They’ve turned to security specialists Kaspersky Lab to get feedback from ”hardcore experts” on hacking. It’s no code simulator, but Ubisoft don’t want to just float of into ‘yeah right’ gimmicks.
The team fire off design ideas to the firm and get told if the idea is feasible, or if it requires a little alteration here and there to be grounded in actual computer science.
”We’re working with Kaspersky Lab, a big security firm,” Ubisoft’s Dominic Guay told Joystiq. ”They have really hardcore experts there on hacking. We send them some of our designs and we ask them feedback on it, and it’s interesting to see what gets back. Sometimes they say, ‘Yeah, that’s possible, but change that word,’ or, ‘That’s not the way it works.’”
Watch Dogs features essentially a ‘magic wand’ in the form of the lead character’s smart phone, which can almost effortlessly subvert electronics and systems around it. However they didn’t want to just have it as an unstoppable remote of the gods - it had to be plausible in a city dominated by computer systems.
”It’s not about the challenges of climbing a wall,” Guay says, ”it’s finding the path I want to follow.”
”It’s not about the minigame that will let me open the door, it’s the fact that I’m making a plan. I’m making a plan of how I’m going to chain hacking, shooting, traveling the city and driving to achieve an objective.”
Watch Dogs releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC November 19th in the US, 22nd in EU and on PS4 in Q4.
