Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The idea
The differences
Other characters
A lot more at the article on gameplay systems and such.
EDIT:Couldn't fit that full article title. (._. )
Aiden Pearce steps off the plane at San Francisco International. He checks his phone, because that’s all he knows how to do. It’s 80°F. Suddenly, a trenchcoat seems like a silly wardrobe choice. The summer sun undoes the knots in his brow, and he struggles to remember what he was feeling so grumpy about. His East Coast manners, born in the red brick alleys and oppressive density of Chicago, are out of place. He loosens up.
Then, poof: just like that, he’s not Aiden Pearce anymore.
Once Jonathan Morin had visited San Francisco, he knew Watch Dogs needed a new hero.
“San Francisco’s about wide open, huge vistas, a lot of colour, and eclectic groups of people who really don’t give a shit about how stuff should work,” says the creative director. “I kind of relate a lot to that. I like that.”
Related: the 14 best sandbox games on PC.
Morin and his team talked to the companies in Silicon Valley. They “listened to all of the vibes” of the Bay Area. And it quickly became obvious they needed a younger hacker.
The differences
Aiden was a brutally violent Batman figure who had already paid a nasty price for his career in heist hacking by the time Watch Dogs opened. Which explained the attitude, but was at odds with the promise of the game - the inherent glee of manipulating the traffic lights and bridges of the urban world around you.
Marcus Holloway wears the bandana and the cap. Like the Assassin, he keeps the key signifiers of his series. But everything else has changed. Born in San Francisco and gentrified out to Oakland, he grew up racially profiled by ctOS - the same surveillance database that powered Chicago - and linked to crimes he had no involvement in.
“He’s the kind of guy who had all the qualities to do anything he wanted,” says Morin. “But for some reason profiling decided that that was not for him.”
Now 24, he runs with DedSec, Watch Dogs’ hacktivist collective. He’s not tortured; he’s having the time of his life.
“I wanted to bring [in] this ‘everything is possible’ type of attitude that happens in California,” Morin elaborates. “For the first time he’s with other people who understand what he wants, who understand how these things work. They see an opportunity in exposing the truth to people and making a difference.”
Other characters
Sitara - the artist and DJ who picked the particularly fine piece of hip hop that accompanied Marcus’ E3 reveal mission - is perhaps keener on ethical debate than Wrench, the anarchist who sports a ski mask that blinks emotes. The player decides where Marcus sits along that spectrum, and now that Ubi have stripped out Watch Dogs’ reputation system, the game doesn’t judge.
“The world responds to what DedSec becomes,” says Morin. “But it’s never going to be, ‘They should be banned’. It’s just going to be a debate, and that’s what I like about it.”
A lot more at the article on gameplay systems and such.
EDIT:Couldn't fit that full article title. (._. )