Watch Dogs 2 Archives

Back in 2012, Ubisoft wrapped up their E3 conference with a stellar looking demonstration of a completely new game. A year before the next generation of hardware would release, this demo was a first look at what was in store for the next generation of gaming. The demo was visually stunning and dynamic, with impressive animations and weather effects. It looked to be ambitious in scope and a new high calibre property from Ubisoft. Fast forward two years and the final game, titled Watch Dogs, finally released to a lukewarm reception. Many praised Watch Dogs concept, this idea of being able to hack into an entire city, but ultimately people came away disappointed. It was not that glorified demo they saw two years ago. Well now Ubisoft has another shot at establishing Watch Dogs as a reputable franchise with the recently leaked and later confirmed sequel, appropriately named, Watch Dogs 2. With E3 2016 right around the corner we will get our first look at the game, but before then, here a five things we want from Watch Dogs 2. NEXT | A better protagonist 1. A better protagonist Aiden Pearce. The vengeful vigilante lead of Watch Dogs. Pearce rocks a suave brown leather jacket, baseball cap and badass bandana. But beyond being an incredibly cool looking protagonist, Pearce was a forgettable character. His revenge fuelled campaign against those who issued a hit on him one night, killing his niece in the process, should have been very emotive. However, Pearce’s motives and feuds with sister Nicole over not seeing his nephew Jackson, who survived the hit, came across very shallow. Why? Because Aiden Pearce was portrayed as a one dimensional character, with no depth or emotion. He came across as soulless, nothing more than a hipster looking hacker that would make for sweet cosplay. So when it comes to Watch Dogs 2, we hope for a protagonist we actually care about. Tell a compelling story, flesh out their motivations and make them an interesting character to invest in over the course of the game. If it ends up being Pearce again, then give him depth and tap into why he is so obsessed with security and hacking. It is implied by an audio log that Pearce and his sister were taken to the US by their mother to avoid their father, where they grew up in a rough neighbourhood and had to quickly adapt. Right there is a pool of backstory that you could tap into and add much needed layers to Pearce, and in turn tell a more engaging narrative. NEXT | A vigilante focused narrative 2. A vigilante focused narrative Speaking of story, the vigilante aspect of Watch Dogs’ storyline was unfortunately very much an afterthought. There would be the occasional new bulletins or media clips that discuss this vigilante hacker either terrorising or helping the city of Chicago, however this was never brought to the forefront. It was only toward the game’s end that Pearce began to embrace this identity, which was a shame. If in Watch Dogs 2 there's more of a discussion on whether one man should have that amount of access and is he really using it to help others, it would be very interesting. Those sorts of questions could in turn be wrestled with within the protagonist’s mind. Being a huge sucker for anything vigilante and currently getting through the latest season of Persons of Interest, which is almost identical in premise to Watch Dogs, it would be much welcomed to see the ethical issues of vigilantism come into play in Watch Dogs 2. NEXT | Improved driving controls 3. Improved driving controls Moving away from narrative now and looking more so at gameplay, one glaring issue that Watch Dogs had was in its driving controls. Being an open world game, Watch Dogs needed to nail driving various vehicles, but it didn’t. Driving a motorcycle was too sensitive and felt like the whole thing weighed an ounce, to which driving cars similarly felt jolty and lacked precision. In short, driving in Watch Dogs was not fun. Therefore, the folks over at Ubisoft Montreal need to look at internal Ubisoft games such as The Crew, or look externally at the GTA series, and take cues from games that handle driving well for Watch Dogs 2. Maybe then completing those tedious checkpoint side missions won’t result in the destruction of multiple city blocks. NEXT | More hackable options 4. More hackable options Where Watch Dogs fell short in its driving, it excelled in having the ability to hack stuff. Whether it be messing with traffics lights, blowing open man hole covers, accessing camera feeds or blacking out the entire city, you felt incredibly powerful. The different hackable options available to you when either on foot combat or behind the wheel opened up avenues of creativity in the game. You could tamper with a guy’s phone to give that brief window to run up to him and wallop him one, or raise bridges at the last second to escape pursuing police cars. So when it comes to Watch Dogs 2, keep much of the same but throw in some more hackable options to avoid things becoming stale. Let us hack and gain control of combat drones, let us play music from people’s phones or the sound of gunfire to potentially ignite combat within groups of enemies. Bottom line, give us more ways to mess with people. Thank you. NEXT | A quicker turnaround 5. A quicker turnaround Now it is time to address the elephant in the room, the fact that Watch Dogs took far too long to hit store shelves. After that reveal demo back in 2012, Watch Dogs was hot on everybody's lips. Then it suffered from multiple delays and went from being a launch title on new hardware, to an after thought. By the time it eventually released in May of 2014, the buzz and excitement surrounding the game had evaporated. The momentum slowly faded after one too many trailers and the infamous graphical dip Therefore, what Watch Dogs 2 needs to do is, ideally, come out at this year's E3 and pull a Fallout 4 move -- show the game extensively and release it this coming November. In doing so, it will dominate the press headlines and be ‘the’ game discussed for four months leading up to its release. Now of course it still needs to be a sound game and an improvement over its predecessor, however the lack of extensive incubation and showing it too early will do the game huge favours. And there you have it, five things we want to see from Watch Dogs 2, but what about you? What do you want to see? Sound off below. More: 7 Things We're Expecting to See at E3

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Watch Dogs 2

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