Keiran McEwen
Keiran McEwenI have nothing but burning hatred for the first Watch_Dogs and Aiden Pearce. Like most, I saw the hype, I saw some of the “hacking,” and I thought: “Damn, maybe this will be the open-world I can interact with, bend, and break, unlike those worlds for Grand Theft Auto.” Now I must say, I love Grand Theft Auto, it is one of the few things that makes me proud of Scotland.
I love the games, and they are one of the few times I am excited about a game’s release. However, when I play these open-world games I have an affinity for, I lose myself; walking around mountains as Franklin, trying to live a “normal” life driving to the movie studio as Michael, or dropping off hitchhikers to the nude cultists in the hills as Trevor.
Nevertheless, there was never the break or the bend I had hoped for. They feel natural, but a developer sat through four months of programming, drawing, and sound engineering, to make these moments feel as they do. These moments are not scripted as we see in Uncharted, but they are a collection of scripts coming together to create something you experience.
With all the promotion behind Watch_Dogs (1), I thought this would be the one. This could give me more to do with the world outside of the structured missions we’ve seen with GTA and Saints Row. It wasn’t, and this was disappointing.
As a game and a concept, Watch_Dogs could be greater. So with a sequel, the idea is to expand and grow on the concept behind it. Saints Row was a simple GTA knockoff, then Saints Row 2 would become whacky and fun, the best in the series. The groundwork was laid for Watch_Dogs 2 to improve upon the dark and gritty story, with the worlds most boring man, Aiden Pearce. In retrospect, there are good points that were improved upon, but just as much was brought from the original or became just as “bad” for this sequel.
I’m not going to lie, I love Watch_Dogs 2 because I look at it the same way you would look at the dumb dog your grandparents had: it would lick your face and run into walls, but you still love it anyway. Watch_Dogs 2 does everything Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, Red Dead Redemption, Mad Max, Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry, L.A. Noire, and Mafia have done. Watch_Dogs 2 doesn’t revolutionize the open-world game. In fact, it is your open-world game. It provides you with some tools to play with inside the world you are in, and in turn, feel like you are doing something.
Comparatively, Watch_Dogs and Watch_Dogs 2 are as different as night and day; the former is about Aiden and his story, the latter is about general security and the risk we all run on our current trajectory. Watch_Dogs 2 is not directly about hackers but tells a story about hacking and internet security that everyone should heed as a warning. The first tried too hard to say it was about realism, but it stood too close and put on its worst Batman impression, while the second installment would throw that out of the window and allow you to be silly.
You play as Marcus Halloway, a young black man living in San Francisco, a city taken over by cTOS. cTOS is the system from the previous game, designed to track data via an algorithm. cTOS compiles data based on who you talk to online, where you go, what you do, things you do via email, things you like, dislike, and everything down to what you make in a year. It is set up in this installment that there are toys recording, collecting, and feeding data about children to the system. This creepy Orwellian system has labeled Marcus as a criminal, so his only recourse is to commit breaking and entering, assault with a weapon, and hacking.
The opening mission to prove Marcus to the hacker cell, “Dedsec“, is to delete his profile from the cTOS 2.0 mainframe. A simple enough mission, right? Well, it is, until you alert everyone and their mother that someone is in the building. Once this happens, I tend to make a B line for the exit, bullet wounds and all. After all, this is an open-world game, and you only have to hit the checkpoint to trigger the cutscene. You may be corralled into a small section of the map, but you can go nuts in that slice of it.
This is where you meet the group of twenty-somethings, focus-grouped to be the most stereotyped cast of twenty-year-olds a middle-aged executive could think of. Yet, it almost comes around to being endearing again as the characters act human. By this I mean, when Marcus meets his favorite actor and has to act like someone from a cult early in the game, he stays in character for a majority of the cutscene. Then, towards the end, breaks character to tell this actor how bad the last few movies have been. Sure, minutes later you can go back to cracking skulls with your ball on a bungee cord, but at least he shows personality.
Mechanically there has been nothing like Watch_Dogs 2. Which is not to say there aren’t the usual “Ubi” game mechanics; it is the way they are implemented here that is different from a Far Cry or Assassins Creed. Instead of throwing meat for an animal or a rock to distract someone, your super-smartphone can call in a gang lieutenant or SWAT team. If you are able to, you can call multiple groups in on each other, and have a party of death. You can also save someone from getting arrested on the street by getting some cops murdered.
