Watchdogs is an open world third person action adventure game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft.
The game was released worldwide on May 27, 2014 and later on the Wii U in North America on November 18, 2014.
Watchdogs begins with a flashback as Aiden Pierce is roaming around the lobby of The Merlaut hotel in Chicago, Illinois. In seconds, we learn that Aiden and his friend, Damien Banks, are doing a heist incognito. Aiden is silently siphoning bank accounts with the help of Damien, who is at a remote location behind his computer.
When Aiden sees that something is causing a disruption to their little operation, he decides to abort even though Damien tries to convince him otherwise.
As he’s running out of the hotel, a third party reveals itself and puts a hit out on both Aiden and Damien, saying that not even the family is off limits.
The hitman eventually finds Aiden and shoots at him during a drive with his niece and nephew. A bullet meant to kill him, ends up with a car crash killing his niece.
We flash forward and now Aiden is at a locker room at a Chicago baseball stadium interrogating the hitman, Maurice Vega. Not getting any answers and running out of time, he escapes the stadium with a major blackout as a distraction and leaves Maurice in the hands of a fellow criminal peer, Jordy Chin.
In Watchdogs, you are Aiden Pierce and while you protect your only family, a sister and her son, it’s up to you to find who was behind the failed hit.
STORY
The story doesn’t just deal with you finding out who was really behind the hit. Along the way, you run into complications that need to be dealt with to help you get to your ultimate goal.
So for example, while you visit your sister, someone calls her and threatens her. When you trace the call, it turns out to be none other than your partner who was with you at the beginning of the game.
Even after doing what he wants, he then takes your sister hostage and then while finding out who was behind the Merlaut hit, you also need to do things for your old partner. In doing things for your old partner, you end up having to take on a gang head on, break into a prison, and so on and so forth.
It’s actually an interesting story that has a pretty decent pace from start to finish. There are moments where I felt like it dragged on but that’s always a possibility in open world games because you have to drive from mission to mission and sometimes you’ll get distracted by the world around you.
Surprisingly, the characters are decent too. Aiden Pierce takes the cake as the main character who reminds me sort of Batman in the beginning. He isn’t exactly a mold of Batman but he reminds of him nonetheless. From the very first moment you begin playing, Aiden used fear to his advantage. If you happen to listen to one of the recordings of the person you interrogate at the beginning, you’ll hear terror in the man’s voice saying, “He won’t stop coming after me!” Which is a terrifying statement to hear from anyone.
Also, he has a public persona known as The Vigilante or The Fox. In the game, there are tiny side missions where you have to stop a crime. The game encourages you to take down the criminal without killing him.
This falls in line with Aiden during the beginning of the game where he has a strong moral compass and it shows. Unfortunately, as this is a game and as the action sequences ramp up towards the game, it’s difficult to say his moral compass is consistent considering he’s mowing down enemies to save his sister. No, don’t kill the person responsible for killing my niece but I’ll gladly take down all these gangsters because they have no relevance to anything, like waitaminute…
However, the argument is there to say he’s doing whatever he has to, to save his sister and avenge his niece.
He’s characterized pretty well, I’d say. I wouldn’t go as far as saying he’s relatable or that he’s one of the greatest characters of all time because in Watchdogs, we don’t recognize a change in him or see him grow. Who we have at the beginning of the game is who we have up until the end of the game. However, he does have reason for his emotions and his voice actor really delivers for him.
Other characters, also help tell a pretty great story. Clara, the hacker that you take on as a partner, a criminal hacker she may be and although her image is a bit generic, rather than being this super obnoxious hacker, she’s actually very shy and always looks to see if what she’s doing is indeed for good cause.
Damien, your old partner is very much someone you can’t trust and I think his writing really supports him as this frenemy. He’ll constantly remind you that you two are great partners and need each other but all the while, he’s the dirtbag that has your sister.
Jordi Chin, a friend of Aiden is basically a wiseass hitman that you hire to take care of your own hostage. He serves as the comedic relief but also sometimes your weapon supplier and in a couple of missions, he’ll support you with his sniper rifle.
So the rest of the characters that you are usually encountering as Aiden aren’t boring but they aren’t memorable. You wouldn’t log off your play session thinking about any of them.
THEMES
I do like the 1984 theme of this game though. For those of you who are not familiar with 1984, you should be ashamed as it is a wonderful book that everyone should have read even if it wasn’t a requirement for your classes.
1984 is a dystopian future (well past technically) where the government is constantly watching you and you have a certain role to fulfill chosen by the government. The government watches all, knows all and you are its slave even if you don’t know it.
