I’ve just exited the halls of E3 for the final time in 2013 and one of the very last games I saw at the show was Watch Dogs. Up until now we’ve mostly seen very restricted, set-piece style missions from Watch Dogs. That’s all well and good but we’ve been constantly told that Watch Dogs is an open world game with multiple dynamic systems — today we got proof.
In a behind closed doors demo we got a glimpse into how Watch Dogs will work when you eventually play it at home and it was extremely impressive. Moving from traditional open world play (combat/shooting/driving) to hacking was seamless and seemed surprisingly accessible. Prompts appeared contextually, giving me the impression that Watch Dogs is all about the decisions you make, and trying to play smart using the environment.
There are also some incredibly unique uses of a tablet app that works in tandem with the game itself, but I’ll go into more detail on this later…
For now I want to talk about the way in which Watch Dogs is like Dark Souls.
At one point in the demo, Aiden (the protagonist) was being hacked from an outside source. ‘Cool,’ I thought. ‘This must be a more complicated Watch Dogs version of the thieves in Assassin’s Creed, who steal your cash and you have to chase them down.’
But no, it turns out that was actually another player, playing the game on another console. Like in Dark Souls, players can essentially invade one another’s game and attempt to hack one another. The goal is to steal their connectivity, their ability to access different technology points in the game world. If you are getting hacked it’s your job to hunt the perp down and kill them before they get access.
It’s seamlessly integrated into the single player and I love the concept. Hopefully it won’t get too frustrating, but I think it’s a great way to shake things up, to feel connected within the world. In Dark Souls I often got angry when I was invaded, because an invasion had the potential to completely ruin a very specific plan you had to get through very difficult parts of the game. In Watch Dogs? I think it’s something I would be more inclined to enjoy.
Comments
11 responses to “Why Watch Dogs Is A Lot Like Dark Souls”
As long as there isn’t an arseload of lag when you have to fight back, it sounds like fun.
Sounds like fun. Looking forward to this too.
Oh the humanity!
A friends only option is a must with this. It is the internet after all. Good idea for sure though.
oh man if its like those old UTOPIA or farmville games where your account is always “live” on the web so you can be hacked 24/7 i just know my friends will abuse it just to troll each other
so more like need a “block friends” option lol
The first time I was invaded I was dead before I knew it. One or two individuals leave items for people. In Watch Dogs though the aim seems to be to only screw with the other player. Still, as long as not catching the hacker doesn’t affect your playthrough in a drastic way like dying in Dark Souls, I won’t complain
You can request help from other players too, I think that’s limited to those playing with the tablet/mobile app though.
But what if we want to partake in jolly cooperation?
It’s funny, when I was really struggling with a Dark Souls section I just ripped the ethernet cable out the back of my PS3. I guess we won’t be able to do that with Xbox One!
Sure you can. Just remember to turn it back on within 24 hours.
If there’s not an option to turn this off I’ll be configuring my Windows firewall to block the Watch Dogs executable from the accessing the Internet. (There’s a joke in here somewhere about having to do some real world hacking before being able to hack me in game)
Awesome, the invasions were some of the best bits in dark souls! Sure there could be dicks but most of them were relatively polite dicks