As far as disappointments in gaming go, “Watch Dogs” was probably a pretty notable incident. The game was hyped up a lot by its developers before it came out, and fans were given the impression that it will be a vast, open-world experience full of exciting things to do and different ways to approach goals. In the end, the game was seen as a bit underwhelming in the context of what we were promised, and many people were annoyed by certain aspects of its gameplay, such as the fact that it feels like it’s on rails even though it’s supposedly an open-world title.
And now, rumors about a sequel are gearing up and there are various possibilities being discussed for the new game, some of which admittedly sound a bit far-fetched, but other seem more plausible. First, the release date – if this rumor is true, Ubisoft have really picked up the pace in their development, as it’s claimed that the game should be ready by the end of this year.
That would make its development period quite the short one, given the huge workload that the studio has had recently, and that has made some fans suspicious of the situation. According to them, either the rumors about the game coming out this year must be false, or Ubisoft will have developed something underwhelming once again, as it’s not very likely that they’ve made a very in-depth experience in such a short time.
What do fans want to see in the new game specifically? This varies from one discussion to another, admittedly, but for the most part people want a more expansive experience, one that spans across a truly open world instead of making the player feel like the game is guiding them by the hand. This is how the first game was supposed to work too, but most of its missions actually felt quite monotonous and repetitive.
Another detail that players would like to see addressed is the variety of choices that are offered to the player. We were originally given the impression that the title will offer many different approaches to a situation, allowing the player to truly decide how they want to go about their problems, including various non-violent solutions to some of the situations. On the other hand, the final product didn’t quite work like that, as most of the missions boiled down to taking out a few guards and/or hacking a certain piece of equipment to move forward.
Given the premise of the game, it could have actually been made a lot more interesting in this regard, and even the initial previews implied that players will be given a lot of options for how they want to go about their missions, and will be able to use the surrounding world to their advantage. And while the game did have some moments like the ones we saw in those previews, the overall experience more or less paled in comparison to that.
There were also mixed opinions about the quality of the game’s graphics back when it came out, but that was a highly subjective discussion and not something we would put a lot of weight to. Most people were fine with how the game looked, but there were also some who felt like the original trailers showed something prettier and more advanced in this department, and the final game came as a bit of a downgrade from those previews. But once again, that’s quite subjective.