In defense of Aiden Pearce

[Gankytim]

A sudden "realization" (read: interpretation) at the end doesn't make a ride with a boring character any less boring. Just because he fronted a persona of being boring and bland doesn't make him any less boring and bland.

I mean fuck, if he were fronting a persona or playing a character why not give him an actual character?

 

[VyseRogueKing]

In terms of Yolanda's quote it was simply an observation of what we already know. His mask is not so that people underestimate him it's so that he doesn't drag his family into his misdeeds. Underneath the cares about his family personality, which is lazy writing, is a cold and calculating mind always thinking how to turn things to his advantage, this is a subtle comparison to a computer by the writers. But when you determine someone to be cold and calculating you lose a lot of possibility to create an interesting character. There are ways but it has to be through other personality flaws. Also Aiden may have been thinking like that throughout the game but never once have I seen it bear fruit only backfiring. The mask itself has obviously failed him yet he refuses to learn.

Aiden's true personality is for the lack of better words a dick without any foresight. His brief introspective moments should help him change yet it's basically forgone the moment the phone rings. The characters have traits to have some interesting dialogue and banter yet Aiden keeps yelling "No jokes my niece is deeaaaad!" Like Batman except the writer forgot that even Batman has his moments where he realizes he's on the slippery slope of insanity himself and actually has caring moments as well. All of his character interactions paint Aiden flatter and flatter.

Jordi

Spoiler

He constantly talks shit to a his hired killer whose only really just having fun messing with him. Sure Jordi asks him to help him with other jobs favors for favors but the only one that was really bad was making Aiden drive for the club and Jordi simply didn't see anything wrong with it being a professional killer that he is. But Aiden constantly asks favors from the guy while being a jerk every step of the way. It's a wonder that when a contract was put on him that Jordi

Spoiler

Didn't jump on it within seconds and took advantage of Aiden instead he informed Aiden to be careful because there's a multi-million dollar bounty on his head. He only went after Aiden in the last ten seconds and even then it seemed like he expected Aiden to come out on top. Probably got paid up-front.

Nikki

Spoiler

Dialogue with his sister is kinda sweet at the very beginning of the game and then it drops down to "PROTECT BABY SISTER RAAAGGGH!" Even when she gets kidnapped within the first act he refuses to open up to the fact that he can't live down his niece's death and while she's in the hands of the dude who knows all his secrets he thinks it's a better idea to leave her in the dark hearing the stuff that comes out of Damien's mouth instead of letting her know what's happening on her own terms and apologizing because he's the one who got her into this mess.

Clara

Spoiler

Clara was a chance for Aiden to open up and act like a human being. She was someone who followed along with him not only because of her past but because she was every bit as curious as a hacker should be. She wanted to find legends. Aiden helped her with that and they had some small chances of showing a healthy relationship. But Aiden being Aiden decides to try to keep her uninvolved because that worked so well for his sister. Even after they teamed up he kept things in the dark even though she has already painted a target on herself. When...

Spoiler

Aiden manages to save his sister a brief status update would have easily saved Clara's life. Who already showed signs of repentant guilt having been the one who sold out Aiden back at the Merlaut only to realize that the intel she gave got a little girl killed. She obviously never thought things would have happened like that. Aiden should have taken the instant his sister left the state to call her and say, "My sister's safe, everything's ok now. I don't blame you for what's happened." Instead he decides it's time to end it all without any back-up and head into a friggin' Mafia stronghold without so much as a howdy-do. She calls to tell him she's sorry for what she's about to do which is warning signals up the yin-yang but shrugs it off basically saying, "Wonder what she's gonna do?" and goes on his valiantly murderous mission without doing a check-up on her. She gets her ass killed trying to trade herself for his sister who is already safe and Damien who is already pretty pissed off hires a hit on her simply because he now knows that Aiden has someone else he "cares" about and shows Aiden what happens when you go against the grain. Making Aiden go back on his spree of vengeance without thinking about the consequences of his actions of constantly keeping people away from him. Side-note: How the hell do you not notice a hit about to be carried out in the middle of an open graveyard field by a bunch of men in black suits armed to the teeth? Clara should have noticed it ran to cover and since Aiden came in the nick of time (only to see her get shot by the worlds most obvious assassination) it should have simply been a protect mission. Afterwards character development would have been easy as friggin' pie.

T-Bone

Spoiler

T-bone boy do I love T-bone. Aiden should have seen a little bit of himself in T-Bone. T-bone did his own little vigilante stunt and in his attempt to prove a point accidentally killed eleven people. Eleven compared to Aiden's ever-escalating direct and indirect murders of both corrupt individuals and innocent bystanders just by driving down the street escaping Fixers, gangs, cops, you name it. T-Bone immediately felt guilty for his actions and painted a target so huge that he had to drop off the map for 10 friggin' years. Sure he was kinda wallowing in self-pity but he obviously was slowly but surely making a move against Blume before Aiden came along. Aiden made T-Bone see a chance to do something right again, which I would say that's pretty good for Aiden if Aiden hadn't already said that he would tell him what he would like to hear and has already done it for several people. What does Aiden do the moment T-Bone gets access to some of the dirtiest secrets in Chicago? He tells T-Bone to hold the hell up. Instead of you know formulating a plan to do the right thing and release the info while at the same time saving his sister. Here's a thought. Make a copy of all the info. (By the way what universe is this where computer data is so valuable yet no one in their right mind makes a back-up?) Perform the exchange and then release all the data immediately after. So Damien loses his ability to make any money and screws him over to kingdom come with Blume. Fixers would be heading over to Damien within seconds.

