2014's Watch Dogs set you loose in a recreation of Chicago
as Aiden Pearce, a guy who could hack and control virtually
anything in his open world with a few taps on his phone.
The idea of instantly taking control of your surroundings was irresistible to millions of players
and it's heading out west to the home of tech the San Francisco bay area
but before we go there we are visiting Ubisoft Montreal
the development home of Watch Dogs 2
There's a lot to discover about our new hacker hero Marcus Holloway
and the new ways that he can control and influence his interconnected surroundings
to find out more we asked the creator's themselves
about the real world locations they chose to recreate
and how you'll be able to hack into it
one of the things we pushed a lot more is hacking. People like the idea
I think the grand promise of controlling an entire city is so being painted
it sparks the imagination of people
think people wanted to do so many different things with it
that we wanted to continue to push forward the second game
that's why Watch Dogs 1 was pointing at something pressing about them
and Watch Dogs 2 when you point at something
you can either press the button and lock into it
and then you have more options to remote control
decide what you want to do with that object
and combine those possibly with other to make more creative to lift up of it
When we started looking at the feedback for Watch Dog 1
It was clear that driving was polarizing
some people like it, some people didn't like it
and want everybody to be able to have fun while dirving
to drive where they wanted to drive without hitting walls all the time
being in control of their vehicles but keep up the fact that every vehcile should feel different
every type of vehcile should feel different
and you should add depth and mastered in driving
as you would in any other video game mechanic
Can you hack other car while you're driving
Yes, for sure so right now while you're driving you can hack
you can even deploy your drones and hack into
and remotely connect to your drones from a different point of view
you can… you can shoot which is something a lot of gamers ask as I said
you know what I want and that's the way I want to play
you know I have gun why can't I should while I'm in a car, ok so now you can
Watch Dogs 2 focuses on Marcus, a young hacker with a huge axe to grind with the system
thanks to being framed for a crime he didn't commit
and as he takes on the system of control that now dominates the game's bay area
He'll get a lot of help from a lot of friends
Marcus Holloway, you're goona hear this a lot said he's a gifted hacker
he's somebody very self made
he's actually a really brilliant sort of charismatic figure
and I think it's actually a lot part that I love about the character
is that he's kind of person that people will rally around
You start off small right Marcus Holloway just join to DedSec
and DedSec needs to fight this war against Blume
which represents all the companies in Silicon Valley
and as well as the bay area for San Francisco
and they quickly realize that need to have a certain amount of horsepower
to pull off what they need to do
so when they go on that journey it's all about like spreading the word
like showing truths about certain companies certain technologies
what's great about is it makes it possible for us to explore a lot different stories
so it's not just a revenge story or something like that
it's more like okay what about like the social media regarding the next election
Can I dig into that and show how social media can impact our choices
it's like what's going on in your life right now with the election in United States
or in complete opposite and that talking about the evolution of AI
and stuff like that with company called liked Tidis
and every time you do something and expose that to the people
you get followers it makes you elated to level up
We started realizing okay well you know... we also want to talk about hackers as a community
we wanted to adress them as being people that work together
the aspect of Dedsec of the communtiy that we have comes about through that
that they have to work together in order to accomplish and it cannot just be done alone.
it's definitely not linear narrative but there are some key beats in the story want you to hit
so there is a I guess operantions you can just find in the world and doing any order
and then there is a operantions that will lead you to that key moment
and then because their narrative continuity you know you need to hit that to have different operation
but mainly we unlock a lot of parallel and you decide the order you want to do them
we're going away from some of those element that we had
like hacking the tower will give you something and all that
that'll be more world exploration and our narrative all being in a App
call the DedSec App which is basically all the stories you find are unlocked
and you can do them in any order so the game structure is going to change
I mean dramatically from Watch Dogs 1 to Watch Dogs 2
Everything you do is kind of gives you followers in the world
so we didn't want to say do these things
and this order in order to get the amount of followers
you need to tackle the problem instead we're saying everything is your followers
and if you want to do puzzle on the size you can do
if you do online like cooperation with other players you can do as well
if you don't want to do a certain main narrative story operation can copmletely dodge it
and still finish what you have to do for the game
We, here UbiBlog, live and work in the bay area
so seeing San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Oakland, and
Marin County transformed into a dynamic open world sandbox is something of a dream come true.
but what can we do in Watch Dogs 2's version and how does it measure up against the real thing?
so we have I think it's smething like a hundred and fifty things that we wanted to make sure we had like key landmarks
I'm not going to run you through all of them
but it's not just Coit Tower, Sutro Tower and Golden Gate
and reality is I think even people who live in the bay are going to discover things in the game
that are actually reflection of things that existed in the real bay area.
Obviously it's a great city for driving because if you know the iconic hills and slopes for sure
but then also because kind of roads you have in Oakland, San Francisco, marin county is very different
The one thing that was noticeable in one of our scouting trip was the amount of construction
and with construction we had a lot of cranes and that can I triggered
I guess a need for us to use that as a gameplay tool and especially being a hacker well
you can hack it so it went well into your philosophy of remote control ingredients.
so our current designed for fast traveling is you can fast travel to any of your HQ or any of the shops around city
and since we have a lot of shops means we basically allow you to fast travel very easily around the world
It is intrigued as we are by its stories and setting the most immediately striking thing about Watch Dogs 2
is how different its action from the first game
key to this is Marcus's fluid context-sensitive parkour
but it turns out that's just the start of what's ahead
Definitely, the parkour is more evolution of what Aiden had in the first game
it's not about making implying everywhere all the time
I think it's more and ideal like you want to present a character with a certain flow
that continues into everything he does.
