was not working, so then you come back and you make your own version of it,” he says.

“You can take into account what works and how it serves your fantasy. As long as you don't just copy for the sake of copying, you're just using the knowledge of everyone.”

Despite the game’s sudden delay, it’s still one of the shining stars of the next-generation line-up. Morin’s stated what you’ll be playing on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 will be pretty much the same as on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 however - it’ll just look a lot nicer.

“For next-gen, we’re really pushing on the visual intensity. We did a lot of stuff, like for example, the wind. We're simulating actual wind, which sounds crazy, but the clothing on Aiden and everyone on the streets, it all moves in a logical way. The particles move in a logical way. Once you’ve see those little details, you don't want them to go away, because they add to the total immersion.”

Aiden © Ubisoft

We push hard to get Morin to give us his take on the NSA leaks - who’s in the right, who’s in the wrong - but he’s keeping it firmly to himself. With Watch Dogs, the message is what you making about it: just making you mull the issue over is enough for Morin.

“There's definitely a meaning behind [Watch Dogs], there's a message, but that message is mine, mine alone, and I don't want to spoil it, and the reason why is that it's never going to be clear. I don't want to impose my take on something; what I like is bringing the canvas where people can think about it.”

“It's been built so that hopefully people can get a sense of what we're talking about, but they think about it, they want to talk about it. That's the sweet spot for people who care about what they got out of the game.”