Imagine if Walter White was your only choice to protect you. Now imagine if instead of meth he had an omnipresent hack that let him control the entire city grid. What could go wrong?
That's the general thinking from Ubisoft when it comes to Watch Dogs, the break-out hit of this year's e3 that raises far too many questions (when's it coming out? will it be on every platform? is it next gen?) than it answers (it looks amazing). Game Informer talked to Ubisoft Developer Dominic Guay about the development of this hidden gem.
"The player is in a gray area. He's not a good guy, and he's not a bad guy. You will define where he is in that gray zone. We're more inspired by Breaking Bad or Dexter, rather than Superman or Darth Vader."
While it undoubtedly has a similar premise to shows like Person of Interest or the 1998 film Enemy of the State, Watch Dogs focuses on an semi-alternate universe around this time where operating systems are advanced enough to run an entire city. Kotaku points out the subtle shifts in history by breaking down the announcement trailer's facts.
Namely, the East Coast Blackout wasn't a hack or computer virus, but caused due to weather conditions and way too many air conditioners being cranked up. One of the tools that Aiden, our vengeance seeking protagonist, uses in his device is The Profiiler, which brought up all those bits of information seen in the gameplay videos. The device feeds you pieces of information that can be used later, from stealing bank accounts to starting side missions. From Guay:
"Imagine you're going down the street, and the Profiler is on, and you see someone convicted of horrible crimes, like multiple rapes. The guy turns off into an alleyway and begins following a woman. Now you have a choice. You can continue on your mission and ignore the danger to the woman, or you could say 'wait, I want to do something about this.' Will you do violence? How will the city react to that, if you gut a guy in an alley based on a suspicion?"
We'll hopefully find out how they'd react soon.
