What's the game about?
What's the game about?
Set within a fictionalized version of the San Francisco Bay Area, the game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on-foot or by vehicle. Players control Marcus Holloway, a hacker who works with the hacking group DedSec to take down the city's advanced surveillance system. There are multiple ways to complete missions, and each successful assignment increases the follower count of DedSec. Ubisoft Montreal, the game's developer, studied player feedback from the first game to assess what could be improved in Watch Dogs 2 and the setting was researched by making frequent trips to California. Ubisoft Reflections was responsible for overhauling the driving mechanic. Real hackers were consulted to validate scripts and game mechanics for authenticity and references to real life hacktivism were fictionalized, like the Project Chanology protest.
The Story (wiki)
Watch Dogs 2 is an action-adventure game with stealth elements. Played from a third-person perspective as protagonist Marcus Holloway – a young hacker from Oakland, California – the game features an open world set in a fictionalized version of the San Francisco Bay Area, an area more than twice as large as the Chicago setting from Watch Dogs. The Bay Area consists of four different areas: San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, and Silicon Valley, all of which have different characteristics and aesthetics. Players can navigate the city on-foot or by the various vehicles featured in the game, such as cars, trucks, buses, cable cars, motorbikes, quad bikes and boats. The driving mechanic was overhauled and was designed to be more accessible. The players can also shoot their weapons while driving. Marcus also has improved acrobatic skills, and has the ability to parkour around the city. Players can use different methods to approach the game's missions, choosing between the aggressive approach, in which they defeat enemies with guns which are made with a 3D printer, explosives like mines, or Marcus' own melee weapon, the thunderball, a billiard ball attached to a bungee cord. Alternatively, players can use the stealth approach, in which they can evade enemies or paralyze them temporarily with Marcus' taser. Players can also complete the game through hacking alone. When players commit too many crimes in the open world, police officers will become alerted and will attempt to arrest the player. The game upgrades system also returns, with items being divided into three categories: Stealth, Aggressor, and Trickster. Players can choose their upgrades in accordance to their own playstyle
Marcus can hack into various electronic devices connected to the ctOS system with his in-game smartphone. For example, Marcus can modify the personal information of non-player characters to have them arrested, hack and manipulate every mobile phone featured in the game, disrupt traffic by hacking cars and traffic lights, hack into monitoring cameras, and carry out "mass hacking", which hacks the electrical equipment of a large group of people. Players also gain multiple options while hacking the same object. For instance, if the player attempts to hack a car, they can gain direct control over them, or have the car losing control and crashing in a random direction. If the player hacks a junction box, they can choose whether they should deactivate it or turn it into a proximity mine. Unlike Aiden, the protagonist of the first game, Marcus has an arsenal of advanced equipment, including a quadcopter and a remote-controlled car, both of which can be used for remote hacking and scouting. Marcus' apparel can be customized with over 700 articles of clothing, available for purchase in stores that maintain fashion styles unique to what is worn by the denizens in each area. The game features several main story missions, and side-missions known as "operations". Once completed, Marcus' follower count will increase, which ties back into the narrative and helps players to complete their ultimate goal.
Following the events of Chicago, San Francisco becomes the next city to install the ctOS (central Operating System), which connects everyone with everything. Marcus Holloway (Ruffin Prentiss), an intelligent twenty-four year old hacker from Oakland, California, is punished for a crime he did not commit by the upgraded ctOS – ctOS 2.0 – which categorizes him as the suspect. Realizing the system covertly brings harm to the innocent citizens of San Francisco, he decides to work with the hacking group DedSec to take down the city's ctOS 2.0, and Blume, the company behind it. Marcus joins DedSec and works with fellow hackers Sitara (Tasya Teles), Wrench (Shawn Baichoo), Horatio (Michael Xavier) and Josh (Jonathan Dubsky), and they begin using their skills to expose corrupt organizations and corporations that are secretly using stolen personal ctOS data for their own ends. The game begins with Marcus – known also as Retr0 – having an initiation test: deleting his own ct0S profile. Accepted into Dedsec, he is alerted to a Church called New Dawn that serves as a criminal organization. Eventually, they stumble upon the existence of a subliminal message and Bellwether, a data manipulation program being fed ctOS data by Dusan (Christopher Jacot), Blume's CTO, to manipulate world finance and politics. DedSec manages to recruit the assistance of Raymond "T-Bone" Kenney, who is determined to battle Blume.
With his assistance, Marcus and DedSec manage to expose the corruption of the FBI and numerous Silicon Valley corporations. They then learn that Blume is planning to install a satellite network designed to bypass undersea data cables, which would effectively give Blume a monopoly on the entire world's electronic data and stock exchanges. In order to bring down Blume and Dusan for good, Marcus breaks into Blume's San Francisco headquarters and hacks their servers, exposing the existence of Bellwether and Dusan's corruption. In the aftermath, Dusan is arrested for fraud and Blume is put under investigation, though Marcus and DedSec resolve to continue the fight against Blume.
