14 DAY TRIAL // Watch Dogs, the upcoming open-world action game from Ubisoft allows players to do a lot of things throughout the story and their decisions will have unique consequences that make sense in the real world, according to developer Ubisoft Montreal.
Watch Dogs impressed lots of gamers both at E3 2012, when it was revealed to the world, but also at the Sony PlayStation 4 press conference, where a live gameplay demo was shown to the world.
The game is set in a fictional version of Chicago where a central computer system controls the whole city while the protagonist, Aidan Pearce, can remotely hack into it and its various components to protect his family.
Besides the main adventures, Pearce can also embark on side quests like the domestic disturbance that was portrayed at the PS4 conference and showed a man breaking his restraining order and going after his ex-wife.
Pearce eventually took him down by hacking into a fuse box and causing it to burst but he could have also used his gun and other more lethal means that would result in various other consequences.
While these include things like a police chase, they also result in a new event in Pearce's notoriety. If he killed that person stealthily, news reports would comment on the man's life, according to Ubisoft Montreal's Jonathan Morin.
"What’s important for us is not to judge the player, but I think every player, regardless of how they play the game, they will expect natural, believable reactions from the system," Morin told Digital Trends.
"So if a player wants to kill the good guy, he’s expecting to see the world surprise him with logical situations afterwards. That’s where we’re going, we’re not judging anything."
What's more, Morin has also emphasized that, while Watch Dogs takes some liberties with the technology seen in its version of Chicago, things like central computer systems controlling entire cities exist in real life.
"It’s actually 100-percent based on real technology," Morin said, "but like all the time, when you tap into the edge of what’s going on right now, you enter what I would personally call the ‘sweet spot’ of certain people that say ‘wow, it’s really relevant, it’s today’s world.’ Some others would say ‘near future, cyber punk.’ And that’s an awesome spectrum. It’s like the Profiler. You want to let the player perceive what he likes."
Watch Dogs is set to appear this year for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 but also for the PlayStation 4 and the oft-rumored Xbox 720.