It was one of the biggest games of 2014. It was also one of the biggest disappointments.
There was so much promise in Ubisoft’s AAA blockbuster Watch Dogs. An open world tech thriller set in an ultra-connected Chicago, where the entire city is controlled by a single operating system – ctOS.
What could have been an exploration of mass surveillance and the fight against technological oppression actually turned out to be a fairly dull story about a fairly dull man searching for the fairly dull bastards that killed his niece. No offence to dead kids, but yawn.
Nevertheless, Watch Dogs was a huge success, so of course Watch Dogs 2 wasn’t far behind. We went to Paris to check out a preview of the sequel and to see if the problems of the first game had been resolved. Obviously we’ll have to wait until the full game is released, but from what we saw, Watch Dogs 2 looks set to be the game Watch Dogs was supposed to be.
1. The new story is way more compelling than the previous
With the greatest respect, it was nearly impossible to give a fuck about the plight of the po-faced Aiden Pearce. He was just another middle-aged white dude running around in a trench coat, shooting people and f e e l i n g  b a d.
Stories fuelled by personal motivations only work if you’re interested in them, and you’re only interested in them if they are in some way interesting. A man searching for the people who killed someone close to him (an act he feels partially responsible for, by the way – no!) is a story we’ve heard a thousand times over.
Watch Dogs 2 ditches the personal angle in favour of something more pertinent. The hero is Marcus Holloway, a young hacker who gets recruited by hacktivist group DeadSec to fight against the dystopian future that the all-seeing, all-knowing ctOS could bring about. He’s young, he’s cool and crucially, he’s not another middle-aged white dude running around in a trench coat.
Fighting against the controlling ctOSÂ gives us more of a reason to root for the hackers; their primary skill makes more sense in this fight, and it’s a fight that, in some ways, we can see unfolding today.
2. The characters are more interesting and actually relatable
Did we mention that no one gives a shit about Aiden Pearce? We might have covered that, but forget him. The new iteration of DeadSec is young, hip and happening, and as a young, hip and happening person, they spoke directly to the shrivelled husk of a soul inside me and all young, hip and happening people.
Though they appear to be the result of a quick Google search for ‘cool millennials’, the members of DeadSec are immediately more familiar than a blank-faced, forty-year-old computer programmer whose best attempt at an alias was ‘The Vigilante’. They do things that we do, like get drunk, fly drones, disable complex computer servers – the usual. Their cause is understandable, and in Marcus we have that most sought-after of components: a protagonist we can actually see ourselves in.
We only got a few hours to play through the game but there were definitely some promising relationships developing, particularly what seems to be a blossoming bromance between Marcus and the chap with the X X mask above. Ordinarily this would go without saying, but we really hope no one’s niece gets killed, because that would bring this party down.
3. San Francisco is an infinitely better city to play in than Chicago
No offence to Chicago, but as far as video games go, San Francisco is an infinitely more enjoyable place to spend time in. The Chicago we saw in Watch Dogs was beautifully realised, but the city means nothing to people outside of it. If you set a game in LA, you need the Hollywood sign. If you set a game in London, you need Buckingham Palace. If you set a game in Chicago, you need… the wind?
The San Francisco of Watch Dogs 2 has enough key landmarks to elicit more than a few oohs and ahhs while you’re playing it, particularly the Golden Gate Bridge, but honestly, it’s just nice being somewhere sunny with beaches, marinas and people wearing shorts. The world feels more open and expansive, too. Outside of San Francisco you can visit Marin, Oakland and Silicon Valley, as well as Alcatraz, an island players of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 will remember fondly.
4. The sequel has more personality than its predecessor
The trap that narrative video games fall into time and time again is taking themselves too seriously, and Watch Dogs was a Pretty Serious Game. Thankfully, Watch Dogs 2 has decided to lighten up and just have some fun. Part of this is changing the setting to San Francisco, where everything is bright and lovely.
Obviously Ubisoft have looked to their competitors’ strengths and borrowed little bits and pieces. A side quest involving ripping off the CEO of a pharma company who raised the price of a drug is an obvious reference to Martin Shkreli, but its doesn’t land as cleanly as when GTA makes pop culture references. They’ve evidently taken some of the more ‘anarchic’ flavours from fellow open worlder Saints Row, but all of these lifted elements tie into the central hacking theme of the game well, so they get away with it.
5. They fixed the clunky driving
One of the biggest ball aches of Watch Dogs was driving. Every car handled like a pig in a wheelbarrow, and in an open world game that requires you to drive almost everywhere, this got very annoying very quickly. When such a crucial game mechanic is so fundamentally flawed, it actively dissuades you from playing, which may be part of the reason why players like us abandoned the game after a few hours.
However, the driving in Watch Dogs 2 is actually good. Not great, and certainly not on a “Jesus, how did they pull this off” level like GTA V, but it’s most definitely an improvement on Watch Dogs. A minor complaint, but the noises some of the cars make are deeply irritating, particularly the Prius-esq car. But then the counter-argument to that is “Why would you drive a Prius in a game?” and there’s really no answer to that question.
6. The missions are easier and more versatile
This isn’t from a particular mission, but we thought you should know how cool blowing up gas mainlines is.
One of the biggest frustrations of Watch Dogs was how unnecessarily hard it was to work through the campaign. Even some of the earlier missions, which should have been easy enough to provide a level playing field for new and experienced players alike, took several attempts and required Aiden to die more times than even he deserved. Escaping from the police was hard, ridiculously hard, meaning that every mission requiring you to do so would take twice as long as it should have.
To Ubisoft’s credit, they’ve clearly listened to the feedback from fans, as the new missions can be completed without players tearing their hair out. There’s also more room for players to choose how they approach the missions; for a game ostensibly about hacking, Watch Dogs had an awful lot of shooting in it. In the sequel, there’s more freedom to decide if you want to use hacking, stealth, bullets or new tools like the remote-controlled Jumper to get the job done.
7. Watch Dogs was trying too hard to be cool. Watch Dogs 2 more or less is cool
There’s nothing more uncool than desperately trying to be cool, and Watch Dogs went too far down the dark-and-brooding, oh-look-at-us-we’re-so-serious route to ever be actually cool. The ‘hacking’ elements of the game (which really just consisted of pressing square a bunch of times) felt like some old dudes had a meeting and tried to figure out what the young people of today think is cool, or ‘lit’ as my great-grandson insists on saying.
Weirdly, for a game so desperately steeped in ‘youth’ culture, Watch Dogs 2 kind of gets away with it. In a world where entire cities are run on a single operating system, it sort of makes sense that there’d be a group of digital pranksters messing with it. But the game doesn’t force the ‘WTFLOLBBQ!!1!’ vision of youth down your throat. If you just want to spend your time – and again, a lot of the game’s success comes down to its location – cruising around San Francisco, you’re very welcome to.
8. It’s just way, way more fun
Like the best games, Watch Dogs 2 is more than the sum of its parts. The improvements (fixing the driving, creating an inviting and engaging setting) and innovations (new multiplayer modes, expanded environmental hacking) make it a joy to spend time in San Francisco with DeadSec.
The series is fundamentally Grand Theft Auto-lite, and if you base your primary gameplay system on the one perfected by Rockstar, that’s criticism you have to expect. However, unlike the first Watch Dogs, which was a constant reminder that you weren’t playing GTA, Watch Dogs 2 has enough quirks, well-honed gameplay and what looks to be a believable and engaging story that will see you investing a solid amount of your life in it.
Watch Dogs 2 is released on PS4 and Xbox One on 15th November, and PC on 29th November.
All images: Ubisoft
