Watch Dogs 2 Analysis
1 Overview
Watch Dogs 2 is a third-person open world action shooter with RPG elements. It was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft in November, 2016.
2 Formal Elements
2.1 Players
The player primarily takes control of a hacker called Marcus Holloway as he attempts to bring the Blume corporation to justice for stealing their San Francisco customers’ private data and using it in various nefarious ways. Near the end of the story, the player will briefly take control of supporting characters. Marcus and the other characters are all controlled from the traditional third-person perspective, as are the vehicles which the player may drive.
Although the main missions are all single player oriented, it is possible to travel around the city with other players in seamless multiplayer. During these times, they may either compete or cooperate in a few different modes.
2.2 Objectives
In the tutorial level, Marcus joins a hacktivist group called DedSec, whose goal is to reveal the truth about Blume’s ctOS and other corporations who are taking advantage of their consumers and sometimes actively harming them. To do this, they need to accumulate enough followers who download the DedSec app onto their mobile devices. These followers contribute computing power and memory which DedSec makes use of.
In order to increase the number of followers, Marcus will complete 14 main missions which usually involve talking to people about the target company, going to that target company and hacking into their building to steal information, and then releasing a closing video that reveals to the public what the company has been keeping secret from them.
2.3 Rules
Like many open world games, Watch Dogs 2 features somewhat complicated rules.
On player death, they will be respawned at the nearest autosave location, which is usually just outside the area where they died or just before the mission stage they died on. Unlike Grand Theft Auto V, where the player spawns outside the nearest hospital having lost a good chunk of cash, there is no in game explanation for the respawn. The ctOS which controls traffic lights, steam vents, circuit breakers, gas mains, traffic barriers, and several cargo moving machines (including cranes) can also be hacked and controlled to blow up, stun enemies, block their path, or move objects or the player to places normally unreachable.
Like the Grand Theft Auto series, there is a notoriety system which increases as the player performs more mayhem and killing without hiding from the authorities.
2.3.1 Gear
The player may carry two weapons plus the stun gun, the RC jumper, drone, and explosive and electroshock devices. Only 360 bullets and (depending on upgrades) 2-5 explosive or electroshock devices may be carried, while the stun gun has infinite ammo. The RC jumper car and drone may be used for surveillance, hacking, reaching places the player cannot travel to or cannot travel to safely/easily.
2.3.2 NPC Interactions
Most NPCs are there for filler. Almost any NPC in the game, and every vehicle may be hacked. Hacking an NPC allows the player to recharge their botnets (a kind of stamina, magika, or energy) which the player uses for hacking, but also gives the player access to some personal information, and allows the player to distract them, steal some data or money, or a few other options.
2.3.3 Stats and Leveling
The leveling system uses the number of followers of the DedSec app as other games use XP. Only by completing quests and activities can you increase the number of followers. Each level up occurs at a scale somewhat similar to the Dark Souls progression and awards the player with increasing numbers of points to invest in seven different skill trees. Each base skill costs 2 points, and increases in cost by two at every branching (the next two cost 4, the next 6, the final ones cost 8).
2.3.4 Quests
There are several different side quest types, but most of them devolve to going somewhere, and hacking something. The only quest that I became emotionally invested in was a short quest that I stumbled onto which involves hacking into ctOS box and discovering a recently laid off man attempting to commit suicide in his garage. The player must hack the garage door, garage fan, the man’s phone, and the car horn in order to alert a neighbor to come and rescue him.
Although multiple quests may be ”active” at the same time, nearly all of them are triggered by going to the next stage marker and activating it, which prevents the player from going from the middle of one quest’s stage to another quest.
2.3.5 Combat
The player may engage almost any NPC in combat. This could involve tapping the melee button to knock them out, shooting them with a stun gun, or using one of the many different rifles, pistols, shotguns, or grenade launchers. The environment can also be used to eliminate NPCs, whether enemy or civilian, by hacking circuit breakers, gas mains, and other hackable objects. If the player is witnessed attacking an NPC, the witnesses will notify the relevant authorities, which may be other gang members, the police, or the local security force. Otherwise, if an NPC comes across the body, they will become alerted and alert other nearby NPCs
2.4 Procedures
2.4.1 Talking to an NPC
Marcus will often have to meet an NPC and talk to them to receive information or other assistance for a quest, or just to progress the story. Sometimes, this will additionally involve navigating or climbing to reach a difficult location.