Then there are the “toys.” These are your eyes, ears, and sometimes hands. The quadcopter can drop bombs like the Ice Cube, and the RC car can swear at policemen in an upper-class English accent. I call the RC car Geoffrey. Each has their own specific set of skills. The car will be used to collect packages such as upgrades, paint schemes, and money; while the drone is your eyes as you slump in a car outside, calling death squads on people.
You may also wonder how the cars handle over the previous installment when every car felt as if you were driving a steam locomotive transporting the circus around on wheels. Happily, I’ll say they feel like cars, clown cars on balloon tires with an elephant in the rear, but cars nonetheless. If you want to get anywhere, I’d suggest finding an electric car because they have power and handle well, in comparison.
Though to bring me back to a happy place, let’s talk about the soundtrack. I love it. I also hate it. There’s something about the soundtrack of an open-world game that tells me whether it is fun. Well, Watch_Dogs 2 has a large and varied soundtrack that almost rivals that of GTA: San Andreas or Saints Row 2. From punk and rock, to hip hop and pop, you are bound to find something you love.
Let me list a few artists: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Judas Priest, Culture Club, Dual Core, KC & The Sunshine Band, OutKast, NOFX, Anti-Flag, and finally Run The Jewels and Zack De La Rocha. Minus the sixteen original tracks by Hudson Mohawke, there is only one notable group that made more than one track out of the eighty-two others. Run The Jewels perfectly encapsulates the anarchist/hacktivist momentum of the game, especially with Close Your Eyes (And Count to F**k), which features Zack De La Rocha of Rage Against The Machine. Watch_Dogs 2 started my own love of the group known as Run The Jewels. The rest of the soundtrack is pretty good too.
It is often said that every Ubisoft game is built from the last, and this would ring true here also. The drone in Watch_Dogs 2 is now the eagle in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the bait system that came from Far Cry 4 is now the gangs or cops here. There is something to be said to that, though these mechanics are being repeated, they are also being improved upon. The downside is how saturated we are with them now.
Watch_Dogs 2 is, as I said above, thee open-world game. I don’t mean the best, the most refined, or the most maintained. At the time Ubisoft had made the open-world game the blandest and most devalued thing in gaming. At the time, Ubisoft had made open-world games a bland, devalued idea. However, despite claims of oversaturating the market with mediocre open worlds, this was a turning point. It wasn’t great, but I still love Watch_Dogs 2.
Due to the “Orwellian” themes discussed above in the topic of cTOS, I feel I have to mention claims made by Ubisoft Massive’s COO, Alf Condelius, in 2018. While talking about The Division at a conference in Sweden, he said, “We cannot be openly political in our games — [it is] bad for business.” which makes some sense, given that some people can feel disenfranchised by some claims. However, earlier in the year Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot, said that Ubisoft does aim to make political games by posing questions to the player.
If both of these claims are true, then I’d like both to explain why there is an allegory for now president Donald J. Trump in Watch_Dogs 2. No, Watch_Dogs 2 is not being overtly political for having such a character, but to pretend this is a question is within itself being stupid. This is nothing more than a finger being pointed to laugh at a man they, at the time, thought was stupid. I personally agree with the joke, I find it funny, but neither is a question being posed nor did the game avoid making a political statement.
There are other statements being made, some are even political and are warranted. Nevertheless, there is a large divide between pointing at a stupid man who makes stupid comments, and raising questions of security, morality, and how much power a government agency should have. When asking how could the FBI use the data, how insurance is effected by cTOS, and how hackers can abuse the system, those are questions being posed. This is when Watch_Dogs 2 is at its best.
However, I hope both these questions and San Fransico’s brightness carries over to the possible third game that has been trademarked. Since February 2017, when an update was released for Watch_Dogs 2, there have been rumors that this possible third installment will be set in London. Primarily in Brixton, where the coordinates from the new cutscene at the end of the game pointed toward Cyberdog, a store that sells clothes that would fit well with the Dedsec team, including Wrench who wears tech-based face wear.
In conclusion, Watch_Dogs 2 is a very flawed game. Marred with the oversaturation of open-world games, not being helped by Ubisoft’s unwavering desire to only make open-world games. I still think about the game weekly, I still play it once a year, and I still love the characters. As I said above, Watch_Dogs 2 is: “…the dumb dog your grandparents had“, and it is reliable for my open-world toy box fix every now and then. I personally still hold out hope for the third to be announced and to dust off the flaws of the second.
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🔥296Watch_Dogs 2
$18.88
Pros
- Fun Open-World
- Enjoyable Characters
- Lots of Fun Toys to Play With
- Large and Varied Soundtrack
Cons
- A Little Bland
- Disconnected Story at Times
