Watch Dogs' story stopped making any sense whatsoever to me the moment Aiden caused a massive car pileup in the E3 2012 trailer just so he had cover to kill people in order to catch one guy. Being a Chicagoan, I was simply excited to cause trouble in areas I constantly walk by and live amongst, and just set my expectations there and left them there.

With that said, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was to play Watch Dogs as a game where you DON'T kill A through Y just to get to Z. It's a much harder game that way, but so satisfying. The story made as little sense as I expected, but I had a truly great time trying to subvert Aiden's hypocritical mission the entire way. I also was taken by surprise by a weird effect of me being acutely conscious of not killing innocent bystanders because I viewed them as virtual extensions of my real neighbors from my real neighborhood. Didn't always succeed, but I had a terrific time trying. After probably 30-40 hours of play, I have yet to cause GTA-scale mischief outside of the Digital Trip minigames, because I just can't bring myself to be that rotten in this environment. (I'm saving it all up for GTA 5.)

Good writeup, Patrick. I would love reading more gameplay postmortems like this. I guess that's what the podcasts accomplish, but still an excellent concept for an article.

Cops have the option of putting bullets into peoples heads and then stealing their wallets, but they don't. You can get through watch dogs without hacking a single civilian bank account. The only thing money is used for really is ammo and guns, and not only are you provided plenty for free, but you also don't need them thanks to your trusty bat-baton, brutally concussing knocking out guards instead of killing them. Pinning the bank hacks on Aiden instead of the player is kind of a cheap cop out. The simple solution is not to take the easy route, just like actual heroes/law abiders.

That isn't to say ubisoft didn't fail in a couple of locations to allow you to do a fully paragon playthrough (when saving the nephew, the security will always be dead on the cams and he'll always be afraid of you, regardless of whether you ran in guns blazing or completely stealthed it, and the blackouts = civilian casualties narrative with forced uses of blackouts) but I think people are just getting overly defensive with the realization that, at least in fictional worlds, it's they who are the sociopaths.

Funny, I did the exact opposite. I did not kill Maurice, because by that time enough blood had been spilt. And Aiden used those exact words afterwards. I chose not to shoot Maurice at the end, because the Aiden at the beginning of the game would not have done so. The Aiden that started the game knew he had it in him to kill Maurice in a fit of anger, that is why he asked Jordy to take his bullets away. It was also Jordy, who was responsible for the mess at the Stadium. Aiden just wanted to walk out without killing anyone. Jordy was the one who thought it was a good idea to ignite a gang war by shooting the dudes. The story of Watch Dogs is not one about Aidens redemption. It is a story about shit hitting the fan. About snowballs getting bigger. But then at the end, when you find out all the things you have done, the big conspiracy stuff, just turns out to be nothing in the grand scheme of things, I thought that was brilliant. The whole game up to that point makes it seem as if you are on this larger than life mission, but in the end. Poof. Nope.

Then you start to wonder, if any of it was worth it, and the game gives you one final chance. Not for Aidens redemption, but for Maurice to find his. Unless you kill him. In which case, you are a dick. Not Aiden Pearce, but you the player. Aidens redemption story may come in Watch Dogs 2, who knows. But it most definitely not present in this games main story. And I personally found that refreshing.

Yea Watch Dogs 2, which, after beating 1 I am still really excited for, would do well to have a new protagonist. They kinda point to the who CToS thing going world-wide, so maybe make Aiden the bad guy, and the player a member of Dead Sec who blames Aiden for pushing CToS to become even more draconian and invasive.

I've always hated it when games or films have the protagonist not kill the main villain because it would make them 'just like them'. They typically go through hundreds of guards, killing people just doing their job, only to end up at the person who is truly evil and decide that THAT'S when they can't do it. It happens all the time and especially for an asshole like Aiden, it makes no sense not to kill the main guy you've been wanting to kill the whole time after doing the same without remorse to so many innocents.

I made him kill Maurice for the same reasons as Patrick, but also because I knew that if I had been forced to see him refuse to do it (like in so many other stories) I would have been pissed.

@mormonwarrior: JOHN MARSTON IS GOD MAN

@andrewboza: If you do the time to find Maurice's tapes around the city and listen to them (I find it interesting these tapes are not actually something you find in normal missions) you discover he actually has a lot in common with Aiden himself. He was a former crook who got out of the life. He did not actually "want" to do what he did to Aiden. Ultimately he was forced to because his bosses threatened his wife and even then he still did not intend to kill the niece and was suffering from horrid levels of guilt over it. He is actually a pretty sympathetic character in the end.

My point is he had tons of motive to do it before his partner did what he did, but Aiden didn't "want" to. He did kill him in the end but by that point his hand was literally being forced.

