ThunderPeel2001

The threat of Watch Dogs

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So does anyone have anything positive to say about this game? It looks kind of fun to me and got decent reviews but I don't think I've seen a single comment here from anyone saying they have played and enjoyed the game. I mean, I get that it's the cool thing to hate on AAA games around here but I can't imagine this game is as bad as everyone's making it out to be.

And I really don't understand all the vitriol towards Ubisoft. Sure Uplay sucks but I've had quite a bit of fun with most of the Ubisoft games I've played.

Sorry to poop on everyone's party here but all the negativity in this thread and claims of well liked games being "garbage" is kind of bumming me out.

Edit: Rereading posts from a couple pages back, it looks like some people are enjoying the game, so I guess I'm being a little unfair here.

 

After going back through this thread I think I was being pretty unfair to most of the people here with this post. Most of the arguments and criticisms have actually pretty reasonable and I was just in a shitty mood and posted without thinking. So apologies all around.

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It's kind of funny; I watched the quicklook of the game on Giant Bomb and they basically came up with 3-10 different instances of what would make the hacking interesting. So the mechanics were there, but the interesting ideas on how to use them weren't, at least from the video.

 

Not surprising, I think everyone sort of expected an AC1 kind of situation. Which means I"m really excited for Watch Dogs 2 next year.(that isn't sarcasm)

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I"m really excited for Watch Dogs 2 next year.(that isn't sarcasm)

 

I'll be extremely apprehensive if they do put out a release next year.

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I think everyone sort of expected an AC1 kind of situation. Which means I"m really excited for Watch Dogs 2 next year.

 

In Watch_Dogs_2, Ezio uses an early smartphone invented by Leonardo da Vinci to hack various Templar bosses and then text them, "r.i.p. -_-".

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Not surprising, I think everyone sort of expected an AC1 kind of situation. Which means I"m really excited for Watch Dogs 2 next year.(that isn't sarcasm)

 

Yeah. It's very much a case of it being a test bed game in terms of content. I think that's generally the case with most new IPs though overall. It's rare if ever that someone hits it out of the park on the first try.

 

The premise is interesting and the game play is enjoyable enough. I think where it suffers is in a lot of heavy-handedness when it comes to the writing and a fair amount of the characterisation (based on what I've seen), and the game could of benefited from taking a lead from GTA as a series and had you engaging with NPCs more often as mission givers, Versus solely participants you encounter on the main storyline. There needs to be a lot more connectivity to these people as a whole in my view. Not that I want them to phone me up to go bowling, but more give a rationale to side missions etc. For instance beyond the fact that intercepting/beating up criminals improves your vigilante rating, there's no real explanation given AFAIR and as far as I've gotten as to why you've become a vigilante. Overall I'd say it's a more accessible title than AC1 was (that game was tedious to the max) and there's some interesting ideas, in there for sure, but I'm expecting the sequel to be more robust in terms of experience. 

 

Given Ubi decided to make the title cross gen rather than commit solely to next Gen & PC it's inevitable that ideas of scope had to be curtailed in terms of functionality and processing. Given the bulk of the sales have come from next gen and PC sales, one suspects that the next title will take proper advantage of Next gen systems. 

 

Anyway, let's compare this to GTA V. I'm sure GTA V was more costly to produce, but it was done in four years' time (as opposed to Wash Rags's five), and I think most would agree that GTA was a far more polished product. Unfortunately, Rockstar only discloses sold-in numbers, but they've probably sold somewhere around 30 million copies since September (and they sold a third of that in 24 hours!). GTA's day-one business was three times better than Hot Dogs, and it managed that on 40% fewer platforms.

 

GTA is an established IP, where as Watch_Dogs is a new one. Albeit the game may have been in development for 5 years, it's probably fair to say that a substantial amount of the first few years would of been dedicated to developing the ideas and principles and running through proof of concept, Versus full on development. 

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When I read about the bad writing, that makes me so sad. Ubi made a huge deal out of its screenwriting department Alice. If this is their output... I wonder what went wrong.

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When I read about the bad writing, that makes me so sad. Ubi made a huge deal out of its screenwriting department Alice. If this is their output... I wonder what went wrong.

 

It's not bad, it's just fairly predictable in this particular case. Some of the characters are well drawn, some less so. I think Aaron Douglas does a great job as Jordi Chin one of Pierces associates for instance. With Aiden Pierce himself I think the writers made the mistake of writing him as a bit of a blank cypher and it has the unfortunate effect of dampening him. It's a mis-step that brings to mind Adam Jensen from DX:HR. Albeit it would of involved  a bit more dialogue work it wouldn't of been a bad idea to take a leaf out of Dragon Age 2 with regards to how player actions inform and alter not only how you talk to characters but also how they respond to you. Adopting that approach would make some of the conversations feel less out of character.

