Watch_Dogs

Wanted to add in that, as a nerdy black guy with overall liberal-leaning politics who is named Marcus and a massive fan of cyberpunk, I actually hated Watch_Dogs 2 Marcus. I always felt like the story was trying to pander to me as opposed to having a narrative it actually cared to tell.

I would rather have Aiden Pierce and for them to double down on all his unpleasant elements and fully explore them more in the story instead of just letting people interpret it like that if they wish. The problem with Aiden, IMO, is that they don't go far enough with him. Marcus meanwhile always felt like something made to appeal to "the youths" and especially irritated me since it felt more driven by agendas & marketing as opposed to it being a story this group felt passionate about.

To compare to The Assassin's Creed franchise, which I once loved, I got more and more invested in it because they actually seemed to be trying to say something with the existentialist themes. Hell, it's what introduced me to it as a concept and helped point me in a direction that's further helped sort a lot of feelings and things I had for the longest of time but couldn't make sense of. That was more meaningful and entertaining to me.

I feel that trying to create a protagonist that's relatable is a flawed angle to come at things from. Instead, focus on creating a protagonist who is compelling first and foremost. As for what makes a protagonist compelling, I think whoever is in charge of that side needs to ask what compels them first and foremost then figure out how to market that to others.

Like I said in the Jim Sterling thread:

Aiden is a dumbass. And the issue with continuing with Aiden is that... his story, dumb as it is, is done. Aiden has no other goal that "baton criminals coz it makes him feel good" He's fully aware of the darker nature of CTOS, but he doesn't give a fuck, and in fact his entirely dependent on it for his vigilantism (to which he's addicted). He sure as hell ain't gonna fight the man over it.

The natural character to follow would've been Raymond Kenney / T-Bone. He actually has a stake in the wider narrative, AND on top of that has some pathos on his own actions having already caused massive collateral damage.

Uh....

We DID continue with Raymond. He's the star of the game-length DLC called "Bad Blood." I didn't much care for it because Raymond Kenny is a terribly uncool guy who doesn't have much depth to his character. What you see is what you get.

Part of the problem with Aiden Pierce is the fact that he's a very good character but I don't actually think the game has any desire to explore a dark and twisted hypocrite vigilante. They wanted someone much more market friendly and we got it in Marcus.

I love Marcus and the Dead_Sec scrip kiddies. Sadly, the game felt very low stakes. I'm not even sure why the villain is someone we're supposed to hate. For having us have a bunch of fake followers? For stealing data? We fight the a bunch of drug lords and the Church of Scientology—either would have made better enemies.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 24th 2020 at 9:15:18 AM

It's more a side story that covers his background and link to some dude from the base game.

I mean an actual follows up on the ending where T-Bone decides to actually fight Blume.

True but I don't think Raymond has the charisma for it. That's just me.

I wish they hadn't killed Clara, she is way above Kenny on my list of favorite Watch_Dogs characters.

Well yeah, okay, Clara would be best.

But I still find Raymond more interesting than Aiden.

Aiden is boring, and flat. He wants to fight crime. And he's also an idiot (as covered above). But void of his revenge quest which he's too dumb to figure out, Aiden has no motivations beyond "Fight criminals coz it gets me hard".

He gives no shit about CT-OS. He doesn't even really give a shit about the crimes he's stopping. Heck, while the story around Aiden is interesting - how he alienates his own family rhrough is obsession (one of the better part of the first game's story), Aiden himself is pretty much a static character through it. Aiden learns nothing from the plot, for good or for bad. The biggest change is that now that his sister and Nephew have been forced to drop all ties to him and flee their life on the run, it's left Aiden with nothing else than his batman-esque obsession.

T-Bone I actually find more interesting since he's not a raging asshole for 90% of the game. And Bad blood does show us the darker side of him - the people he killed in the 2003 blackout. I think there's an interesting story there for a guy who wants to fight the monster he's himself created, but at the same time knows from experience that pulling the plug will get a lot of people dead. There's a genuinely interesting dilemma there.

