Watch Dogs is an upcoming open world action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft.
The game takes place in Chicago, Illinois, and is built around the concept of information warfare, data being interconnected, and the world’s increasing use of technology — questioning who exactly runs the computers they depend on. Aiden Pearce, our protagonist, is a highly skilled hacker, who can hack into various electronic systems tied to the city’s central operating system (CtOS), allowing various methods for the player to solve numerous objectives. This includes:
- Hacking into people’s phones to retrieve bank data and steal funds
- Triggering malfunctions in equipment to distract other characters
- Hacking into traffic lights to cause collisions
- Players can also receive information on civilians via augmented reality feeds, providing the player with information on demographics, health and potential behavior
- Find specific targets to kill
- Evade the police
- Follow potential victims in order to stop their would-be killers
Combat utilizes a combination of stealth components and parkour, along with the mechanics of a cover-based third-person shooter.
The multiplayer experience is a one-on-one interaction between two human characters in which one player seamlessly and secretly joins the single player experience of another player. The first player (who enters the other player’s world) is tasked with finding the second player (who is unaware that someone is in their game session – no notification is given to the second player).
Once the first player finds the second player the objective is updated. The first player’s new objective is to install a back door virus into the second player’s smartphone, then hide while that virus siphons off a portion of the data the second player has collected. This stolen information increases the first player’s power once they return to their own single player session.
The second player must stay within a certain radius of the first player for the download to progress. Once the download is initiated, the second player is alerted that they have been hacked and that data is being stolen from their smartphone. Once the second player is alerted of the intrusion, their objective is to locate the first player who is stealing their data, and either kill the first player or cause them to flee to such a distance that the download stops (a minimum distance is needed for the download to continue).
It’s been confirmed that an online free roam mode will be featured in the game. Other multiplayer modes include CTOS Mobile Challenge, Online Hacking, Decryption and a racing mode.
Many fans have been asking about the Watch Dogs PC requirements. A tweet from Jonathan Morin, creative director for Watch Dogs, has listed the following as the minimum your PC will need to run the game:
- Processor: IntelCore 2 Quad Q8400 2.66Ghz or AMDPhenom II X4 940 3.0Ghz
- Memory: 6GB RAM
- Video card: 1024 VRAM DirectX 11 Shader 5.0
- Sound Card: DirectX9
- Hard Drive: 25 GB
No other information has been disclosed at this time, but Ubisoft Montreal confirmed that Watch Dogs will release for PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4 and PS3 on May 27th. As for the Wii U — release date TBA.
