Ubisoft may be taking a year off from Assassin’s Creed this year, but it doesn’t mean they won’t have a huge AAA presence this holiday season. Watch Dogs 2 was announced today with a spiffy new trailer and some hints of the game’s story.
Watch Dogs 2 moves the action from Chicago to San Fransisco, and introduces a new protagonist, Marcus Holloway, who runs with DedSec, a hacktivist group. As in the last game, the world will be open, and Marcus can essentially hack into anything and everything as he works to shut down the ctOS 2.0, which is an evasive technology spying on essentially everyone.
By moving the story to San Francisco, the heart of the technological world (silicon valley), there will be more opportunities to really push the boundaries between fact and fiction. Our smartphones already track us through our microphones (this is not a crazy conspiracy theory, read your EULAs!), and with Ubisoft building a game franchise around the very real possibility of massive hacks of personal information, Watch Dogs 2 is as much a game as it is a warning of what could actually happen sometime in the near future, which is one of the biggest draws.
Also new in Watch Dogs 2 is the seamless multiplayer modes with co-op and player vs. player activities. This will probably work much like it does in another Ubisoft game, The Division. The open world environment will feature areas around San Fransisco bay, and bleed into Oakland and even silicon valley itself. By real work maps alone, this would make Watch Dogs 2 much bigger than the first game.
As you can see in the trailer, the character models look stunning — even if it’s not true real game footage. The first Watch Dogs was gorgeous, even with the downgraded graphics from the initial reveal. With the additional years of development on the original engine, there is nothing to say the sequel won’t top it.
More inför here.
Watch Dogs 2 will hit November 15, 2015, for the PS4 and Xbox One. Expect more information on this highly anticipated game as we get closer to release.