 

    

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Is it possible to do a totally pacificst run in WD, or does killing dudes become required at some point?  One of the reasons I was so fond of both Deus Ex: HR and Dishonored were that they let you do pacifist runs (barring the boss fights in the original release of DE:HR).  I actually wasn't successful in either of them, but it let me decide that I was going to only kill when I felt it was narratively justified for my character, not just because it was the easy way out. 

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It's so unbelievably easy to murder people even if you tried a pacifist run you'd still end up killing like ten people before the credits roll.

For example, me just playing around with my gadgets seeing what they do, standing in a crowded forecourt area with an on screen prompt to explode an electrical control panel on the wall, me thinking that it's just a diversionary technique hold down the prompt button for half a second and BOOM dead civilian pops on my HUD, -1 karma points, Aidan Pierce doesn't bat an eyelid. I was shocked, a brief throw away moment of curiosity and a single button press has ended somebody's life.

It's as if watch_dogs is a god simulator

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Is it possible to do a totally pacificst run in WD, or does killing dudes become required at some point?  One of the reasons I was so fond of both Deus Ex: HR and Dishonored were that they let you do pacifist runs (barring the boss fights in the original release of DE:HR).  I actually wasn't successful in either of them, but it let me decide that I was going to only kill when I felt it was narratively justified for my character, not just because it was the easy way out. 

 

There are missions in Watch underscore Dogs where you can avoid combat altogether, but others require you to kill the bad guys.

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Is it possible to do a totally pacificst run in WD, or does killing dudes become required at some point?  One of the reasons I was so fond of both Deus Ex: HR and Dishonored were that they let you do pacifist runs (barring the boss fights in the original release of DE:HR).  I actually wasn't successful in either of them, but it let me decide that I was going to only kill when I felt it was narratively justified for my character, not just because it was the easy way out. 

 

On the whole you can avoid it save a couple of the main missions where it's very much kill, or be killed. You can unlock some pretty nifty tools like the blackout ability, a noise bug etc which make evasion and non lethal at night pretty straight forward and there are non lethal hacks like distract and coms jamming that you can use on certain individuals as well. Much like silent assassin in Hitman, it's pretty satisfying to pull off a well orchestrated infiltration with zero deaths.   

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I'm an hour or so in an have a few observations:

  • I'm not particularly unimpressed by the story at this point. The one story mission that I completed made Aiden out to be a sympathetic big brother archetype and thus far I like him.
  • The driving has a GTA-level of floatiness. Maybe it's just the super scrubby cars I have right now, but after playing Saints Row the level of responsiveness and the really lame e-braking is kinda disappointing. Hoping driving upgrades and better cars improves this.
  • There is a distracting level of content available. Maybe this is just a weird parallel of the modern world it seeks to emulate, but there seems to be literally always like 10 dudes to hack, 5 cameras in sight, a "Fixer" mission popup every 60 seconds, and a random crime every 90 seconds. I was trying to figure out a CToS tower and I ended up foiling 3 crimes and picking up 2 dead drops before I actually managed it because I couldn't control myself.

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I picked this up a couple weeks ago and after putting a decent amount of time in this last weekend, everything finally started to click and the game is starting to get pretty fun.

 

At the start, this game does not leave the best impression. The driving controls are really hard to get used to, especially after spending so much time with the excellent driving controls in GTA V, and it seems to take a little while before you actually have enough hacking abilities unlocked to really dig in to the game. For a while there, I actually wasn't sure if this was going to be very enjoyable. Escaping the police was overly difficult and frustrating, I couldn't seem to figure out how to effectively take out pursuing cars as I was driving, and the hacking missions didn't seem to have a lot of depth to them.

