Watch Dogs, recently revealed to be releasing on May 27, was originally set to release four months ago with the start of the current console generation. In an interview with Eurogamer, Watch Dog's creative director, Jonathan Morin, disclosed some details on Ubisoft's decision to delay the game for such a considerable amount of time.
Morin told Eurogamer that the game's sudden delay, just four week's shy of its original release date, stemmed from the game missing “important details”.
"When you're promising a player that they can hack everything and express themselves, they expect the result to be there," he explains. "A complicated game that is broken is no more acceptable than an easier one that works."
Morin and the Watch Dogs teams didn't want to expand upon the game or add additional content, they merely wanted the game to work as intended, as to not break the game's ability to immerse players in its world and its many intricate systems. Morin told Eurogamer that the focus of the delay was to “deliver on expectations” through additional polish.
Interestingly, Morin tells the site that getting approval from Ubisoft's higher-ups was easier to do than he believes it would be at any other publishers due Ubisoft's top dogs having game design backgrounds - enabling them to see the value in a delay to further polish a product.
"I'm not pitching a concept to businessmen - which would make my pitch different. I wouldn't like it. So when we arrive at such a big decision [as the delay] there are a lot of people high up who already have all of my bullet points before I've even sent them. The fact that they understood that meant all I had to say was 'I agree'."
When it came to convincing investors that the Watch Dogs delay would be beneficial, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stepped up.
"I have to give credit to him. I don't know many people who would have said that based on systemic gameplay stuff. A lot of people would have said 'who cares? who will find that? nine players out of 10 won't get there!' even if it wasn't true just to get the game made faster,” added Morin.
In regards to the Wii U version of Watch Dogs, Morin stated that it is is on hold until after the other versions are complete.
Lastly, in regards to what Morin hopes the end product will be due to the additional effort and development time, he says this, "Are we delivering the 'movie [style vision] of every single person on Earth who saw that [The Games Reveal Trailer]? Probably not, that's not possible. But are we delivering on this fantasy of being a hacker, controlling everything and approaching things in different ways – yes.”
The above quote is sure to be picked up by those up in a panic about yesterday's trailer. Comparatively, Watch Dog's current visuals are a far cry from what we saw at E3 2012. This has been a hot topic for debate on message boards like NeoGaf, with people fuming over the graphic disparity between the two trailers.
We'll see if Ubisoft's additional development time will have paid off by making the game more fun and functional, but I don't expect people to calm down over the visual downgrade for quite some time.