Aidan's primary issue is that his stated goals and actions don't correlate. Aidan doesn't want to work with Damian, because their last job went poorly. Fine, makes sense at a glance. But then Damian reveals that he wants Aidan to help him to figure out who crippled him and killed Aidan's niece. Aidan still absolutely refuses to cooperate with Damian, until Damian kidnaps Aidan's sister. Then Aidan finally agrees to work with Damian while he tries to free his sister. Damian shows how evil his plan was by forcing Aidan to investigate the people Aidan was already planning on investigating.

But Aidan can't be blackmailed into doing the thing he already wanted to do without some backup, right? Luckily, while Aidan is plotting against the person he shares a common goal with (Damian), he hires a fixer (Jordi) who has no loyalty to Aidan at all. Jordi shows his complete lack of loyalty by getting Aidan a job working for The Club as a fixer (that early game mission).

So Jordi employs you to work for the people that killed your niece, and you'd rather work with him than with an old partner? Sure Damian is a jackass himself, but seeing as he only wants you to do the thing you were already planning to do, you're not out anything by willingly cooperating.

"Damian, I don't want to work directly with you because I'm still salty. But... I will agree that we should both investigate separately and share the information we find." - Reasonable Aidan saves his sister from being kidnapped

A lot of the flaws mentioned above aren't actually flaws above.

• Aiden believes the second hacker who detected them at the hotel is the person who sent a hit on him and his niece. He is trying to track down Maurice Vega down so he can find out who hired him. He certainly thinks SOMEONE involved in organized crime is involved but that's a big tent in Chicago.
• I actually find Aiden's hypocrisy and self-righteousness interesting. He thinks he's a hero but destroys the lives of everyone around him. Basically, that this is as much TAXI DRIVER as it is THE DARK KNIGHT. I think at least some of the developers are aware of this as I got a bunch of likes from writers for my essay but I don't think Ubisoft approved.
• Aiden flat out deflects any and all blame for his actions on other people, up to and including Damien. This is part of his refusal to own up to his own responsibility for what happened.So I can buy that he flat out hates Damien because he blames him for something that's his fault.
  • Damien is also incredibly unstable and dangerous after all as well.
• I really would have liked a Watch_Dogs sequel that dealt with Aiden eventually having some of the illusions about himself and his War on Crime torn down. The fact he's besties with Jordi (a HITMAN), is something easy to call out.

By contrast, my major issues with WD 2 is the game feels so incredibly low stakes by comparison. There's no one genuinely EVIL in the game that you can latch onto as a major villain.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 25th 2020 at 8:19:51 AM

It also depends on what story you're trying to tell. Is Watch_Dogs a drama about a not-quite-ex-criminal taking revenge when his criminal life gets a little close to home and discovering that you can't murder your way to happiness? Or is it a story about corporate control of media and the horrible things that can happen when we surrender our autonomy to unaccountable masters? The game grinds its gears the hardest when these two parts collide.

Watch_Dogs2 decided to tell the latter story and ditch the confusion, which makes it a purer experience, but they also pulled most of the drama and tension out of the situation by having it be a bunch of goofy hijinx with the Scooby Gang. The other mistake was keeping the open-world third-person-shooter gameplay, so these crusaders for digital justice and freedom of information can go out and commit mass murder for larfs.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 25th 2020 at 11:28:23 AM

I wondered if they should have done the Hand Wave thing and said all the guns had rubber bullets.

Well, here's the thing... if you hack the FBI and put all their dirty secrets out into the public, they will send men with very big guns to take you away. You can hide from them, or fight back with your own arsenal of guns. If you do that, they keep sending more men with guns until you are dead. They don't give up because you embarrassed them enough.

This is what broke immersion for me in WD2. Using "rubber bullets" won't fix it. When you shoot back at the cops, especially the feds, you lose. Period. There's no coming back from that.

That's Gameplay and Story Segregation. You're not SUPPOSED to shoot at cops.

You shoot at Rent A Cops and stealth your way.

The first game had the balls to make your open world actions have consequences, though. Where'd that go?