2.4.2 Hack Something
For a game about hacking, the hacking is fairly one button, as with many Ubisoft takes on activities. When they released Assassin’s Creed, it featured one button platforming without the player needing to worry about timing or skill. The combat in that game series is also mostly one button. The Far Cry series features one button crafting. Anyway.
There is a hacking minigame, which like so many hacking minigames is a Pipe Dream-like affair. While it can be interesting, there is so little variety to this and the game makes use of it so much, that it soon becomes repetitive.
2.4.3 Searching an Area & Scavenging
The player will sometimes be tasked with exploring an area to find particular parts, NPCs to hack, or computer terminals to hack.
2.4.4 Selling Loot
As the player explores the city of San Francisco, they will pick up fitness bands, computers, phones, and other expensive gadgetry which can be sold at pawnshops for money.
2.4.5 Leveling Up
When a set number of followers has been earned, the player can level up. The level system is complicated by the fact that certain higher rank skills can only be unlocked after the player has performed a specific hacking task in the world to collect the data or schematic needed for that skill.
2.4.6 Managing Health Conditions
Marcus has regenerating health, so the player need only stay in cover for a certain amount of time to get back to full health.
If any NPCs are nearby the player may hack them to recharge their botnet points, which can then be used to perform other hacking actions.
2.5 Resources
2.5.1 Tangible Resources
- Ammo: Each weapon, excepting the stun gun, has limited ammo. This can be bought from pawn shops, or picked up from fallen enemies.
- RC Jumper: Can jump, move through air ducts, and small places that Marcus cannot reach. Limited in range. If destroyed, it will respawn after a cooldown.
- Drone: Can reach areas which Marcus and the RC Jumper cannot, but it cannot be used for nodes which must be physically hacked. Limited in range. If destroyed, it will respawn after a cooldown.
- Weapons: Includes pistols, shotguns, combat rifles, submachine gunes, sniper rifles, and grenade launchers.
- Vehicles: Come in many different varieties, from boats, to cars, to motorcycles.
2.5.2 Intangible Resources
- Health: If health drops to zero, the player dies.
- Botnet: Watch Dogs 2 equivalent of stamina or magic.
- Money: Can be used to buy cars, weapons, or clothes.
- Followers: Watch Dogs 2 equivalent of XP.
- Research Points: Allow the player to research a skill.
- Skills: Grant the player new abilities, like crashing the ctOS locally, increasing botnet number, or reducing the botnet cost of using abilities.
2.6 Conflicts
2.6.1 NPCs
There are several different factions in the San Francisco of Watch Dogs 2. These factions are mostly gangs, but also include some private security forces. These can actually be brought into conflict with each other temporarily through player hacking, but there is no long term effect to this.
2.6.2 Stealth versus Guns-blazing
NPCs are quite perceptive in Watch Dogs 2 compared to other games, which makes the stealth gameplay even more challenging. Since alerted NPCs can also call for reinforcements (even, ridiculously, during a mission which takes place on a boat in the middle of the ocean), this makes a huge difference for gameplay. If the player uses camera, the RC Jumper, and drone to scout the area, mark enemies, and lay booby traps, then proceeds to use silenced weapons and melee attacks to take out the rest of the enemies, the mission will feel a lot different than if the player puts an explosive device on a car, hacks that to enter the enemy’s hideout, then triggers the bomb, proceeding to use combat rifles and grenade launchers to take out enemies. Both approaches are possible, and it is even likely that the player will start stealthy then be spotted and have to go loud at some point. Once the player has gone loud, it can be difficult if not impossible to deescalate the situation.
2.6.3 Lethal versus Non-lethal
There are several lethal and non-lethal ways of taking out enemies in an area. In terms of gameplay, it usually makes more sense to just kill your enemies, as knocked out enemies tend to come to after a few minutes, which can make escaping the area very difficult.
2.7 Boundaries
2.7.1 Map
Watch Dogs 2 recreates a smaller scale version of the San Francisco Bay area, including downtown San Francisco, Marin, Oakland, Silicon Valley, and the island of Alcatraz. The player cannot travel beyond these borders.
2.7.2 Leveling
There appears to be a max level of 23, which allows the player to unlock every skill in the game.
2.8 Outcomes
There is only one outcome: the player has led Marcus and DedSec to victory over Blume.
3 Dynamic Elements
3.1 Weather & Day/Night Cycle
Watch Dogs 2 features a day/night cycle in addition to dynamically generated weather. For the most part, these have no affect on gameplay, except for night making sneaking somewhat easier.