Watchdogs has a similar theme in that you are essentially a one man resistance against ctOS. ctOS is a giant program that was installed after a large blackout that affected a huge part of the North Eastern United States and it’s responsible for everything electrical in the Chicago area. Your computer is hooked up to ctOS. The stop lights are hooked up to ctOS. The light in your house. The Smart TV. The cameras. If electricity is running through it and it needs to be hooked up to a larger server in some shape or form, it’s ctOS.
Imagine if a company like AT&T was in charge of your city’s infrastructure. Controls to the train? Stop light? Cell phone? Computer? Internet? Electricity?
The use of a single server was so it would be more controlled and an event like a blackout that caused panic and chaos would be avoided.
And you are the resistance along with a completely unaffiliated DedSec which you’ll see in the background as you play through the game. DedSec is completely unrelated to Aiden and is a fictionalized version of the real world’s hacking group, Anonymous.
As you play as Aiden, you’ll hack into ctOS servers and find out that they’re actually recording, storing and analyzing everything. So whenever you get into a server, you’ll see brief moments of personal lives. At the surface, these moments break the tension in a good way either to show an easter egg or to add a little humor but just think about it.
Imagine if you were at home and you were having a private discussion with your loved one. Now imagine, AT&T recorded it and analyzed it and then sent you ads for marital aids. We already desensitized to that kind of thing when we use the internet with things like Facebook but imagine it with your actual life how terrifying that would be. Knowing that you never have a moment to yourself. You are always being watched.
VISUALS
The game looks pretty good for a game that was developed for the Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 and Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Does the game look astounding? No, it’s an Ubisoft game.
A lot of people’s criticisms came from the E3 trailer or something where Ubisoft presented it as this beautiful looking game but the final product was way off. Now that I’m playing this a second time in 2017, I hardly think it matters so I won’t even factor in the popular criticism.
What they delivered still holds up pretty well in 2017 more or less. The character animations in cutscenes are decent and the environment actually looks like a futuristic bustling Chicago. The faces on the characters are pretty good too. They aren’t anywhere near as detailed as say the main characters in a Yakuza game but they at least look human and not these empty shells of human beings.
Both Clara and Damien look like real people, mostly because from Clara I get that image of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander and Damien reminds me of every old white guy who thinks he looks cool with a goatee I’ve ever seen in real life.
For being the coolest character in the game, Aiden doesn’t have any memorable features on his face but that must run in the family since his sister and nephew are the same exact way. If you put them as NPCs on the street, I wouldn’t notice.
The environments are detailed and nice to look at. However, this has never been Ubisoft’s problem. Open world environments is their strength and Watchdogs only proves it more.
However, a big Ubisoft weakness has always been visual bugs and glitches. Sometimes, when Aiden looks up, you can see where his hat and his head are clipping. Other times, I’ve encountered people with glazed eyes so they look like Raiden from Mortal Kombat. The environment sometimes faded in or an asset would pop in out of nowhere causing me to crash but luckily it only happened when I was messing around. When I was doing a mission, I never had a problem.
AUDIO
The audio is pretty good too. The ambience of people walking around and driving around is there. It doesn’t compete to the brilliant ambience of a Grand Theft Auto game but walking around Chicago as Aiden never felt like a complete bore.
The voice acting is weird. There are moments where you’ll see and hear the emotion but sometimes, it’s like the actors were never told to have a dramatic pause. For example, there’s a line where Aiden tells his hostage over the phone, shut up, I said shut up. Normally, it seems like a good idea to have a pause between both statements but Aiden said it without a pause so it sounds like he’s trying way too hard. Rather than “Shut up…I said shut up!” it’s just, “Shut up, I said shut up.”
There is one character that dropped the ball and that is Iraq. Iraq is a gang leader and a hacker and you’ll hear him from time to time through hacked audio or when you listen in on his conversations. But when it comes time to the show down between you and him, he has the most annoying little giggle and with that giggle, his voice ceases to be a performance and more of an annoyance.
Everyone else though delivers pretty well.
The game doesn’t have a radio but it does have a media player through your phone so when you’re driving, your phone will automatically put on music only stopping to give you news alerts related to your actions or if the game’s score kicks in. You start the game with a few songs but you can actually hack bystanders to increase your music library. You can also edit the playlist so whenever you can listen to whatever you want. Also, since it is on your phone, you can actually listen to music not just as you’re driving but while you’re walking around too.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is where Watchdogs really comes into its own. This is not a GTA clone. The only similarity is that they are both open world and free to roam.
