Watch_Dogs

So, as I've recently come into a large sum of money (some of which I'll be spending on PS 4 games after my brother bought one), I'm thinking of picking this up. Is it a good idea, or should I pass on it?

Aiden was about the furthest thing from a blank slate. He is a very clearly defined character with his own motivations, his own reactions, and his own operating methods. Not only does he not allow the player to make his choices for him, he even goes so far as to mandate certain specific resolutions, such as despite the game featuring a mechanic for guiding a helpless person to safety in a heavily fortified installation that gets used multiple times, when Aiden is rescuing Jacks, you MUST kill everyone - absolutely EVERYONE - because Aiden has decided that's how he's going to approach it, and f*ck you, player, if you think you're going to tell him how to do things.

You are not here to put yourself in Aiden's shoes. Aiden is walking in his own shoes, he's calling the shots, and the player's just along for the ride. The player has flexibility to decide how to approach Aiden's objectives that he decided on without your input - and then, the player only has that flexibility when Aiden permits it and doesn't mandate a specific way you are required to approach - but only at one specific point after the credits is the player offered any sort of choice in Aiden's actions.

Aiden is not a blank slate. Not by a longshot. He makes it very clear that this is HIS story, not YOURS. He is a thoroughly pre-defined character. The problem is, he's not a particularly interesting pre-defined character.

edited 6th Oct '14 8:20:16 AM by TobiasDrake

I'd give it a pass.

Ultimately it plays like a GTA clone, has an awful main character and pretty dumb plot.

Sure the supporting characters are interesting and there's potential for it to not suck but they're not interesting enough and that potential is wasted. I cannot in good faith recommend this game to anyone.

edited 6th Oct '14 9:17:27 AM by LeGarcon

Alright then.

Or WELL defined as pointed out in blatant hyprocracy and contradictions between some of his actions in game. Damien is a bad guy because he kidnaps Nicole until he gets the information he wants from her, but he never seems to torture her in anyway, allows her to talk with Aiden periodicallly, and we know he allowed the guards to talk to her and bring her blankets.

But, Aiden is a good guy, even though our very first scene of him, he brutally beats a man up to get information, kidnaps him from his family (we later find out that they themselves have been taken from him, but that's beside the point), allows Jordi to torture him off screen and even suports his joking nature about it, and said torture even lasts longer than Damien's of Nikky. The ending even remarks on Maurice being a horribly broken man by everything that's happened... but never once does our protagonist question that may have broken him more than Maurice and other's already did. WTF?

I mean, I don't exactly have a fault with that in of itself since that creates a great contrast between Aiden and Damien and certainly opens a wonderful opportunity for the narrative to comment on the characters and prompt change... but no one even vaguely seems to be aware of the contradiction and Aiden almost sounds like he wants to be a champion for the 'victims' like Maurice in the ending, blatantly unaware tht HE did this to Maurice in the first place.

Right.

Aiden drives the plot too much - to the extent of forcing the player to do things the way he wants them done - to work as a Blank Slate.

At the same time, he's too bland, emotionless, and self-contradictory to be a compelling protagonist in his own right.

So finally got around to beating this game. I rather liked the ending actually. Sort of felt nice knowing that Aiden and his entire story and tragedy was just a meaningless footnote if even that. I really couldn't tell you why but that made me pretty happy.

I like that his entire world came crashing down around him. His family cut ties with him, Clara is dead and it's his fault, his release of info ultimately did nothing. Because at the end of the day he's just a madman with a gun and a phone, he's not some great hero or anybody of importance. He's a criminal.

I did sorta like the final mission though, I think it would have been more fun if I had been fighting fixers instead of cops. I never could bring myself to hurt a police officer. Hell I was forced to shoot one in the knee that mission and I felt terrible about it.

Might try doing the T-Bone DLC, I've heard that's much better.

edited 31st Oct '14 6:15:42 AM by LeGarcon

The funniest thing for me in that massive police chase was when I sniped a cop shooting from a helicopter in the knee. He fell down and probably splattered on the pavement, but it still counted as a disabling rather than a kill. XD

Also, how it feels to go lethal on the cops as a last resort:

edited 31st Oct '14 6:37:53 AM by VolatileChills

This game was pretty good at organic moments of awesome.

My favorite point was on a Criminal Convoy where the target was being escorted by cops and, thankfully, it was NOT That One Stage where you have to nonlethally take down a target being escorted by cops. I'm generally reluctant to kill cops in games unless my character is SUPPOSED to be an irredeemable scumbag, and Aiden doesn't seem that type, so my usual tactic of shooting grenades at cars until everybody's dead wasn't going to work out for me.

So instead, I sat on my motorcycle, blew up just the target car with an IED, then booked with police hot on my tail. At the end of the alley, I raised a blocker and slid perfectly between the posts as the pursuing squad cars smashed into it, ending the chase. It was glorious. A friend who'd been with me at the time joked with me about how stupid it was that I was trying to beat a police convoy with a motorcycle, which I agreed with because I don't always make sound tactical decisions and I know it. At that moment, I boasted, "THAT is how you beat a police convoy with a motorcycle."

edited 31st Oct '14 7:47:41 AM by TobiasDrake

My issue with all of this in the ending is that it presents it as a dramatic Hero Origin Story. So, instead of realizing 'I'm a fucking asshole' from all this tragedy, its blamed on other people and Aiden resolves to stop this tragedy from happening to other people... The spark for this speech is Aiden commenting on how broken the assassin who killed his daughter is... EVEN THOUGH AIDEN IS THE ONE WHO BROKE HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE MAKING HIS SPEECH IRRELEVANT.