Screw off Aiden Pierce, turn into a bowling ball. Good riddance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8IlJbwWjfU&list=UUmiI4JksotwKomr3hjIYl0Q

What he's about to do has nothing to do with Redemption,It is called Justice.
Redemption is not about forgiving other ppl crimes but fixing your own .But what ppl say is true, he's a selfish ****.,and that will never happen.
This game relies on Character design and actors performance as all recent Ubisoft games,that's what they do the best and that's what stands out
.It was a very well executed game,but very poorly directed.The lead lacks maturity in the choices they've made.They got rid of Clara stupidly,without any good reason or explanation and want us to give a **** about Maurizzzio the ultimate redeemer?
Well that won't happen either.

It's so fucking dull. Look at the video clip- Above the head of a human being- "2m" and "SHOOT". As if to say to the player "get it done, idiot." It's just another waypoint in the game with another mindless, hollow condition to act on.

Is this not always the case with the western developed open world games? For me the characters of GTAV were 'violently unlikable' too, not only were they incredibly inconsistent as fictional characters, but the nihilistic nature of that game made them seem like horrible monsters that deserve no redemption.

To take it further, I always find it troublesome how many games find it completely justifiable to ask the player to kill hundreds of people, or other intelligences simply because they are 'bad guys'. Killing the Asari in Mass Effect games always made me incredibly uneasy because of the capacity for life that that species had and how many potential changes an individual member of that species could go throughout their long life. It never felt justifiable to me.

And there is no reason that we should have to put up with this trivialisation of life. A lot of games don't handle it like that, yet manage to still be action packed and violent. The Yakuza series, often looked at as a Japanese GTA, makes a huge deal out if every lost life. The games are very violent, but they don't ask the player to kill hundreds of men. Silent Hill and Resident Evil series always make every human death a significant event. The MGS games always make you feel like resorting to killing is a failure.

I could ramble on about this for hours, but I think the heart if my question here is this; why is this only an issue with Watch Dogs? Are there any characters that can be justified in killing hundreds and thousands of people? This is becoming a much discussed issue, but for me this has always been a problem with a lot of videogames, and it's not like this is something unavoidable.

John Marsden was a horrible human being in the past and is seeking his redemption - it is the entire point of the narrative arc of the game (though it does stray a little in the late 2nd Act). And without being too spoilery, he gets it. Ergo, not irredeemable.

I think it is MGS 3 that literally has you wade through a river haunted by the ghost of every enemy you killed during The Sorrow boss fight. Man that was powerful moment especially since my first playthrough I was a bit trigger happy.

That's right. I find that really interesting since most games just gloss right over that stuff. I really hope they follow through on that. I just got done playing Tomb Raider again yesterday and I really like what's been done to the series. I'm stoked for the next one. I wish more games would try to do that sort of thing.

But anyway, back on topic - I totally agree with Patrick here. The violence didn't really bother me as much as it seemed to bother him, because to me the whole point of the game was shooting people in the face just like most every other action game out there, but I agree that Aiden was a scumbag and the story, instead of giving it any meaning, was a total cop out. I don't know if the writers just didn't care, or they just didn't know how to end it and just went with the most generic half-assed ending they could to get the game out the door, but it sucked.

So yeah, not a big fan of the game overall. It had some interesting ideas, but the action was mediocre at best and the story was just utterly forgettable and kinda bad. I hope they remedy that shit for the inevitable Watch Dogs 2.

I don't know about that. They made no bones about who Niko was and what he was trying to do. He was there to kill someone and that's it. Everything else along the way was just the means to an end. All the talk about right or wrong didn't really matter due to his past and present actions, so I have trouble with thinking that anyone in the GTA universe is or was meant to be a "good" guy. Everyone in the GTA universe is kind of a criminal scumbag. Even the people on the "right side" of the law aren't exactly clean, upstanding citizens. If you made this argument for John Marston from Red Dead then you might have a point good point, but not with anyone from GTA.

What happened in Watch Dogs is just bad writing/storytelling. They expect you to be sympathetic to the character without actually doing anything to make you sympathetic, and worse yet, actively causing you to dislike them. If you want the player to connect and feel for the character than you have to earn it.

When it comes to games with weird-ass plots about characters who don't realize how monstrous they are, I always think back on the Dead to Rights series.

Here, something for the next Worth Reading. It's an oldie but a goodie:

http://www.gamecritics.com/daniel-weissenberger/dead-to-rights-the-longest-video-game-review-ever

Sums up my feelings towards Aiden perfectly. The guy is an asshole. His sister pleads with him at her daughters grave to just stop trying to hunt down the people who did this and stop putting everyone in more danger and being the asshole he is, he ignores her, gets her kidnapped and has her son targeted for kidnapping too.

Pearce isn't bad or evil, he's just ruthless in the pursuit of his goal. If you want to play the renegade with a heart of gold, it's very possible. More difficult, but definitely possible. But that doesn't change the end goal of his quest which is revenge. If you expect the game to hand you a cookie if you don't kill innocents that's because you have wrong expectations. YOU decide how you play and so the deaths of people are on YOUR conscience. If you expect to be rewarded because you're trying to be nice, that's a very sick attitude to have in life. Just as in real life, being nice or an asshole rarely changes anything. I tried to minimize civilian casualties and even refused to carjack unless there was really no other option (twice in the game for me). I didn't do that to change anything but I felt better by playing that way.