What really defines this game is the hacking. With the power of a button you can create distractions, explosions, car crashes and black outs. Hacking will be the key essence of the entire gameplay. Without the hacking, this game is just a third person action game.
There are three elements to Watch Dogs and they are sneaking, driving and full on assault.
There will be moments in Watch Dogs where your goal is to outrun the police or fixers. Sure you can literally just outrun them and make twists and turns all over the map or you can use your hacking abilities to your advantage which makes car chases a whole lot more fun.
Someone’s on your tail? Hack into the street lights and cause a car crash at an intersection. No longer your problem. Hack and open doors as you drive towards an empty garage and close them behind you.
When you’re on the ground and you need to get through an area silently, you can hack into the cameras and tag anyone in the area. Now they’re on your map and you know exactly where they’re facing.
When you’re on the ground and you need to kill your enemies, blow up a pipe to temporarily blind them, hack the explosive on their vests to explode on them, hack and overload a generator to explode and kill anyone in the vicinity.
Are you on the run and on foot? Cause a blackout and escape into the darkness.
The game also gives you choices from time to time. Choices that won’t affect the story but can affect your gameplay. The objectives will read, “Escape or kill your pursuers.” Say you’re bored of running and want to turn the gun on them, now it’s allowed.
Say your objective is to simple hack into a mainframe. In certain instances, you can go through the area without killing anyone. If you’re really good, you’ll incapacitate everyone with your baton and keep a clear conscience.
I won’t say the possibilities are endless because once you feel comfortable, you’ll just naturally stick to a routine and you’ll feel the limits to your power. Sometimes the game will do it for narrative purposes. You may never be able to use an ability because you failed to upgrade sufficiently. However, the possibilities are there and the gameplay constantly feels fresh. By the end of the game, the gameplay will be familiar and less fresh but it’ll never feel cut and paste and repeat.
The missions may lack in variety but more often than not, you’re left to your own devices and you can complete the mission however you want.
Besides story missions there are also other ways to enjoy yourself in Chicago. There plenty of side missions that can range to preventing crime which reward you with a boost to your reputation to distracting the police with a given car. You can take out gang leaders or you can collect briefcases that hold the people responsible for the huge human trafficking racket in Chicago.
There are collectibles in this game but they aren’t your average collectibles. Your effort in getting a collectible is rewarded almost immediately. For example, when you collect one briefcase, you get a brief insight into the human trafficking racket but collect them all and you get a special mission. Prevent a crime? If your reputation is at it’s highest level, you will be well known around the city and people will think twice about reporting you to the police.
You can also get rewarded in other ways for completing a certain number of optional side quests such as new weapons, new abilities and etc. And all in all, each of these little quests are totally maneagable. It’s like ten briefcases, ten recordings, 20 crime preventions and so on and so forth. They can be done if you really care. As opposed to gather 100 and something Riddler trophies just to beat Riddler’s ass. Honestly, if I was batman and Riddler made me collect that many trophies, I’d have shot him in the face.
CONCLUSION
Anyways, coming back to Watchdogs in 2017 was actually a pleasant surprise. I actually enjoyed my time with it and it really made me think about why it did so poorly back when it first released.
The game isn’t a bore and it’s a first entry to a new series. People’s expectations were so high that I think it was impossible for this game to ever reach. It really reminded me of The Dark Knight Rises. Everyone was thinking this was going to be the greatest movie of all time and instead, everyone shat on it. The movie had its mistakes definitely but to think of it prerelease so highly and then shitting on it because it didn’t meet your high expectations? That’s ridiculous.
And that’s how I feel about this game. If it didn’t have such high expectations, maybe it wouldn’t have been of GTA 5 fame but I think it would have been done a lot better. The visuals aren’t what they were when showed at E3 but people fail to realize that sometimes game developers have to take something away to add something more, if that makes sense.
This game isn’t as beautiful as it was at E3 but it’s still pretty nice looking. Had this game looked like Ride to Hell: Retribution, then definitely, by all means, forget it.
I honestly believe that this game just happened to be a victim of the hate bandwagon just because I personally know people that shat on this game and I know for sure they never played it.
The story is decent. The characters are good. There’s a real theme to this game. The gameplay is absolutely amazing.
Some might say it’s biased for me to say all this about Watchdogs because it was my first ever PS4 game. Believe it or not, I was part of that “This game is boring and forgettable” bandwagon when I first beat it. However, now that I really gave it a second chance, it suprised me.
I ended up buying the game again on a PSN flash sale and it came with the season pass for 20 dollars and my recommendation would be that if you encounter a similar price for this game, it’s absolutely worth a try.
So from me, Watchdogs get’s an 8…out of 10.