Of course, Aiden is an idiot. He's in a hotel of Chicago's biggest crimeboss. Who everyone knows owns the hotel coz he hosts galas there for the mayor and everyone in town. In person.

And Aiden can't add 2 and 2 together and goes "But whoooo could get a murder boner about me hacking into the hotel????"

While true, I also note that Aiden may be Pagan Min.

"I used her death to justify doing all the things I wanted to do anyway."

I'd love that to be true, but that runs counter to all the time Aiden gets annoyed at the hoops he has to jump through to get his next "clue".

That might be true for Aiden's Batman fantasy about beating up criminal.

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 25th 2020 at 4:07:31 AM

Ehh, it doesn't sound like too much of a logic problem. He wouldn't want to directly against The Biggest Goddamn Fish until he was really sure it was him specifically.

Besides, Aiden is only a little into his quest when he meets Lucky Quinn and Lucky Quinn hires him out for jobs.

Aiden doesn't really think, But for Me, It Was Tuesday applies to Lucky.

Which is, yes, him misreading his own importance that Lucky would recognize him and care.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 25th 2020 at 1:18:22 AM

I still think the sister, Nikki, would have been the better protagonist trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Play as Aiden for awhile at the start with ALL THE ABILITIES unlocked and get that sweet taste of power. Aiden then gets kidnapped with Nikki getting his phone and she tries to solve who took Aiden and uncovered the Merlot job, who killed her niece, and all of these other mysteries along the way. With the added bonus of gameplay level ups being Nikki slowly figuring out the phone hacks and how to work everything. We also have a nice layer of character development of going from Soccer mom for her traumatized son to a badass hacker taking down criminals and mob bosses. Taking a character out of their comfort zone and letting them grow and change and harden into stronger people is more interesting than stagnant Aiden.

It would massively solve a number of the plot and character problems the first one had. The plot is too open because it feels like we know a ton of the details or can piece the details together rather easily. Contrastingly, Nikki isn't aware of the Merlot job let alone ANY of the Hacker Underground which allows her knowledge to deepen and grow across the game. As for Aiden, his character had nowhere to go. He doesn't really repent or grow in any meaningful way. And since he's already deep 'In' the world of CTOS and the Hackers, his knowledge depth doesn't feel like it grows since he pretty much knows everything around him. As pointed out multiple times, he becomes a more monstrous and bigger dumbass the longer the game goes.

Perhaps for a different game but even if we give Nikki all the gameplay related skills of Aiden for an open world game, there's not much compelling about her storyline.

I mean, the whole reason we're discussing Aiden is because 100% of the people on these forums agrees he's an enormous pile of shit. He's somewhere between an Antihero and Villain Protagonist ala Edward Kenway, only with computers instead of a pirate ship.

Nikki would be, "Someone killed my daughter and I'm out FOR REVENGE."

See, that's the thing. When I played WD, I really enjoyed Aiden's character because the game had the balls to have him suffer genuine consequences for being such an obsessive dickwad. Then I read criticism of the game and realized that a lot of people didn't like that, apparently hoping for a more heroic character.

I admit he comes across as rather monotone, but that is kind of the point. As I said, this seems to have come from Ubisoft being unable to commit to making a protagonist who is indisputably on the black end of the moral spectrum. The game keeps wanting to play him up like a savior of the people, at least if you take the "good" path in the sandbox, yet it is not reflected at all in the story.

I think there's more to it.

WD 1 suffers from the same issue that Assassin's Creed 1 does. The meta narrative is way more interesting than the main plot.

The main plot is kind of a cookie cutter revenge plot. Even the element of the hero being questioned about taking their revenge too far at the cost of what they love is... kinda played out. Then you have the side narrative, given early through side quest, about Blume and the shit they are getting up to. And for most of the game one kinda wonders when the two threads will intersect. You have the protagonist usurping the system. Surely soon he'll turn from his personal revenge story and fight the greater evil.

