Big Brother is watching… we're all watching…
Sad to say, but what Ubisoft showed of their highly anticipated game, Watch Dogs, was the exact same footage they showed at the Sony PlayStation 4 press conference. The narration of the presentation was completely different, but that was all that was new from the gameplay shown.
In case you missed that press conference, Ubisoft showed a little more of what the protagonist, Aiden Pearce, can do and what the player can do with this huge open world Ubisoft has created within Chicago. Since Aiden is connected to everything and everyone, he is able to see who could actually be a potential victim in a crime. In this case and point, Aiden comes across a woman who recently won a custody battle and was flagged by the ctOS as a potential victim.
When Aiden follows her, he witnesses her being accosted and physically threatened by her ex-husband. Aiden can choose to intervene, and in this instance he does, thereby saving the woman's life. Aiden also chases down the ex, prompts a circuit breaker to overload and burst right in front of the man's face, and when he falls, Aiden beats him down into submission. Now Aiden must flee the police, which he does by hacking into a local train as it passes, forcing it to slow down long enough for him to hop on board. The brief presentation showed the possibility of all the side quests the player could encounter in the open world, which also made the game far more appealing to me, as I've had trouble getting excited about this game.
However, Ubisoft did give us some more information about the game as a whole. For instance, the lead developer mentioned that the game could be played on a variety of devices, suggesting that other people could watch your game [Who watches the watch dogs? ~Ed. Nick], but didn't go into much other detail than that. So does this mean that there will be Watch Dogs apps for smartphones and tablets as well? And with these apps, can you tap into other players' games and watch? If so, that really helps play into the huge surveillance theme of the game, but as for me, I really don't want people watching how much I suck at playing games. If that's what it is, can I possibly turn it off?
There is still no official release date other than the vague fourth quarter 2013. Watch Dogs will release on both current-gen and next-gen platforms.
