You won’t be seeing the same thing twice in Ubisoft Montreal’s Watch Dogs according to animation director Colin Graham.
In a post on the Ubiblog, Graham stated that, “You’re hacking people. You’re responding to crimes. You can rescue people if they’re trapped in their cars in gunfights. You can cause people to panic and they will see your face on TV and recognize you and call the cops. You can take their phone and smash it. All this is fully integrated into the system so they’re not just cardboard cut-outs or mannequins. They interact with you.
“You will never see the same thing twice, guaranteed. Your experience is unique. You go around this corner and the ten people that are there will be ten completely different people. Ten different profiles, ten different backgrounds, different actions, different combinations of actions.”
Rather than following pre-determined commands, the citizens of Chicago will act and react depending on what you do. “That’s the next-gen approach to creating a living city. It’s all simulated.
“If you pull out your gun, what level of reaction do they go to then? Some people will react to your gun and others will react to the people that are panicking. They haven’t seen you. They don’t know what’s causing it. But they do know something’s up.”
Hilariously, the delay helped in refining the animation for protagonist Aiden Pearce’s thumbs. “We animated Aiden’s thumb movements so he’s better at hacking. For example, when he hacks a tower, you’ll see he clicks on the screen properly with his thumb. We didn’t have that quite right before.”
Watch Dogs will be out on May 27th for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4 and PC.
