Their Disrupt game engine is flexible, says Ubisoft, as they knew well in advance when making it that Xbox One and PS4 were on the horizon. The next-gen will just enjoy more simulation and crowds.
There’s no chunk of game missing then if you decide not to play the next-gen versions. It’s still left unsaid as to whether the PC version is regarded as current or next-gen.
“We knew we would have next-gen hardware coming out before we ship,” said Guay. “But we started off knowing we wanted to support PS3 and Xbox 360.” The Watch Dog senior producer explains some of the finer points of the Disrupt engine via a Ubisoft blog which also details a little more about multiplayer.
”On current-gen systems we may need to cut down the number of people on the street a little, but it’s still the same game. You don’t get the same sense of the crowd, but it allows us to scale certain bits and keep the same experience.”
“Players are going to know they aren’t getting a bad experience if they play Watch Dogs for the current gen, but the next gen is the real HD experience. You can zoom in another level. You can have better shaders, better simulation on the wind or the water, more particles, better atmospherics… Basically anything you can get with more computing power.”
With great power comes great responsibility fidelity.
”There are no trimmed-down mechanics to make you feel as though you are missing out on the core experience,” reads the blog. ”Watch Dogs is truly a next-gen game – not just in terms of offering cutting edge graphical performance on the next generation of consoles, but also when it comes to the gameplay, the immersion and the seamless online experience.”
Watch Dogs releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC November 19th in the US, 22nd in EU. Xbox One and PS4 later.
