Ubisoft got candid in a developer Q&A about the upcoming Watch Dogs 2. Here’s some of what we gleaned from the Q&A session.
On how is Watch Dogs 2’s open world different from others: In Watch Dogs 2, players can decide how they approach each situation. They can invest on the skills and tools they want to become either the aggressor, the ghost or the trickster hacker. If they want to play without killing people they have taser weapons and drone tools to do so. If they want to turn people against each other to avoid doing the dirty work themselves they can do that too. They can also use cops to get people arrested instead of neutralizing them. Regardless of how they play, the game will not judge them, letting them decide how far Dedsec is willing to go to take back control. When they seamlessly encounter other players they can continue their fun experiments alongside them.
This freedom of action is what characterizes a systemic open world. We’re building a world that has many different stories to tell. Players can interact with the world at many different levels. They can discover stories in the world and decide which kind of operations they do in order to progress. These choices will define what kind of debates are active in the world narrative. Each Dedsec operation players chose to take on will expose various issues surrounding our hyper-connected way of living. As players discover these operations and expose its secrets to the world, Dedsec will get more followers increasing the amount of people talking about them on the streets. So our world responds narratively to what is being done. They can also encounter other hackers seamlessly adding an all new layer of emergence and possibilities. In the end they get more control, more surprises and more freedom.
On how villain motivations: Technology has become a giant spider’s web of data controlled by the highly complex Central Operating System (ctOS), controlled by Blume and its CTO. Marcus uses hacking as his ultimate weapon to rebel against the establishment which watches us, tracks us, and records us through our purchases, friends, online activity, even the words we type in our search engines. If Marcus is fighting the tools that the establishment uses, the main villains in the game are the people that are providing those tools.
Are you excited for Watch Dogs 2? Let us know!