After making waves amongst the gaming crowd at E3, cyber espionage thriller Watch_Dogs resurfaced at last night's big Playstation 4 event, where Ubisoft confirmed the already widely held belief that the game would be making its way to the PS4, and, somewhat more unexpectedly, the Wii U.
Set in the near future in the city of Chicago, Watch Dogs tells the tale of Aiden Pearce, a hacker with a violent past. When a tragedy befalls his family, Aiden sets out on a quest to find those who hurt his family. In a city where everything's networked together using an overarching system called ctOS, from cashpoints, to traffic lights, and even public transport, a hacker like Aiden can be very powerful. Letting you bring up information about every person you see, their likes and dislikes, their past, their foibles, no one can hide behind anonymity - and at the touch of a button, you can turn the city to chaos. Need to stop a car? Why not turn the lights at a junction to green and create a pile up to stop them? Or even better, just raise the barriers, and bring their journey to an abrupt halt. With a massive city to explore, and hundreds of people to play with, the world is your oyster. It's all very cyberpunk.
Appearing on stage at the Playstation reveal last night, the game's producer, Jonathan Morin, talked the gathered crowd through a demo of the game. Showing the character walking up to a cash point, hacking it in a matter of seconds, and withdrawing a huge sum of money, the plucky Aiden then happens upon a robbery in progress. Letting you decide whether to be the hero, or just let the assailant have his way with his victim, the good guys at Ubisoft decided to give chase, before hacking a fuse box, mid-pursuit, and causing it to explode to bring the chase to its end. Unfortunately for him, the police get the wrong man, and start hunting for you.
Like a super hero armed with only a phone, Watch Dogs is set for release towards the end of this year across all formats. You can watch the full demo below:
