One of the more frustrating aspects of some of today's open world titles is when you're stuck to a fairly limited portion of the gigantic map, and forced to earn access to the rest of it over time. It's a tease. Thankfully, this won't be the case for the windy city in Ubisoft's open world hackathon Watch Dogs.
Creative Director Jonathan Morin confirmed the news with The Average Gamer, saying that the world is "open right at the start. You can go anywhere you want. We are not restricting the player."
While the map is completely accessible right at the get-go, you might not want to go running all over the place at the very beginning. Morin mentioned that there are certain strategic points scattered throughout the city, and you'll want to take control of these spots early in the game if you want a leg up. These points are intrinsic to the city's CtOS, the Big Brother styled network that controls just about everything in the city: aspects of transportation, communication, personal data, and more.
By taking control of these points, it's "possible for him [Aiden] to get connected in a district. It's going to grow and we call this "monitoring grid". It's like its own network to listen to what's going on in the city. That unlocks tons of different side activities and events that the system can detect so we can actually go and intervene into them," explained Morin.
"We really wanted the player, through the free-roaming, to feel that he is building his own hacking system," he continued Morin. "It would have been a bit weird and magical to just have it."
Watch Dogs' open world of Chicago is home to a security network that would make Orwell piss his pants, responsible for keeping everyone and everything jacked in for the purpose of keeping tabs. At the same time, it allows players as Aiden to meddle with all manner of the city's infrastructure as they see fit - ATM's, traffic lights, security cameras, raise bridges, public transportation, access various networks, etc.
Watch Dogs is coming to PC, PlayStation 3 and 4, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One in November.