Watch Dogs has quite a few problems as a game, the likability of Pearce isn't one. He's not your average righteous warrior, and if that bothers people they should not have played a game that describes the player character as an anti-hero. In most games anti-hero is still just a boring person that tries to be the good guy.

When I went in to that final choice scene, I planned on shooting Maurice because it was a part of the quest for revenge, and he was a criminal and a murderer after all. Most of the things he said couldn't persuade me otherwise. He begged, then threatened, then resigned to his fate. But one of the last things he said was 'Nothing ever changes'. And because Pearce might have been on a quest for revenge, he was also convinced that things needed to change. Allowing Maurice to live was a change from the violence of the rest of the story. And again, allowing one person to live or die doesn't change anything in a global sense, it's the idea behind it that matters.

Somehow I constantly forgot what the mission was actually about when playing WatchDogs. I got a call and a waypoint and when I was driving towards the goal I already forgot what I was going to do. I had exactly the same with AC2 & AC4, so I don't know if that is due to the story or the writing from Ubi's part or that I'm the problem myself.
Somehow I'm not experiencing this with GTA for instance..

@onemanx: and you know what? I liked that about the game. Playing as a self-serving jerk for a main character is a nice change of pace from white knighting. It was a game about a regular dude getting his personal revenge. What's wrong with that?

I enjoyed the game. I'm interested to see what they do to evolve the franchise from here. Hopefully without cross-platform development. And pretty poor matchmaking online.

I don't understand why anyone would choose the "good" option in a video game. To me, video games are an escape; an opportunity to do insane things that you could never get away with in real life. To that end, any "moral choices" are completely unrelatable to me. Murderize those polygons in the most absurd way possible!

Maurice didn't deserve that bullet in my opinion. Aiden is a selfish dick, like you say, but at that moment he has the choice to not be a selfish dick. He did (in my game) what he should have done from the start, walk away.

Whaaat? You're supposed to wait for Aiden to say "I've at least given them something to fear." or w/e and then have Maurice go "What the fuck...", before you put a bullet between his eyes. Way more like a cliched movie that way!

@westinlee: Oh I know! that game looked fantastic. I also remember them saying in early development that killing was something you can actively avoid in the game, and a lot of video clips of Aiden taking people out with a police-like baton. It reminded me of Hitman, a little. But I guess they abandoned that for a GTA style shout-em-up. It's a real shame we never got that original game they showed us.

Pretty much exactly what I was going to post.

@humanity: i agree with you. My Aiden rarely took a life, drove sanely and even parked in the lines. After hearing ALL of maurice's backstory, i felt justified with letting him live. Thus breaking the cycle of revenge and developing my character further. But of course given the medium, there is no "right" way to play the game, i can't fault people for their personal experience with it.

I didn't pull the trigger simply because I disliked Aiden so much I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of satisfying his blood lust

Here is the reason:

Aiden is the biggest bore since AC3's Connor. Personality of a fucking doorstop.

Great writeup, I felt the same throughout Watch Dogs.

Every time I stole money, blew up a highway, raised a bridge, made a light turn red or killed civilians (in a manner that was usually totally unpunished) I just felt like a dirtbag. A terrorist, is how I would describe it.

I subverted a system designed to keep people safe, to cause nothing but tragedy and destruction - it made absolutely no sense that Aiden was heralded as a cool renegade dude that people liked, because, what the fuck, Aiden.

I think there was good game in here, didn't surface this time, but I suspect it's sequel will pull an AC2 and build on the flawed narrative and repetition... one would hope.

Aiden is a deluded, psychopathic hypocrite who stole Batman's voice.

He thinks Bedbug is a nice kid. Bedbug only wants to kill his cousin and take over his criminal empire.

Yet he has no problem with his off the rails partner who killed 2 cops just for mocking him.

Why were we even given a choice at the end? At this point I'm a mass murderer who has now killed cops despite my best efforts to be good.

I shot Maurice because unlike Aiden I'm not a hypocrite.

Watch_Dogs is a mediocre GTA clone at best. Sleeping Dogs is way better.

+1000 for the author of this article.

It is EXACTLY how I felt about this game, down to pulling the trigger because I hated Aiden too.

I heard that theres gonna be a mod skin where Adien dresses as John Reese from Person of Interest.

I thought it was a decent game, worthy of a playthrough but not for full admission. It had it's problems but I still had fun. When the 2nd one comes out it will be better but I'll wait for a bargain bin price.

Interesting reading... and apparently Patrick is not alone.

I finished this game today and I agree with everything you had to say about it, Patrick. I heavily disliked this game.

That's just A class argumentation right there.

(P.S. Miss ya scoops!)