![]() There’s more to Watch Dogs 2 than a sometimes-stunning recreation of San Francisco and the surrounding areas.Īnd while this upturning of the Ubisoft formula is in large parts the reason I enjoyed Watch Dogs 2, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t talk briefly about its improvements within the context of the first game: Writing a character who actually matters and making hacking a viable strategy. In recent years, I’ve often said that Ubisoft’s output feels more like a collection of incredible art assets than a real game-a beautiful city, in other words, brimming with some of the most vapid “content” possible. Overall though it’s an impressive shift for Ubisoft. A series of race missions are the worst offenders, standard open-world fodder that we should just let die already. There are also still some scattered holdovers from the “Let’s just cram everything in” mentality. Sometimes you’ll see pedestrians act out scenes together, but then you’ll see the same scene repeated later and it loses the magic. The people walking down the street don’t seem particularly smarter than Assassin’s Creed’s mobs-strangle a guy in front of them and half the time they’ll forget to react. But in Watch Dogs 2, I’d often see the little “ScoutX location nearby!” tag pop up on the GPS, slam on the brakes, and jump out to take a picture on the way to my next mission. In Assassin’s Creed, I’ve long since given up on grabbing every asinine treasure chest or dumb MacGuffin on my way to the finish line. I’ve advocated for that style of open-world storytelling in the past, and while I don’t think Watch Dogs 2 makes it all the way-there’s still definitely a central thread to follow-it gets pretty damn close. You’ve got a character (Marcus) and an end-goal (overthrow the evil Blume corporation) but other than that you’re free to dabble in the story wherever you’d like. The result? Instead of feeling like a straightforward story with optional side activities, as in the ol’ Ubisoft Formula, Watch Dogs 2 feels more like a non-linear narrative. And each “collectible” is technically unique, so you’re not just grabbing your hundredth feather from a rooftop, you feel like you’re exploring the city. an app that could conceivably exist in our actual reality. It’s like Niantic’s real-life Field Trip app mixed with Foursquare, a.k.a. “ScoutX,” for example-an app on Marcus’s phone that rewards you for seeking out and taking pictures of Bay Area landmarks. The Assassin’s Creed II formula was “Do the same tedious activity a dozen times, but in different parts of the city.” In Watch Dogs 2, each side mission has its own story, and often its own unique environment to explore-be it a robot assembly line or Ubisoft’s own San Francisco studio.Įven collectibles are covered within the Watch Dogs 2 fiction. They’re couched in the world’s fiction, with Marcus hacking people’s phones or being handed missions by his friends at hacking collective Dedsec. Side missions must be introduced in a logical manner, for instance-and are. As if to bring the point home, the game’s second mission has you drive from Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco, as if to say “See! No gates here! Go wherever you want!”Īnd without tower climbing to rely on as a crutch, other pieces of Ubisoft’s formula start to crumble. The San Francisco of Watch Dogs 2 feel more like a world and less like a series of artificial hurdles to overcome. Obvious or not, it’s a huge shift in presentation though.
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