14 DAY TRIAL // The development team working on Watch Dogs at Ubisoft says that most of the open world video game can be completed by players who take advantage of the stealth mechanics it will include, with the only necessary confrontations linked to some of the leading antagonists.
Dominic Guay, the senior director working on the title, tells Polygon that, “About 95% of missions you can completely stealth through, or flee or chase without having to shoot.”
Most open world games offer some kind of stealth-based approach, but most players opt to abandon it in order to test the various weapons that their characters can use and the special powers that they get access to.
In Watch Dogs, main character Aiden Pearce can hack into the computer controlling the city of Chicago in order to find out information on his targets or use the environment against them, while he moves around unnoticed and does not offered a clear target to his enemies.
The director adds, “So it’s really player choice-driven. There are a very few, very limited amount of missions that will force you to kill people.”
A solid stealth mechanic makes sense for the open world Ubisoft title because the overall story deals with the power of surveillance and what one man can do in order to stay off the grid while using its extensive capabilities against his own targets.
Guay also says that the multiplayer modes of Watch Dogs are also designed to make stealth movement and kills a viable approach, although his team has so far refused to offer more details about the mechanics.
Watch Dogs will be launched on the PC, the PS3, the Wii U from Nintendo and the Xbox 360 on November 19 in the United States and on November 22 across Europe.
Versions for next-gen consoles are also being created at Ubisoft.