Unfinished: Watch Dogs 2 09/22/2016

hoooooooly shit. so i loved watch dogs 1 and had my fun not killing any civilians or cops and stuff, but this looks like a sequel to just completely cut loose with and play like sleeping dogs or saints row. fucking great.

also that cut to jeff chillin the fuck out was pretty funny. was nooot expecting that.

Finally, a real Neil Breen simulator.

@exogen: I look forward to our "Pass Thru" future.

All the funny distractions seem to be there to cover up a totally bland and directionless game.

I felt burned by the first Watch Dogs... so much promise, but ultimately disappointing. This looks like a potential improvement, but we'll see.

I also kind of find it funny that Ubisoft didn't want them to show the map... they probably don't want people to see the usual AC Unity-esque barf that they sprawled all over this game's map. Hope it's better than that.

I love CCR, but Dan looping "Fortunate Son" for twenty minutes while dropping bombs on a strip club stage... He's really the Heath Ledger Joker, isn't he? A pure agent of chaos.

Saints Row managed to turn a by-the-book open world action game franchise into its own mad thing so maybe Watch Dogs is going the same way, via the medium of millennial nerd-angst.

i want more terminals. gimme all the terminals. i practically never leave work anyway.

Chillin' Jeff is the best quick look on this site.

Licensed soundtrack is looking a lot better than the first game, though the selection seems a bit slim slim if that Pop is anything to go by. Even if that's just one 'station'.

I can get behind some RTJ and Clark.

This doesn't look that great. Gimme Sleeping dogs 2 instead and a new Driver Ubisoft.

What the hell, this is two QLs in a row I've watched where Jeff talked about graffiti "throw ups," or "throwies" as is the parlance of the time.

Being able to frame random people for crimes is a funny idea, but completely against the idea of your character being at all a good person. 'Fight the man' or whatever, but that comes undone if you're able to get innocent people arrested.

10 years ago I wouldn't have cared but I'm not 16 any more.

In the year 2016 there is a television show that more accurately portrays hacking than video games.

@alistercat:I've always found the concept of playing as the "good guy" in most games quite ironic. Sure, you could say it's all just fantasy, but then why do so many developers try to ground their games in reality? Perhaps it's just a conflict between the game mechanic designers and story writers.

I do sometimes wonder what kind of physiological effect this might all be having on our society; Kids growing up playing games where the "good guys" win by mass murder and destruction. All justified of course by hatred for the evil or just stupid "enemy".

Most games don't usually encourage or even allow people to settle conflicts in a nonviolent way -- This is why I like RPGs and conversation options. But I can however understand that this is probably due to design and technological restraints. It's much easier to program a character to shoot the bad guy than talk to him. However, even the nonviolent options in games can be illegal / immoral. So violence itself isn't the only problem.

WHAT?! Ow my brain!

W_D1 mainly only disappointed me in how little of the world you could change through hacking. It was all doors and steam pipes and crickets. But I saw at least remote controling cars, forlifts, and getting cops / gangs to go after people, so it looks like they're working on that specific problem I had with it. That's real promising! If it was more of the same, I'd say "nah, I'm okay", but I'm looking forward to it now!

@icyeyes: Haha. Fixed. I should proofread more.

Amazing coverage guys. You took a game I had zero interest in, and made me consider the hurdles involved in being able to play it. I've always wanted to be an "agent of chaos", and I am super into the "dumb but awesome" aspects of this.

I still don't really like the aesthetic and tone of this game. It feels like it is trying to tilt more towards the more ridiculous tone of a GTA or Saints Row, but if the story takes itself super seriously like the first one did, it will just not work for me.

How does a celebrity interior designer make less than both a truck driver and barista?

It's somewhat interesting, but extremely rough in spots. Played it for the first time last year. It's not great.

This looks alright, but Jesus Christ the characters somehow have worse fashion sense than the cast of Hackers.

I had zero interest in the first game, but this at least seems wildly stupid in a way that I will play when it can pick it up at a discount.

Still doesn't seem great though. Very AAA.

but of course you can take selfies.. god....

