Watch Dogs 2 is an open world action adventure from Ubisoft and the successor to Watch Dogs. The game was released on November 15, 2016 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and on November 29, 2016 for Microsoft Windows. In a fictionalized version of the San Francisco Bay Area, the game is played from the perspective of a third person and its open world can be explored on foot or by vehicle.
Players control Marcus Holloway, a hacker who works with the hacking group DedSec to take down the city’s advanced surveillance system called ctOS.
Storyline (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)
After the Chicago events, San Francisco will be the next city to install the ctOS (Central Operating System) that connects everyone to everything. The hacker Marcus Holloway is being punished for a crime he did not commit with the updated ctOS (ctOS 2.0) categorizing him as a suspect.
As the system secretly harms the innocent citizens of San Francisco, he decides to work with the hacking group DedSec to shut down ctOS 2.0 and the company Blume, which is behind it. Marcus joins the hacking group DedSec and works with the hackers Sitara, Wrench, Horatio and Josh and uses their skills to expose corrupt organizations and companies that are using the stolen data of the ctOS staff for their own purposes.
The game begins with Marcus, also known by his hacker alias “Retr0”, running a test that requires him to delete his own ctOS profile. In DedSec, he is made aware of a church called New Dawn that operates as a criminal organization, after which Marcus mainly serves to raise awareness of the hackers’ goals through social media and hacks in order to get enough computers to run Blume to bring down.
Eventually they stumble upon the existence of a subliminal message and Bellwether, a data manipulation program fed with ctOS data by Dušan Nemec, Flower’s CTO, to manipulate world finances and politics. DedSec later succeeds in recruiting Raymond “T-Bone” Kenney, who is determined to fight Blume three years after the attack on the ctOS in Chicago.
With his help, DedSec succeeds in uncovering the corruption of the FBI and numerous Silicon Valley companies by hacking their data facilities. When he learned that Blume wanted to install a satellite network to bypass underwater data cables, giving Blume a monopoly on all of the world’s electronic data and exchanges, they infiltrated the launch area of one of the satellites to install a back door. In order to bring down Blume and Dušan for good, Marcus breaks into all of Blume’s international headquarters and ultimately into their headquarters in San Francisco.
There he hacked their servers to expose the existence of Bellwether and Dušan’s corruption. Dušan is arrested for fraud and Blume is under investigation, while DedSec decides to continue their fight against Blume. In an expanded ending scene added in a post-release patch, two unidentified individuals discover that more DedSec cells and hacktivist groups have emerged worldwide in response to the Blume scandal, and it is time to make their own plans put into action.
Gameplay
Similar to its predecessor, Watch Dogs 2 is an action-adventure game with stealth elements. The game is played from a third-person perspective as the protagonist Marcus Holloway, a young hacker. Watch Dogs 2 is set in a fictionalized version of the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Bay Area consists of four different areas: San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, and Silicon Valley, all of which have different characteristics. Marcus has improved acrobatic skills and the ability to run parkour around town.
The player can use various methods to approach the game’s missions, choosing between the aggressive approach, where they defeat opponents with weapons that can be made with a 3D printer, or the player can use the stealth approach where he can evade enemies or temporarily paralyze them with a taser.
Our best friend
However, simply hacking into it blindly does not work: We only have a limited supply of energy via our botnet and have to precisely time traps if we do not want the entire security staff to be alerted by an unconscious agent or an explosion. We mustn’t overdo it either – otherwise the ctOS will cheek back and block us from accessing all systems for a while.
So it is often smarter to sneak silently like a ghost to the goal. However, the cameras are not always sufficient here, because complex hacking processes can only be carried out by hand – or by drone. In order not to endanger Marcus, we therefore send our little helpers into the danger zone.
With jumpers or quadrocopter we can reach the target on the ground or in the air by remote control and steal important data or distract enemies and unlock new access points. Rarely, Marcus actually has to do it himself to steal files or hard drives – then neither drones nor cameras help.
While the hacking initially only requires one click, there are later downright puzzle passages in which we have to connect different nodes with one another. This can be tricky, especially under time pressure or when another hacker is working against us. In general, the hacking mechanics are at the heart of Watch Dogs 2.
The interplay of the possibilities is consistently fun and offers enough freedom to experiment. In one mission, for example, we have to steal a truck from a strictly guarded area and use the individual hacking options alone to maneuver the vehicle comfortably out of the restricted area and onto the road. In moments like this we actually feel like a brilliant hacker, realism left aside.
Hi San Francisco!