 

Despite my initial frustrations with the game however, I pushed through and am now really enjoying myself. I finally managed to figure out how to hack various environmental elements at the right time to take out pursuing cars which actually makes car chases pretty damn fun. There is a Burnout style slow motion crash cam that shows when you take down a car and I find that it is a nice little touch that makes the process of kiting dudes around the city and slowly taking them out with various elements very satisfying. I've also managed to fall into a nice rhythm with the various hacking missions, making them a lot more fun to play. I tried the non-lethal approach for a little bit but ended up abandoning that when I realized it was a lot more fun to just use all of the tools and hacks the game gives you to tackle missions in a variety of different ways. Now that I have a good handle on the different approaches I can take in a mission, I have come to really appreciate the way they flow and how effective the stealth mechanic is. My strategy is typically to stand right outside the entrance of the compound and hack into a camera to start scoping out the area. Once I have a good idea of where all the enemies are I start to make my way into the compound and silently take out enemies around the perimeter as I slowly make my way in, using whatever hacks and distractions I need to to make sure that I can take each on out in a spot where none of the other enemies will notice the body. Then, once it's down to a few clusters of enemies I will typically identify any of the remaining enemies that have explosives on them and set those off to try to whittle each group down. Then depending on the situation, I will either leave the last few non-critical guys alone and finish the mission, or finish the rest of them off to make sure that I have no resistance when I go to exit the compound.

 

I would also echo what JonCole said regarding the story. Going off of what I've read on various gaming sites, I expected the story to be total shit but it's a lot better than I think most people give it credit for. Aiden's gruff voice is kind of cheesy at first but I think he is a totally okay character and I am enjoying the story so far. As it stands right now, I am glad I picked up this game and I can't wait to play more.

 

And on a quick side note, I really like the profiling feature in this game. The brief descriptions for each NPC and the various conversations you can eavesdrop on go a long way towards making this feel like a living, breathing world. I regularly find myself just walking around hacking citizens and reading their descriptions between missions and I think what they did in this game is a good step towards making open worlds with lots of NPCs feel more alive.

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Watch Dogs already destroys my year or so old $900-ish PC, so as nice as that "mod"/E3 texture and effects look I don't think I could handle it.

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Watch Dogs already destroys my year or so old $900-ish PC, so as nice as that "mod"/E3 texture and effects look I don't think I could handle it.

 

That's the funniest part: the mod also boosts performance.

 

:tommy: Oh, Ubisoft!

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The thing I really like is that Rock Paper Shotgun turned it on and discovered that the game plays worse with the mods on. There's a great shot of the game with the graphics mod on where the street furniture is all inexplicably crisp and the other side of the street is blurry and indistinct, as if streetlights are important, and they're pointing out that there could easily be a man with a gun on the other side of the street shooting at you and you wouldn't be able to see them.

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Yeah, I did notice that somewhat extreme depth of field/focus effect in the E3 video. Can you just install the mod, disable DOF, and get the best of both worlds?

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Yeah you can toggle DOF on or off, that's just a minor aspect of it. That's just a default value chosen by the person who wrote the thing that updates the config values.  The default has already been toned down since that RPS article too.

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So, still sticking with this game and I'm enjoying it more as I go along. That may be in part due to the fact that I've just started playing while listening to podcasts and doing ALL of the side content so I'll be distracted by less as I actually progress through the main story. I've done so much of the side content that I've actually unlocked CTOS all over the city, hacked all the towers to show all POIs, bought all the available weapons, bought all available outfits, and bought about half of the available cars, trucks, and motorcycles.

 

I feel like it's worth noting that this game has the best feeling motorcycles out of just about any non-racing game I've ever played. Maybe it's just because 90% of the cars handle like shit, but the superb handling and generally solid off-road capability of motorcycles make them amazing for just about anything but take-down style missions. Plus, they're a lot easier to spot than the specific cars that are actually worth driving.

 

Also, the grenade launcher is ridiculously OP. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't use it from the very beginning of the game. What better way to handle enemy backup than blow up their cars before they can dismount? What better way to handle a heavily armored guy than a grenade to the face? Buy one, buy ammo whenever you're short, and some of the more frustrating combat encounters simply won't happen any longer.

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I am a bit on the fence on whether to get Watch Dogs; it's gotten a rather tepid critical response. As someone who enjoys the blissful productivity/zero challenge nature of the Assassin's Creed map-tidying games, is this something similar? Can I just tool around unmolested picking up cyber-feathers except when I feel the peculiar urge to do a tiny bit of plot?

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Oh yeah, that's 100% what this game is. It's like the furthest iterated version of the AC map-tidying stuff.

 

There are like 5 or 6 different collectibles to get that usually lead to getting a special mission or powerful weapon at the end. There are something like 20 each of 5 or 6 side mission types that actually tend to be fun if you like the combat and/or driving. And there are tons of places where you can hack into random peoples' cameras and snoop on them for some of the funnier/weirder content in the game.

 

Here's a random video I found where the guy scrolls around the map a little at the beginning:

 

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