In a world where Mr. Robot exists, I wonder if the Watch Dogs take on Hacking and Hackers is going to feel trite or something. Then again, I've only seen the pilot of Mr. Robot and didn't end up playing the first game despite being extremely interested in the lead up to release.

I can't with this dialogue and this story. It's just so cringy D:

That masked dude is the absolute worst

This game seems to constantly whiplash itself. Its goofy and self aware sometimes but not always and the characters are dopey idiots but then like insufferably lame at times. And its all about hacking and fighting "the man" and whatnot but you can just casually go on a murder spree with a gun? what?

I can see so many people cosplaying as the man with emote mask. I'm looking forward to playing this.

I do like that, given Dan's previous conversation topics on the podcast, the first thing he does in his San Francisco power fantasy is get the police to arrest a homeless person. (And then take a selfie of it)

I never understood why people thought the tone was going to be so self-serious. I was always (and still am) worried that they wouldn't get the goofy tone right but, I mean, they had a trailer set to Run the Jewels, your melee weapon is a pool ball on a rope, and someone is wearing a mask with early 2000's chat emoticons as eyeballs.

I think being able to hack vehicles is neat, but at that point i want to be able to hack multiple vehicles, simulate them riding a course, and then make it all play out in real time by hitting a button.

This video seemed very reminiscent of Arkham Knight, where your tools are split up between 2-3 devices (dude, drone, hopper), and you have to control them one at a time to complete the objective. I think it would be more fun to carefully plan it all out and have 5 minutes of pure action, while all the hacked vehicles / devices do their thing.

This would also make the AI seem less dumb, since the bulk of the hacking is done before shit pops off, not as shit hits the fan . Quite a bummer to see those guards just look at the main character hanging out with his laptop while doors open left and right.

It's hilarious the hackers are discussing the threat of Big Brother surveillance while they're manipulating it to get police to arrest each other and arrange driveby shootings.

It would be great if, at the end of the game, you learn the CEO of the company is a former hacker that used to pull the same shit you do until "I realized I could do so much more if I went professional and bigtime!"

Hey, that actually doesn't look too bad! I still think the tone and story will probably not be very good, but if the gameplay stays interesting I may try this out.

The first game had some neat ideas though, so I really hope the campaign missions make good use of all the cool new abilities.

Those dome things are above sewer grates which leads me to believe they're the area of effect of explosions. WHen Dan goes for the motorcycle and blows up, he hacks the sewer grate and causes the explosion, that was in the first game too only they didn't show the area of effect there.

This looks like the right kind of stupid. I bet the people shit talking the fashion in this game wear either plaid button ups or tshirts with video game references on them.

And I really hope this game takes its self SUPER FUCKING SERIOUSLY. It'll just amplify the stupid.

There's a lot about the character animation that screams GTAV to me.

Aways enjoyed watching the first one being played, but never got into it myself. This one looks cool aswell.

The AI in Ubisoft open world games just never seems to evolve and it kills any immersion you could hope for. This is literally still the same shit way back from Assassin's Creed 2. There is always this jarring disconnect between how they present the games and how they actually play.

I'm really excited for Watch^_^Dogs The Third

Being 100% honest... I can't stand watching Dan play any video games. He's worse than Vinny with the whole running around pressing EVERY SINGLE BUTTON EVER WITH NO CONTEXT thing. I have no idea how to play this game or what it's basic mechanics are, but I know you can drop bombs in a strip club from a drone... thanks?

I want to play an open world game in San Francisco, but I don't know that I want that game to be Watch Dogs 2.

I keep wanting to get into this series but here we are with the second entry and i still don't think it looks very good? Beyond open world jank that would make Bethesda devs blush it just seems like a tonally inconsistent trainwreck. I'd rather see these abilities with something even more akin to a Saint's Row in tenor & humor.

Hmm, I don't know. They seem to be trying to strike so kind of balance between GTA on the one hand and Saints Row on the other. And GTA has always had very silly elements already. I do like the look of this though; just making chaos seems fun.

I enjoyed the first Watch_Dogs and this looks like a lot more fun. Can't wait.