Watch_Dogs has something of a special rose tinted place in my heart. Not Watch_Dogs 2- no tint needed there, that game just slaps. Always did, always will. And definitely not Legion- that game was a complete miscarriage with all the tragedy and sadness perfectly preserved in the package. I'm talking the original story of revenge and... nah, it really doesn't get any deeper than a revenge plot, does it? I was going to throw in 'conspiracy' but I think the ultimate reveal is so exceedingly disappointing that it single-handily undoes all the conspiratorial build up the game dedicated itself to beforehand. That first game really was something, wasn't it? Maybe not a masterpiece, but not a disaster piece either. I wouldn't even call it an average game- but I would certainly understand pushback against calling it one of the greats. It was a game of significance, I think we call agree on that much- which is more than can be said for a lot of Ubisoft titles.
And I think a big part of that topsy-turvy state of being comes from the fact that Watch_Dogs is rather transparently a very ambitious game that bites it's own tongue so very often- but not often enough that you don't see the glimmers of what it once was shine out every now and then. I'll just say it straight, you don't pull out all the stops to make a third person shooter play that good unless you have big plans- and I'd go so far as to say bigger plans than what ended up on the disc. Of course these suspicions would have remained only that until my imagination was sparked by learning about the impressive Watch_Dogs 'Living City' mod which aims to achieve much of the latent potential it feels the game always had, albeit through the hands of 'modding' babes.
In many ways what the Living City attempts to do is make the world, missions and player experience more reactive to the narrative- not in that vague marketing way where random variables are tied to the odd player input- but in the really tangible way that the pulse of the city quickens and slacks with the pace of the plot in a manner that is true to the spirit that Watch_Dogs was trying to evoke, rather than just true to the lethargic principles of open world design that Ubisoft stick to like a holy text. Even simple things like restoring an apparently cut feature where hackers hunting for Aiden, the most wanted vigilante in the state mind you, would set up fake contracts to lead the player into an ambush- that kind of stuff contributes to selling the world.
Watch_Dogs was ostensibly built around the idea of the death of digital privacy in a world where the wrong people with the right tools can peel apart the world from the touch of a button on a smartphone half a block away. It's a world of false safety and paper-thin civility draped over a pulsing underworld of the cities worst- a world that Aiden is embroiled in. It should be dangerous, poignant, paranoia inducing and unrelenting- as you dive deeper into the guts of the beast and rile up even more of Chicago's filth. Aiden is built up as this one-man army taking on a city of corruption, collusion and collateral chaos. But in the base game, none of these ideals exist beyond the page of the script they're written on- and that's just not how you design effective works of art. Not in the gaming medium.
Watch_Dogs could have leaned into the consequence that was clearly supposed to be of some significance during that infamous E3 trailer. The way that people would recognise you and try to discreetly call the police, in reaction to the inherent violent actions the player could partake in reflected the human cost of a war waged in blood across residential streets. The fact that in the pursuit of vengeance in resolve to a very human reaction to loss, Aiden would divest himself from the average citizens he believed he was fighting for (to some degree) would reflect gorgeously upon the general themes of the franchise. Just as we surrender our security for the sake of security, Aiden surrenders his humanity in search of humanity. It was right there!
Whatsmore, all of this would have served better in making Aiden this tragic tortured character who never managed to get over the loss and guilt like Ubisoft clearly wanted him to be by the events of Legion. No, instead they just kind of jumped awkwardly to that conclusion without taking the small amount of effort to set it up, resulting in jarring discontent of story. In their version of Aiden, the only thing he really has to feel guilty about is getting Clara killed because he was a dick to her, only she was conveniently left out of his flashbacks forgoing that slight amount of guilt- I suspect because they didn't want to try and source her voice actress again. Ubisoft are just the kings of never following through and it ruins the potential of so many of their works!
Don't even get me started on the failings of the main narrative. Clara Lille, the female supporting character who never got a chance to develop into anything because Ubisoft killed her off in the third act for cheap pity points before she got the chance to become a character important enough to where that death would mean something. Imagine if they killed off T-Bone in Watch_Dogs 2- a character they actually developed! Imagine how people would have felt about that! But no, in this 'brutal world' of vigilantes and corruption the story never has the courage to go that one step further- and perhaps that was what led to the franchise giving up on that angle and instead going the 'rainbow attitude' route for the sequel.
Watch_Dogs had potential to be a very different side of the Ubisoft formula- doing away with the gimmicky nature of it's style and showcasing just how well this style of development can reinforce themes and plot. Instead it became a disappointment, then a redemption too late and finally a disgrace upon game design as a whole. At the end of the day I'm starting to think that the idea of Watch_Dogs wasn't the problem, and I still find the whole 'Aiden hate' to be deeply routed in ancillary distaste for Ubisoft that somehow manifested itself in generalised protagonist bashing. The problem was a lack of conviction. Maybe some day we'll get something similar with the right hearts leading the project to show us the true face of what Watch_Dogs could have been.
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