He is younger more athletic more daring more intuitive to dangerous stuff
so I think when he moves it's worthwhile to see that flow in a natural way
but then when it continues into the acting you want to continue to feel that flow, right?
you don't want to point to something press the button
point and you control it and you can continue having ideas
so even if you crossed another player you continue within minutes
It's more about this flow to make sure everything rolls naturally.
The thunder ball is really cool weapon
so what we're doing with melee is we're keep a contextual melee as in Watch Dogs 1
but we want to be more granular so you don't have to take down people lethally
so you can have various degree of takedowns be keeping a very fast effective mainly system
but try to combine it with the fact
that Marcus is a very fast character very agile character
who can change it more naturally in your movement
All our misssions are 360 meaning there is a goal. There's a problem, an objective you need to do something
and then you can approach this problem anyway you want
you know you can be combat stealth or as a hacker
there's a two thing that in design and we wanted to push with acting
first one was being more analog which means make sure each element
can be controlled in different ways
so you really want to make sure for example when you point the car can lock into it
and then you can accelerate steer left right backward There using foot on top of each other
so it almost feel like you're controlling a car from a distant perfectly
so you can do that every car around you
then at same time you have those gadget control like everywhere that are sticking to everything
one of them is more destructive the others more stealth taser like
so you can play the way you want
so players start having "What if" moment, right?
I can stick stuff into everything?
Can I try a bomb into the front of the car?
Can I turn that bomb into a proximity trigger and then accelerate the car from a distant then throw it
like a moveable bomb into six persons in a row?
The answer to that is yes
Can I controll my fly airliner into the air and stick bomb to that
and see what happens to that did it work? Yes
Can you lose the flying drone?
Yes, but you can re-craft it on the fly
Crafting an object is like it's a cooldown.
They're like the character can recraft after a certain amount of time.
so we don't want to create that feeling where oh my god my precious flying drone
I don't want to take risk with it
it's quite the other way around . Go try something out
so the more fan you get through DedSec the more followers you get
that give you the research points
to invest in hacking in developer all your hacking skills
we're adding 3D printing so you can print your weapons
you can print your remote control jumper, your quadcopter, your drawing.
We want to make sure that every mission in the game
we don't force you down as to a certain style
so any mission in the game you can play full stealth or full ghost
which dosen't mean not using hacking and which doesn't mean not using weapons
but we have for example it taser weapons, slienced pistols
and that support to ghost play style
and you have a lot of hacks you can do that will help you infiltrate areas stealthy
we have the aggressor style which is basically full gun blazing
and then we're adding a lot of different hacks and weapons and customizable weapons
for the player to do this
and even the drone can help you be aggressor
for example we have drones that you can upgrade to deploy some explosive
that's the way you want to do it
and the first style what we call the "Trickster"
which is relying heavily on hacking oftentimes you don't even go in the danger area
you can stay outside use your drone use your acting and infiltrate the area through that
play with people manipulate the eye and get to your objective
often times without even setting foot in the mission land
one of the things we're adding to Watch Dogs is what we call network hacking
when you get into that mode you can see through walls
and you can see in the entire area all the hackable ingredients
so that way if I'm in front of a wall I can go network hacing
I can see a camera behind it, I can see a computer behind it, I can see a car or someone
I can hack that person, or I can have that thing through the wall
In contrast with lone wolf narrtive of first Watch Dogs
community and cooperation will be major themes in Watch Dogs 2
and that's reflected in your ability to get help not just from other players
but from the Bay area citizens as well
When you start the game you can just meet another DedSec friend anywhere in the city
so I can be a complete stranger
but you know they are are part of DedSec and you know they are allies
and you have a contact list in your phone and you can actually jump in game of your friends
so you can actually provoked that situation with someone you know
and then go co-op if you want to
and if player don't want that they can turn this off you know
There's a whole set of missions that are meant to be done and co-op
so it's really a new layer we are adding to the whole open world at the Watch Dogs 2
Can you still invade other players games and greet them?
Yes. We're bringing back
that hacking was the most popular online gameplay we had
and now I imagine that with the drone, the RC jumper, as the net hack
so we're actually expanding the mechanics of that with our new toys
so it's going to get it I guess an improvement also in Watch Dogs 2
Watch Dogs 1 was very about mass surveillance
but we really pushed this part. There's not only is about what information is being gathered
but how is that information being used and we basically use the hacker culture
as a way of explaining it to the player
for the reason why it could potentially be detrimental
what these hackers would try and do in order to fight it all these sorts of things
so there's been an evolution of who the hackers are
so there's definitely been a lot of new gameplay elements have been added more to address the situation
and what we've done in there as well to support that
and to sort of crack them into their own stories
Watch Dogs 2 will be available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 15
For more on Watch Dogs 2 and other upcoming Ubisoft game
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