http://www.purexbox.com/news/2016/06/watch_dogs_2_release_date_just_got_leaked

(Moderator note: I'm willing to add this to some kind of E3 reveal/leak thread if that's a better thing to do.)

I refined Watchdogs could be fantastic.

I got an email from ubisoft about the game the other day, saying it would be revealed tomorrow. I think IGN jumped the gun, lol.

Eww. WD was a total drag. How you progressed wasn't engaging at all, and I didn't like the controls. The awful mouse acceleration still hasn't been fixed. The protagonist dressed like a douchebag and it looks like WD2 is following suit. Ubisoft is too big to make games that are worth a damn. I don't know why I bought Assassin's Creed IV a few months ago. It has the same tedious progression, annoying menus, limiting structure, bad writing and counter-intuitive controls as their other AAA games. I barely played either of these games.

If Ubisoft had any self awareness, the first mission in this game will be to go and murder Aiden Pierce.

Oh wow, this year huh?

I really liked the first game. Like, a lot.

No underscore before the 2? For shame.

I wasn't a big fan of the first game, but felt at the time that a sequel that builds on some of it's ideas would be neat. I'll wait and see what happens with this thing.

The character design on that main protagonist (if that's him) looks really boring and uninspired, like a bland random NPC on a low-budget online game or like if it was early concept art for an enemy on Marc Ecko's Getting Up but it was quickly thrown to the trash because of how bad it's designed.

I love when people take one small piece of an already small bit of information and run with it to such a stupid point. I'm hoping this was a joke.

I obviously used a lot of hyperbole, but I still think it looks like bad character design.

High Five man! You and me both. Only.. you and me..

I don't know what it was but I really liked the car physics and world interaction in Watch Dogs. Being on the run from the cops only to open up an underground garage door, rush in closing it behind me and then turning my engine off and seeing the cops lose track of me felt super badass. It was also the first open world game that gave me that minimal semblance of interaction with the game world whereas usually it's just this static object you bounce around in.

Also I didn't mind Aiden Pearce at all. The guy wasn't the best game protagonist ever written but he seemed fine in the role of "guy that is so consumed with something that he can't see how it's affecting those around him."

A San Francisco open world could be pretty cool, especially since the way they rendered Chicago was one of the few good things about the first game.

"We are taking a year off of Assassin's Creed... so we can have our studios work on Watch Dogs instead." -Ubisoft

I rather play Aiden then a Hipster I hope Jordi comes back he is one of the best characters that Ubi created in years.

I could get excited for a new Watch dogs game. I REALLY hope they make the player character likable though. Aiden suffered from the same issue as Connor from AC3 in that he was so serious and dull that he made the game a chore to play. It also needs like 200% more stuff to hack, WD1 relied to much on guns when you run out of environmental stuff to play with, they need to change that.

Fucking shit. For a second I was thinking this was Sleeping Dogs 2. Now I am just bummed out.

@humanity: Yeah, it's one of the better realized game worlds, even if it's not particularly accurate to Chicago. Even just walking the streets was oddly enjoyable. In other open world games, the city feels almost like an oversized toy that you're just fiddling around in. I think it's the scale of the streets, sidewalks, and buildings in Watch Dogs that made simply getting around so engaging.

And yeah, the car physics coupled with the hacking and the random-ass bullet time (not that it ever needs justification), surrounded by somehow also being a goddamn stealth game (both on foot and in-car), while having an intriguing profile system that significantly impacted the way I engaged with the game, all really came together to become something special I thought. Never even touched the multiplayer.

Feel the same as you about Aiden Pearce. He's just a whatever revenge protagonist. Nothing especially memorable, but nowhere near as annoyingly serious or grim as he's touted to be. The only thing I actively didn't like was Clara's death being completely unearned. The graphical downgrade was a bit of a bummer too, but whatever, game still looked fine.

I should play through the first Watch_Dogs. It didn't really grab me when I first tried it out, but it should be something I really get into. I like those mindless open world games, like Ass Creed and Mad Max.

*cricket chirp*

The only people I know who will get excited about this game are kids who believe that GTA and Saints Row are the only kinds of games worth playing or people who foolishly still believe Ubisoft isn't out to fuck them out of all their money ASAP.

As for Watch Dogs 2 itself, in terms of being a game, I can only judge based on the first game...which I could barely play more than an hour of before being bored to sleep. Literal sleep. I can't play the game because I keep falling asleep every time I try to play it. It's just...drab and boring and uninteresting and unexciting and dull and... Like, in terms of gameplay, it's fine. It's just...not...good to me. There isn't really anything they can do to improve that to a point where I'd give a shit about the second game.

I've been proven wrong before, though. I spit vitriol at Fallout 3, and I ate those words. I just feel pretty safe that I won't be eating my words with another Ubisoft attempt as something that didn't work the first time.

Watch_Dogs 2 will be to the original game what Assassin's Creed 2: Brotherhood was to the series as a whole. Calling it right now.

You know, this could be like Assassin's Creed 1 -> Assassin's Creed 2. I'm interested in this.

