Watch_Dogs

Before I start this piece it’s important to note that for the most part, I actually enjoyed Watch_Dogs. This was the first time I had been able to visit Chicago in a video game so was eager to be let loose. The city felt alive and looked fantastic. Manipulating the environment by hacking was seamless and provided me with some of my best escape moments. But as we’ve found out too many times, there is always a downfall. Watch_Dogs was set to rival massive open world games such as Grand Theft Auto, but with a lacklustre story, flat characters and technical issues, Watch_Dogs ran out of charge and wasn’t able to hit that sweet spot.

Ubisoft Montreal began work on Watch_Dogs in 2009 and almost three years later it was unveiled at E3 in 2012. Two years from there, the game was finally released in 2014. One of the well marketed points about Watch_Dogs was the immersive story. Set within Chicago, players took control of an experienced hacker – Aiden Pierce. Haunted by a traumatising event that he believes he is responsible for, Aiden’s main mission is to hunt down the people behind the event and bring them to justice… well kind of. Sure it’s a story, but I struggled (as did many other players) to feel Aiden’s conviction due to the poor character immersion and scripting.

One of the big areas Watch_Dogs was going to set it apart from any competition was the hacking element in Ubisofts sandbox title. Being a highly skilled hacker, Aiden is capable of controlling traffic lights, tripping car alarms, burst underground steam pipes and all at the ease of one button press. The more you level up, the more you can hack. While all of these elements worked well and lead to some amazing chase moments, it was hacking the NPC’s that populated Chicago that dropped the ball.

Pre launch, Ubisoft informed players that moral decisions would play an important role within the game. Killing innocents or driving recklessly meant that if a civilian saw you commit a crime, they were more likely to call the police. However abiding by the law and helping civilians from a sticky situation would ensure they would turn a blind eye should you do something untoward. As far as a morale system in Watch_Dogs, that’s pretty much it, but it could have been so much more.

Being a hacker, you can hack into people’s phones and access their personal details and personal bank accounts. Personal information would often give you a brief summary of the person – a drug addict with a bad debt that needs paying, a banker who looks down on the rest of society or a single mum struggling to make ends meet. The problem with Watch_Dogs, is that there’s no morality consequences should you choose to steal money from any one of these characters. Obviously stealing from the single mum seems like the bad thing to do, but there’s nothing in Watch_Dogs that follows that through. Eventually I gave up worrying about right or wrong choices in Watch_Dogs and just became very rich, very quickly.

In early gameplay trailers, Watch_Dogs was set to be a gorgeous looking game that made you feel like you were walking/driving/swimming in a living Chicago. The fact that it was unveiled before Sony and Microsoft announced their next gen consoles, gamers were left awestruck. Fast forward a couple of months before launch, people had noticed that the graphics had been scaled down somewhat. Where was the shiny Chicago Ubisoft promised players? Ubisoft argued that this was due to performance issues but eventually this was disputed as people found a way to re-enable the high graphics and a dip in performance was marginal.

When you want to explore the city, Watch_Dogs offered side quests around every corner. After hacking a NPC mobile you could learn of a mugging or murder that was about to take place. In order to open up new areas to hack, you can locate and activate a local comms tower. Want something a little more thrilling? Choose to take on the Watch_Dogs version of the mafia by taking out convoys or controlled areas. While these all sound great and while they are great, they all get repetitive very quickly. Watch_Dogs boasted of a new feature whereby other online players could enter your game and initiate a hack against you. Again, this was great fun the first couple of times – track and hunt down the opposing hacker – but when you want to start a mission and are forced to take a side step; the feature became an annoyance rather than a nicety.

Although it broke records for the biggest first day sales in Ubisoft history and had the biggest launch of a new IP since LA Noire, its hard not to recognise the disappointment it delivered to many hyped players. I guess the hype worked in this instance as it gave Ubisoft some great sales figures and broke records, but in the long run it’s arguably added another dent in Ubisofts ever weakening armour. Since the launch of Watch_Dogs in 2014, it has been rumoured that work has begun on Watch_Dogs 2. We can only hope that Ubisoft have learnt a lesson here and approach the sequel with trepidation and deliver a game that’s promised to the players.

What are your thoughts on Watch_Dogs? Did Ubisoft fall short on another hyped release? Let me know in the comment section below!

Stay tuned for our fourth and final victim of Hype: Evolve