Morin gives the targeting system as an example of needing extra focus, as sometimes ”emergent situations” would arise with multiple hack options - it wasn’t working well.
Given the entire of Watch Dogs is about having the city as our playground for mischief, making sure our hacks can flow seamlessly into each other was a major priority.
”We did not delay the game to change it. We simply wanted to deliver the experience and the fantasy as intended. We started to feel we needed to cut corners to ship it in time, so we decided to delay the experience instead so we could use our Plan A and not our Plan B to fix the issues,” Jonathan Morin told MCV.
”One example would be the targeting system. We realised that sometimes emergent situations would gather several hack possibilities close to each other which our selection system wasn`t handling really well. Also we did notice that more experienced players could end up doing deep hack manipulations that would result in unsatisfying outcomes. These were not really new features but systems not well hooked to each other in certain deep interconnections.”
”Considering we all wanted to make sure creative play was properly rewarded we had to push the game and evaluate the way to safely fix this without breaking other systems along the way, which explains why we did not define a new date immediately,” he explained.
“Now the game is where we want it to be and the team is in full debug. This is why we are now completely confident with the new date.” Originally Watch Dogs would have released around the same time as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Now the open world hacking sandbox is done and ready for its launch early next week.
”There’s a mix of excitement, pride and nervousness,” added senior producer Dominic Guay.
”We’re excited to finally see the game done and that fans will soon get their hands on it. Proud of the work the team has achieved. But also nervous at not being in control anymore: we’ve mostly finished our part. Now gamers are the ones who will make Watch Dogs.” Watch Dogs features an ‘open’ multiplayer system where other players can enter into your game world and cause their own mischief, which Ubisoft hopes will add thrilling non-scripted moments.
”I’m excited to finally reach this point. We’ve been in the world of Watch Dogs for so long. Finally seeing how players will express themselves with it is very exciting,” said Morin.
Watch Dogs releases on PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4 May 27th.