The upcoming sequel to WatchDogs has undergone somewhat of a transformation to that of its predecessor. The original openworld hack fest received numerous criticism from its tower infused formulaic open world to its blantant graphical downgrade. Now we have WatchDogs 2 and the developers are trying to break away from what came before.
“We wanted to break a formula we felt was being used too much,” senior producer Dominic Guay said. “In Far Cry, in Watch Dogs, in Assassin’s… it works, but we felt we wanted a structure which rewarded players for exploring the world instead of a structure where you got the feeling you needed to scrub the icons from the map. You feel like that’s your only job, and yet humans don’t work that way. If I’m exploring Paris, I’m going to look at a map and go straight to Notre Dame. It’s the same in Watch Dogs 2 we value the places over the icons.”
The departure from the overused formula of map towers may be the first hint that WatchDogs to may just get the breath of fresh air it needs to survive as a franchise. With a new cast of characters, new main story and the promise of lots of side content, WatchDogs 2 might please those sorely disappointed with the original.
Ubisoft’s game is set to launch on November 15th with three different editions ranging from $60 to $100 in price. Not only this but once again they are using exclusive pre-order DLC to try and attract pre-orders. It will be interesting to see if the second game can hack its way out of the shadow of its disappointing first installment.
