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One could not be blamed for approaching Watch Dogs 2 with a touch of trepidation. The original Watch Dogs, released for both console generations in 2014, was hailed as a sort of Assassin’s Creed set in the modern day. Given that both were made by Ubisoft, comparisons were to be expected. Watch Dogs reminded me a lot of the first Assassin’s Creed way back in 2006; a repetitive mission structure, random and disjointed activities, dour and undeveloped protagonist, an ambitious yet disjointed story…, but containing the bud of a great idea. That great idea happily came into full bloom in 2009 with the release of Assassin’s Creed 2, and has done so again in Watch Dogs 2.
Moving away from rainy Chicago to sunny San Francisco, the player controls a young and bright-eyed hacker named Marcus Holloway. As opposed to the noir-style revenge motive that drove Aidan Pierce, Marcus is simply looking for fun, adventure— and taking down the technological goliath dominating the City by the Bay. Players learn far more about the Central Operating System (ominously referred to mostly as CTOS) and their hacking antithesis DedSec. DedSec, it turns out, is a bunch of teenagers sitting in a basement on laptops. The storyline, while no great shakes taken as a whole, basically follows several operations against various aspects of the online city’s infrastructure. Genuinely excellent parodies of Silicon Valley and the tech industry abound, from breaking into Nudle’s server room (what on earth could that be referencing?) deleting illegally traded data, to proving how one’s conveniently automated house turns it into a data prison. Side activities are triggered through apps on Marcus’ phone, such as Driver SF (an Uber-like taxi app) and SnapX (a sight-seeing version of SnapChat). DedSec is a realistically passive resistor, focusing much more on leaking information and exposing scandals to create controversy about CTOS, rather than directly attacking it.
While a genuinely believable story, it does however create some contradictions in gameplay. Most of the focus is on hacking various objects or infrastructure in the world, with the assistance of two drones. However, apparently unwilling to venture into total puzzle game territory, the world is also brimming with firearms. While there is nearly always a more sophisticated way to approach an objective, going in guns blazing is often the easiest. It’s frankly impossible to imagine Marcus or any of these other kids gunning down dozens of police officers or FBI agents, but that uninspired gaming style is always left available to those who desire it. It seems Ubisoft was unwilling to blaze a new trail of action gaming and felt the need to drop in components of GTA as well, which is utterly unnecessary.
Watch Dogs 2 improves on its predecessor in almost every way. However, by refusing to truly embrace the new genre they’re trying to create, Ubisoft fails to make Watch Dogs the innovative series it could and frankly should be.