The assassin was broken long before Aiden ever met him.

Not exactly like Aiden particularly help in kidnapping him and torturing him off-screen. Not even Damien tortured Aiden's sister.

WHAT HE SAID. Go find all 8 burner phones, THEN tell me Aiden broke that guy.

Maurice was a wreck before Aiden found him; I have found all the Burnder Phones, but he's even worse off in the end after spending THE ENTIRE game being tortured by Jordi. There is NO WAY Aiden didn't know Jordi was torturing him. He's a psychotic wreck in that last scene. How dare Aiden swear vengeance on people who make victims like Maurice when AIDEN DID EXACTLY THAT. He's on a Moral High Horse that he needs to be brought down from for most of the game because its very clear that he sincerely believes he hasn't done much wrong. The entire game is riddled with similar issues.

Watch Dogs is a cautionary tale how good writing may not not make an bad game good, bad writing always makes an otherwise good game bad.

The writers just didn't have a coherent vision for the character. Aidan Pearce kills people for his own satisfaction rather than justice, treats his friends and family like dirt and ends causing more destruction than any of the games villains. And all of this would of be fine, had the writers actually been conscious of his actions and made the story reflected it. But alas they still treated as him as 'edgy' but still ultimately heroic character. I really hope the development team just had conflicting visions because if not ubisoft has some seriously messed up values.

People have been saying that Aidan shouldn't be in watch dogs 2 ((and all probability they are going to do just that) but just having him unceremoniously killed off is just dealing with the symptom and not the cause.

What I think would be good is if they gave you a new playable hacker vigilant character and kept Aidan around as a sort of quasi-villainous mentor would pop in occasionally to give in game tutorials and missions. Keep the character the same just give the player the option to disassociate themselves from his attitude and actions with a younger less jaded protagonist. An ethnic minority or female hacker would make a good contrast to him to him as well, If they feel like being really crazy.

edited 1st Nov '14 5:32:11 AM by joeyjojo

See go with that, but end it with putting a bullet in Aiden's head. Or the option to after some nice finale speech about the ethics of vigilantism and hacking and telling Aiden that he's actually a bad guy.

I agree with this tactic.

I don't think Aiden's really salvageable as a lead protagonist, but at the same time, leaving him out of the game entirely would reek too much of Ubisoft dropping the ball and running rather than trying to fix what's broken, and making him the villain would be DO NOT MAKE YOUR OLD PROTAGONIST THE VILLAIN.

Ultimately, the best thing they can do with Aiden is keep him in the game but shift the focus away from him. Let him keep being the same character he's been, and he'd be perfect for a Jori-esque role as a morally-ambiguous ally and/or mentor figure.

edited 1st Nov '14 7:49:34 AM by TobiasDrake

What about a huge Time Skip, and they make his mute nephew the new protagonist? He idolizes his uncle, tries to be his uncle, realizes his uncle wasn't that good a guy, the moral of Watch_Dogs2.0 is "Be your own man".

ETA: Watch_Dogs2.0 is in JERSEY? Why are they punishing the fans like that?

Watch one of the achievements be "get the clap".

edited 1st Nov '14 12:07:23 PM by CEOIII

I don't know where they're getting Jersey at all. To be honest, a lot of gaming journalism is terrible about backing up their info.

Anyway, why not make Pierce a side-Jordi like character? In the sense that he's not the main antagonist but he comes in and does shit to the plot and almost distracts us from the main goal a bit.

It could also work as a great contrast to Pierce's portrayal in the first game if his actions in the second are EXACTLY the same methods from the first game, but we're seeing it from a second/third party perspective and we have to survive his levels of destruction.

Bonus points if Aiden's chaos creates said new protagonist.

I feel like the arc the Nephew would have to go through to be a protagonist would get a bit muddled. The first of which is his mother; she removes him from Aiden and escapes. She'd probably keep Jackson as far away from the hacking world as she could, not just to keep him from being involved, but for other peoples who would want to find and harm them.

So, to get him to be a hacking protagonist, he'd need to actively betray his mother and... She's been through enough. Her six year old daughter and then kidnapped for god knows how long (Couple of weeks to a month or two???), and then the revelation of Aiden's betrayal comes to light and... She's been through enough. If she wasn't an emotional wreck before (She was very mature with Aiden at Lena's grave and I liked that scene for that reason, but she has been regularly getting therapy), She is now.

Since she was one of the few characters I genuinely liked from the first game, I don't want to see her hurt even more. But, the idea of giving Jackson depth and promoting him to Player Character would be interesting. He'd probably have to be mid-to-late teens at the very earliest. I feel the main issue is that they did nothing with him in the first game; He is silent and shows little reaction to anything Aiden does during the game and throws no thoughts onto the table to build from. I suppose we could just write it off that he's traumatized the entire game, but that feels more like a bad writing excuse her than a legitimate decision.

Started playing the T-Bone DLC. Already infinitely better because of his little backpack face thingy.

Plus he's so much better of a character than Aiden it isn't even funny. Haven't gotten too far yet but I can already tell this will be good.

Actually I thought it would be interesting to give the player the opportunity to romance Aidan as a female hacker back into the side of the angels

There has to be a fanfiction where that happens.

Crime is Aiden's one true love. It's a love/hate relationship.

Sorry, I'd prefer we not have an abusive relationship in video games.

I just started playing it, thanks to a Steam sale. Getting used to the interface and controls is tricky for someone used to the Assassin's Creed series.

I was wondering what the bump was. Enjoy.