This change of scenery actually runs through the whole game and instead of going to the oppressive Chicago we go to the happily sunny San Francisco, where we start our hacker career more or less drunk on the beach. We are Marcus Holloway, a young black hacker who is observed by the hacker collective »Dedsec« and who is finally accepted into our own ranks after we hacked into the ctOS server in the tutorial. And that has to be celebrated!
This change of scenery actually runs through the whole game and instead of going to the oppressive Chicago we go to the happily sunny San Francisco, where we start our hacker career more or less drunk on the beach. We are Marcus Holloway, a young black hacker who is observed by the hacker collective »Dedsec« and who is finally accepted into our own ranks after we hacked into the ctOS server in the tutorial. And that has to be celebrated!
And we mean that literally: When we drive through San Francisco, symbols pop up all around us at any time – on the other hand, even the maps of Assassin’s Creed and Co. appear in places as if they were swept clean.
We can find skins or research points, take taxi missions with the winking name “Driver: San Francisco”, play co-op operations, go shopping, drive races, visit sights (and take selfies in front of them), and hack pretty much anything that doesn’t have a battery on three is empty – cell phones, traffic lights, cars and even manhole covers.
There are also special multiplayer events such as bounty hunts or hacker invasions by other players that appear without prior notice. And of course we also follow some side and main missions, if we get around to it.
GTA5 + Splinter Cell = Watch Dogs 2
And hacking is just one of many possibilities: While it is not a good idea to storm a restricted area with a gun drawn, it is also not impossible if we want to quickly prevent reinforcements from being called. Or we just sneak from opponent to opponent with Marcus, distract them and then silently switch them off one after the other. Or cleverly play the individual factions off against each other – so rush gangsters after gangsters or secretly alert the police and comfortably watch as the officers do our work.
This freedom sets Watch Dogs 2 pleasantly apart from other open-world titles, we can play it like GTA 5 or Splinter Cell, but despite our own skill tree for firearms, sneaking is clearly preferred, hackers simply have it easier.
So if you can’t do anything with the hacking mechanics and don’t enjoy stealth and the puzzling hacking passages, Ubisoft’s open world sequel is also not for you. Because despite the GTA-like open-world appearance, the title remains a rather calm game in which one should proceed prudently.
While we usually restarted a mission on the PS4 or Xbox One as soon as we were discovered, on the PC we don’t let a few opponents dissuade us from our mission. Because thanks to the exemplary adapted mouse and keyboard controls, the firefights, including the cover mechanics, are much more precise and fun on the PC than on the consoles.
In the options, we can really adapt every detail to our personal needs – from the strength of the aiming aid to the mouse sensitivity to a switchable cruise control when driving. Of course, we are also allowed to assign all buttons freely and even separately for running, driving and drone control.
Bottomline
Ubisoft is definitely on the right track. Although you orient yourself more closely to the last GTA representative than the predecessor and also create a better approximation, you also throw in enough of your own ideas that give the game character and even manage to pull away in one point: What the city population here responses and actions are surprising and usually very credible, but prone to repetition after tens of hours.
The script is a success, the 15 main missions tell an exciting, albeit not completely fresh story in the times of Mr. Robot about the influence of megacorporations and the dangers of modern information technology. Fortunately, they don’t always take themselves seriously, which is very good for the generally relaxed and humorous approach of this high-tech adventure playground, without the characters losing their character. It is a shame, however, that the main tasks too often fall back on the same pattern and only vary the scene, the available hack options and the opponents, which also usually have weak AI.
In return, however, you can solve most of the tasks in many ways, from hacking to sneaking to a hail of bullets, whereby the shot mechanics are implemented adequately.
However, Ubisoft still does not quite get out of the “as accessible as possible” drawer: While the main character cannot even actively jump, there is just as much a one-button mechanism for overpowering close combat as for sneaking or in the context of the Parcours elements, with the help of which Marcus overcomes obstacles worth seeing but devoid of any demands.
This and the backdrop, which is noticeable in technical detail with tearing and occasional frame rate drops, despite the very attractive locations, are primarily responsible for the fact that Watch Dogs 2 cannot position itself higher. But since Just Cause 2 I haven’t had so much fun with an open world apart from rock star epics.
Watch Dogs 2 had a lot of potential and raised expectations immensely in advance. The game cannot do justice to that. Too often it seems mixed up and inconsistent. There is a lack of successful staging.
Far too much is assumed, far too little is explained, characters are flat and unconvincing. In terms of play, Watch Dogs 2 can hardly be criticized – apart from the rather monotonous main missions. In general: Watch Dogs 2 has become a good open world action game. But not a real highlight.
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