I love a lot of the basics of WD 1, as far as making a more interactive open world and making other areas (like driving) dynamic in different ways like having stealth in there. I hope they do really pull off a AC 1 to AC 2 type jump. The one area that it needs really improvement is any area of personality and flavor but I could overlook that some if the rest is there and have it be a little more of a mindless game to listen to podcasts and play.

I don't know why people keep using this comparison. Assassin's Creed 1 was a really good game, specially for the time it was released. The lack of cinematics was probably it's biggest problem.

The jump from AC1 to AC2 was way smaller than the jump Watch Dogs needs to do from 1 to 2.

I'll check this one out. I thought the first was decent. Didn't love it or hate. The first one had a lot of great ideas that they either didn't fully follow through with or utilize properly. So it will be interesting to see what they do with this one.

@johnymyko: probably because those people don't agree with you. AC 1 is a decent game at best IMO. The story is lame, the characters are boring, the gameplay structure was not fun at all. The build up to a big hit was probably the only good part. The traversal was interesting at the time but by the time 2 came along it was far better. 2 was a crazy jump in quality to me. I was not even looking forward to it a ton going in because of the taste 1 left in my mouth.

I can see a very similar set up here. Like with AC 1, the basics are there but it needs just about everything around it to be better.

I'm going to utilize a terrible metric: average review scores. With that data, Asser's Cred jumped from ~80 to ~90 with its sequel, and several reviewers threw some big caveats at the first instalment. Watchamacallit...Doggers? is in much the same boat, with a fairly equal amount of criticism leveled against it.

So, yes, as a fun aside in this thread I am proclaiming a great amount of improvements from the first to the second.

The first Watch_Dogs wasn't nearly as bad of a game as it's generally thought to be; it just needed a better story, protagonist, and needed to flesh out some concepts a bit further. There's some real potential for the series, but whether they capitalize on it or not remains to be seen. Regardless, I think it was a good move by Ubi to give this another shot and give AC a much-needed break.

Will Aiden Pearce's "iconic" cap be returning?

I hope they've got a new lead writer on this because man the story in the first game was top-tier fucking dog shit. I've played a lot of games with shaky narratives and unlikeable protagonists, but Watch Dogs was an unholy maelstrom of nonsensical motivations, awful dialogue and almost every trope and stereotype it's possible for a story to have.

No. It wasn't.

Assassins Creed 1 had extreme problems. The maps were small and further constrained by the limiting mechanics. The world was under-realized, only existing to supplement the tower climbing. The combat was anemic and barely existed, the game outright told you that if you got caught, dying was the fastest way to get back to a playable state since the combat was so iffy. Objectives had no variety outside of "Kill the main man. Do the same 5-6 miniobjectives ( pickpocket a guy, listen in on a conversation, beat up a preacher, etc ) over and over again to learn more about where he is hiding so you can unlock the actual kill mission.". The world was a setpiece you barely existed in.

Assassins Creed 2 succeeds because it plays -nothing- like Assassins Creed 1. The world map is large and varied. Side quest content is hefty, varied, and everywhere with great rewards. The story/main arc has been refurbished into a more action style of almost GTA missions, unlike the previous "hits" system. Combat has been completely overhauled with a greater focus on counters/light and heavy attacks, which gets further overhauled in Brotherhood.

I like AssCreed 1. Don't get me wrong, it's still a solid game and a solid start to the franchise. But every game that came after it in the series took almost nothing from it outside of the ideal of historical tourism. The way the missions are doled out, combat, assassination style, plot, world style ( medium sized cities with countryside/horse to large cities with fades in between, etc. ) everything was changed in the process of making it's sequels. The difference between AssCreed 1 and AssCreed 2 is the difference between Far Cry 1 and Far Cry 3 if you get into the actual nitty gritty.

Watch Dogs needs significantly less change to hit those same notes as AssCreed 2. The protag and his allies need to be replaced with better/more interesting people. The hacking needs to be a bit more extensive/mission driven rather then just casual fuckery. And the driving needs a slight re-tuning to be a bit less floaty. None of that is exceptionally difficult to pull off. This isn't to say Ubisoft -can- pull it off, but it's not like they have to reinvent the wheel here.

looking at the title with a space and an underscore makes me cringe a little bit

Finally, another open-world Ubisoft game! They haven't made one of those in a while.

Fingers crossed for an AC2 situation.

Everyone else has already said this, but hopefully this is the AC2/Brotherhood that improves upon the first game.

I'm definitely down to watch more dogs. I really liked the first game.

Watch_Dogs' Chicago was criticized for being sterile and a generic open world with none of the character of the city it took place in. What better choice than to set the sequel in a city that is presently a shadow of its former self with all harsh edges of culture filed off by boorish tech and wealth.

You think it'll have Latinos? Contrary to what gentrification would have you think, they are there. I'm having trouble thinking of the last Latino in a Ubisoft game and I'm willing to believe they're so handicapped in their writing that they'd dodge an entire ethnicity.

The Spanish in Black Flag don't count, though I imagine there are others in that game who do.

Oh, no, wait, I've made it political. Sorry.

Is Oakland going to be an escapist fantasy crime ghetto where you can get into massive gunfights with no sense of responsibility because the area is allegedly filled with only bad people?