After all the leaks and subsequent announcements, Ubisoft has gone ahead and officially revealed Watch Dogs 2.
The reveal came yesterday during a special announcement stream which you can watch below.
The video gives a good overview of the game including the new San Fransisco setting, new way to hack and a new signature weapon.
The change from Chicago opens up a ton of gameplay opportunities to the player. Because the game is set in the Bay Area, can now run around Silicon Valley and hack into the biggest tech companies there, which Ubisoft happily encourages. As Seinor Producer Dominic Guay puts it,
It’s a world that has a lot of potential for gameplay…if you are a hacker and have the head offices of some of the biggest tech companies in the world, what will you do? Can you hack into those places? What will you find? It’s a very intriguing setting for a hacker.
Above the fun hacking potential, Ubisoft wants to drive home how real their world feels. The world “feels like a simulation” and when you step in to it, you feel like you are in a real world.
And who will populate this living, breathing city? Why the many criminal organizations, tech companies, and rival hacker groups of course! According to Guay, all of these groups are trying to take control of ctOS, the operating system that was installed in Chicago in the original game.
That is where DedSec and our new hero come into play. With Aidan Pierce off smoking six packs of cigarettes somewhere, Watch Dogs 2 needed a new protagonist to ctrl.
When designing a new player character, Ubisoft wanted to create someone who embodies the San Fransisco/Bay Area. Meet Marcus Holloway.
Underneath that stylized trailer hides a very serious backstory for our hero. Originally from Oakland, Marcus is a brilliant hacker who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit, an act which pushed him toward the hacker lifestyle Watch Dogs 2 depicts.
One of the more unique design choices for Marcus is his signature weapon.
Instead of Aidan Pierce’s collapsible night stick, Ubisoft decided to go a little more DIY with Marcus and landed on a billiard ball attached to a length of para cord. You can see it in action in the announcement video starting at 9:40.
Hacking has also changed since the last game. Instead of only being able to hack certain people, now you can hack anyone in the world, as well as hacking multiple targets at once.
Remote control is another big thing in Watch Dogs 2, players will be able to remote control cars, drones and weird smiling bin shaped robots, all from the comfort of a dirty alley.
The game has a host of other changes from driving to exploring, but for right now we are going to have to wait until E3 for more information.
Watch Dogs 2 will be out on November 16th this year for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.
According to ThisGenGaming, the game will also have a couple of special editions too.
The first is a Deluxe Edition for $70 that has some exclusive content, a $100 Gold Edition which comes with the extra content and the season pass. There is also a Collector’s Edition that too has a Standard ($110), Deluxe ($120), and Gold ($150) tier. Not much is known about what will be included in them but all pre-orders of any edition will include a special Zodiac Mission.