3.2 Notoriety
As Marcus performs violent acts in front of witnesses, Watch Dogs 2 will increase his notoriety rating. If he continues to do so, the rating will continue increasing, with more police, and stronger units aggressively chasing the player until Marcus is killed or the player manages to escape and hide, resetting the notoriety level.
3.3 Patterns
This section focuses on game patterns as discussed by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans in Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design.
3.3.1 Playing Style Reinforcement
The leveling system also contains the playing style reinforcement pattern. As the player plays in a certain way (stealthy, or guns-blazing for instance), they will receive Followers, which can be used to purchase skills. These skills, if wisely chosen, will allow the player to perform more of the actions which gave them Followers in the first place.
3.3.2 Dynamic Friction
Watch Dogs 2 contains many examples of the dynamic friction pattern. Each level up requires greater and greater numbers of Followers, requires more actions and missions to be completed in order to reach the next level.
As the player purchases upgrades, they become more and more expensive in each skill tree.
3.3.3 Stopping Mechanism
The player has a limited amount of health and of botnets, both of which recharge over time. This recharge timer is in effect a stopping mechanism, preventing the player from taking more actions which were causing the drain on the resource (stopping the player from hacking until the botnets have recharged, or stopping the player from moving out of cover until health has recharged).
4 Dramatic Elements
Like many Ubisoft games, Watch Dogs 2 features a strong story.
4.1 Characters
The main character is Marcus Holloway (codename Retr0), a young hacktivist who wishes to remove a crime for which he was framed from his account on the San Francisco ctOS servers. Following his success, his is recruited into a hacktivist group called DedSec, which has characters like the mechanical genius but painfully shy Wrench, the hacker Josh who probably suffers from Asperger Syndrome, the socially active Sitara, and the ”leader,” Horatio. Later on, they are joined by Ray, a former member of Blume who became disillusioned by the company and its aims.
The only other characters which are developed to any degree are movie star and probable Tom Cruise stand-in Jake Slater, and the CEOs of several Silicon Valley company stand-ins (!nVite for FaceBook, nudle for Google, ScoutX for Instagram, and Galilei for SpaceX). Most of these CEOs are connected to Dusan Nemec, the CTO for Blume Corporation. Much like the CEO of hooli, Gavin Belsin, from HBO’s Silicon Valley, he practices yoga, is arrogant, and breaks the law regularly to get an edge over his competition.
4.2 Story
The story follows Marcus as he attempts to gather enough followers to take out Blume. He and DedSec go about this by hacking companies which they discover either have public or hidden agreements with Blume. As they hack more companies, they discover just how far and how pernicious the connections go. A religious organization which seems to spoof Scientology blackmails its members and its enemies using data bought from Blume, for example, or a Senator has made an agreement to pass certain legislation in return for help from !nVite (the FaceBook stand-in) to get him reelected. As the stakes escalate, one of their members is abducted and killed, and the FBI is alerted to their activities by Dusan.
Eventually, Marcus and DedSec are able to gain access to the servers at Blume’s headquarters and get the information about all these deals that Dusan has made with other companies, the US government, and China, and they release a final video showing how he has betrayed his consumers’ trust.
4.3 Attitude
The attitudes and characterization of the city, its neighborhoods, and its characters is so joyfully ridiculous that although at first the player will be groaning at how lame and far-fetched everything is, soon the player will become infected by it.
5 Conclusion
Watch Dogs 2 is in many ways a success. Its protagonist and his motivations are relatable, and most aspects of the gameplay are fun and enjoyable. The characters are well-acted and memorable. There is a large gap between the themes and the gameplay, however. The player’s ability to steal cars anywhere and to kill completely innocent civilians creates a disconnect between the character Marcus and the actions the player performs. The game world also fails to react to this. For every in-game news release praising DedSec’s actions, there will be zero about the hit and run you got into in which three innocent people were killed, or the shoot-out started because you entered a restricted zone to pick up a collectible. DedSec harps and harps on the the responsibility of those with power, yet the other members will never harp on Marcus after he kills everyone in a building instead of hacking in and getting out without anyone being the wiser. Marcus is just a hacker, not some kind of emotionally hardened killer, so it makes no sense for him to be allowed to kill so indiscriminately.
For a game about hacking and the use of information, the player is actually given zero choice about how to use the information Marcus acquires through hacking. Granted, Ubisoft has a story they want the player to experience, but so did CD Project Red when they made all the The Witcher games, and all those games allow the player to influence the story through their actions. Although the design of the world and its basic interactions has been set up to promote player agency, the heavily scripted story removes any feeling that our actions are having an influence on what happens.