Nah, he doesn't. And while that's narratively an interesting decision. And I admire that the plot has the gall to stick to its gun and never have Aiden learn his mistake, instead having him lose his family to his obsession, it can be frustrating for someone who's really fallen for the meta narative to see nothing comes of it. Add the aforementioned Captain Obvious Reveal which makes for a kind of unsatisfying finale. The game ends with Aiden saying he's got no idea what Damien wanted. That he's got no regrets. But at the same time not providing any sense of closure. Aiden is unphased about his sister and nephew leaving his life. He's got no other aspiration than "welp. gonna go baton some muggers I guess".

Then the credits play reminding you of the much more interesting metaplot.

Actually, the biggest flaw of WATCH_DOGS 2 for me is the fact that I don't actually care about stopping Blume. Yes, they're gathering a bunch of data and using it to manipulate people to make advertising revenue. Frankly, that lacks "sexiness" as villainous plots go and certainly there's a reason why everyone remembers the human trafficking angle of Watch_Dogs better than virtually every other part of the game.

Raymond Kenny goes into his elaborate Conspiracy Theorist rants about the evils of the system and how it can be hacked—which isn't necessary because we've been hacking it left and right with the ending being "Damien destroys Chicago" but if we're going to be hackers exploiting system vulnerabilities to fight crime—I can't say I care much about the evils of system vulnerabilities. Its an inherently hypocritical stance.

"You're a hacker, you can't condemn people stealing data."

I wonder how much of that is bad writing versus very good writing that Aiden is The Sociopath.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 25th 2020 at 8:53:56 AM

Neither of those make for an engaging protagonist. So either way, it's splitting hair.

Watch_Dogs in some ways remind me of Assassin's creed 3 (as well as the first one), in that it has ideas that are cool and interesting from a pure writing point of view, but when translated into a game don't work. AC 3 has those ideas about shaking our views of the Templars and Assassin, and deconstructing the reactive, avenging hero like Ezio was. And while that's cool in paper. Once put into the game that sort of translates into Connor coming off as rude, whiny, entitled, and ultimately kind of a tool. Because the writing, and a lot of the framing around the writing (both gameplay, marketing, and franchise history) don't quite Gel.

Aiden I feel has the same thing. Like, sure, maybe Aiden's a sociopath, or a deconstruction. But the end result doesn't gel into someone compelling to follow.

I can say 100% surely I do not even remember that plot point being in the game at all till you mentioned it. So, so much for that assertion.

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 25th 2020 at 12:05:00 PM

That's not quite what the issue was. I don't mind characters that are dickwads or morally gray and aren't quite heroic. Choices make characters and they're not 'choices' if characters always have to choose the 'good' thing. The problem was that the game never seemed quite self-aware enough to realize he was a massive piece of shit? Like, it's aware he's not 'good' exactly but it never acknowledges the depths of that utterly amoral and apathetic sociopath he displays.

For example, early on, Aiden is visiting his niece's grave and mourning and Nikki, the child's ACTUAL mother, is surprisingly mature and doesn't blame Aiden at all for what happened. But she is sitting on Lena's grave BEGGING Aiden to leave the case alone because all that hacking is what got Lena killed in the first place... and he just ignores her. And I feel like the game is trying to play it as some 'He won't give up the good fight' kinda moment but when Nikki (and Jackson) is probably one of the characters most damaged from a lot of Aiden's actions in the game... Yeah, he's a jackass.

Then there's that scene where Aiden goes to rescue Jackson and we have a horrified moment of Jackson seeing Aiden slaughter the entire building of people and... we go nowhere with that. Because going anywhere with it would require Aiden to self-reflect on his own choices and actions. And maybe listen to someone for once.

Or the half-assed 'Bedbug survived' rewrite at the last second. Aiden didn't give a shit about Bedbug.

I don't think rewriting the first game from Nikki's perspective would be 'about revenge' or anything. Even as is, Nikki is probably one of the kindest and least revenge driven characters in the series. It would probably be far less of an action shooty game than what we got as I can't see her mowing down a room full of gangsters or mercs, but I think the narrative progression there of a more mystery thriller story could have been stronger with her and a couple of other tweaks.