Watch Dogs Twitch Stream Was Insightful

    
Watch live video from Ubisoft on TwitchTV

          Watch Dogs developers appeared on an hour or so long Twitch stream today and gave a ton of info, some old some new. What stood out was the vision, one that encapsulated density and player volition. There was a sense that the world no longer remained a static, unchanged thing.  The ability to traverse with an Assassin's Creed-like parkour while activating hacks in creative, emergent ways, altering the playing field seamlessly in your favor, is refreshing to me. Some may disagree, but the graphics, running on a PS4 at low res, still looked good. The weather effects and the lighting combine to give this digital depiction Chicago an assorted complexion.

  

 ---- Half some fun with it....If you just like blowing [stuff] up, it's cool...

            

          Creative director, Jonathan Morin, and lead game designer, Danny Bélanger gave some interesting insights into the creative/ design process. Chicago was in fact chosen, not solely for its hyper-surveillance, but also for its greater, if theoretical, likely-hood of adopting such a city-wide operating system as ctOS. The multiplayer, then, becomes an extension of the game world's connectivity, thus linking players asynchronously for one-vs-one hacking or in larger, more chaotic four-vs-four matchups, centered on decryption and/or free-roaming.  If you haven't already, take a look at Ubisoft's stream--skipping ahead to around 20-mins in will get you past the rehashed promo videos.

Watch_Dogs Preview

After nearly two years of hype, can Watch_Dogs (Ubisoft's latest open-world outing) hack it?

 

Watch_Dogs, published by Ubisoft, releases on May 27th

     
      I've been keenly interested in Watch Dogs for some time now. The game made its debut at E3 2012 to a floored crowd, anticipation has surged since. What the heck is Watch Dogs? An open-world action-adventure starring Aiden Pearce, a hacker extraordinaire. Yes. It is also touted to be a "true next-gen experience." From what has been shown thus far, I can say that things look assuredly bright for Ubisoft Montreal's latest brain child-- In development since 2009 and hotly anticipated.

HACK IN

       Hack anything, play any way, do anything--well, not exactly a tag, but you get the idea. Grand claims and grander visions align. The preview images and videos for the game show off the many ways that Watch Dogs will attempt to deepen the level of player interaction and choice within the gaming realm. We see the protagonist, Aiden, speeding across the cityscape of Watch Dogs' virtual Chicago. In escape of the authorities, he (the player) slows time and pinpoints from an array of options, which include ground spikes to steam pipes, the ability to hack an oncoming draw bridge. With his pursuers in tail, Aiden initiates the hack and darts across the raising bridge just in time to cutoff the cops. 

         How? The city--Chicago--is connected. CtOS, a city wide operating system, functions to monitor and control wireless, interconnected facets--both seemingly public and private. And as such, Aiden Pearce can hack the CtOS systems and gain control over many of the cities networked components. These include the ability to raise guard rails—for cover in combat, short circuit breaker boxes, activate searing steam pipes and, as has been seen innumerable times, hack NPC's cellphones and private networks. Though a morality system is nowhere to be found in the upcoming title, Ubisoft's creative minds want players to be wholly aware of their actions, choosing to forgo the stale and limited reaches of a binary morality bar, instead opting to reflect the consequences of player action within the dynamics of the city itself.