Damien

Spoiler

Then there's Damien. Friggin' Damien. It's obvious that his a manipulative son of a *****. To the point that Aiden himself makes note of it time and time again. First he shouldn't have been a dick to the dude who even though is a tad of an asshole was simply trying to get some help and find some vengeance together. (Aiden being the man that he is would have jumped on it immediately if he wasn't the walking lone wolf cliche that he is along with the fact that he blames Damien for his niece's death. For slightly shaky reasoning.) Instead of handling it like a reasonable man and say, "Dude I can't risk it. I'm afraid my family will get hurt again so I'm gonna do what I can to safely find this guy." Damien presents info of a second hacker. Which is obviously an extension of good faith telling info without any payment. Of course there's the underlying motive of wanting some help but that's a given. Aiden should have said thank you for the intel but I'm sorry, I can't risk working for you. Might not have worked but it pays not to piss off a dude who outright says he has nothing left. "You need me but I don't need you" is probably one of the worst things he could say. Then because of his arrogance Damien kidnaps Nikki. Dick move, Damien. It was to make sure Aiden cooperates. Aiden realizes this. He says that he should go along with his plan until the opportunity strikes because as long as he doesn't rock the boat Nikki is perfectly safe. A good idea. So what does Aiden do? He rocks the boat every goddamn second. Talk to Damien? GIVE ME BACK MY SISTER! I'M GONNA GET MY SISTER! YOU'RE GONNA PAY FOR THIS! Working on the job? Screw you Damien I'm doing things my own way! Got sensitive info? I'm not gonna tell you, you friggin' kidnapper! Dammit Aiden if you just played along quietly while doing your own plotting you may have gotten your sister let go out of good faith. A stretch sure but it's better than pissing off a dude with a hostage. What else does he do? He lets slip something that no one should know. I've found Raymond Kenney. I'm going to go get Raymond Kenney. We need Raymond Kenney. Damien says that's a bad idea? Too bad, I'm getting Raymond Kenney. A dude who has been wanted by multiple factions for ten friggin' years. Instead of simply saying the files are encrypted, I have a lead on a guy who might be able to decrypt them. Tell you more when I got more info. Simple, clean, Damien has no way to know of who Aiden's possible ally might be. Then a move could be swiftly made and everyone eats Ice Cream except Damien who will either end up behind bars or dead. Instead Damien gets so pissed off and somehow ends up with full ctOS access that he brings an entire city to his knees.

Maurice

Spoiler

Then there's Maurice. A character introduced in the first few minutes, held hostage for weeks, gives up no intel except for warning about "these guys" so that there's a sequel hook and serves absolutely no importance to plot nor character development. Maurice is obviously repentant. A collection side-quest only further proves that. All of these traits are something Aiden could use for character development IN STORY QUESTS. Occasionally dropping in on Maurice could make Aiden understand Maurice's plight. A nobody gang-banger forced to work for some shadow organization. Maurice's warning of those guys immediately tells Aiden there's some puppet-mastery going on and that Maurice most likely knows nothing other than he's screwed if he doesn't follow orders. And you know what happened? Maurice didn't follow orders now he's got nothing left to live for. This is all info in a collection side-quest that if implemented in story could have Aiden realize that Maurice is just as much of a victim as himself. He could have simply told Maurice, "You obviously had no choice, I'm going to get those assholes that ruined our lives. Do you want in? If not I can help fall of the grid so you can at least live life in peace." Maurice could have joined Aiden's plight. They could help each other get revenge. A former viceroy would have been extremely helpful infiltrating Iraq's stronghold. He has another gunman that Damien wouldn't know about. A definite plus in any plot to overthrow Damien. Extra firepower where it's needed and much much more. A chance for Aiden to learn to forgive, find more leads having a former viceroy and puppet at his side, as well as an opportunity to learn more about himself and not to let the same thing happen again. But instead he locks Maurice in a room, doesn't even try to get intel out of him, does nothing after finding audio logs of a man who had everything to lose if he didn't do as he was told, and lost it. Delegating all of Maurice's importance to a sequel hook and a moral choice at the end. He may as well not have been in the game to begin with. Just make a gunner who did his job and Aiden gets his revenge. Law of conservation of detail. If I'm going to have to be sorry for some guy make him part of the friggin' story.

The game is fun and the characters, especially Aiden if he ever had character development, had potential. However the story is absolutely shite as it is rife with plot-holes, hubris, lack of foresight, lack of HINDSIGHT, character development is non-existent, resulting in a lot of easily preventable things getting much worse. At least I had fun running around the city.

 

[RealRT]

reminder that Ubisoft said they were not making a game they could not make a franchise out of. This means that Aiden still has time to grow as a character.

Are there any critisiscms you would like to voice against my point or any other wyas you would defend Aiden?

Well then start defending him when they actually do that, not before.

 

[Fsyco]

I always got the impression that Aiden was poorly adjusted, which is why he acts so strangely and basically becomes cyber-batman, even after his sister has moved on from the whole dead-kid thing. I guess he was kind of a boring character, thinking back on it, but he never bothered me, and I liked his voice. He was surrounded by more interesting characters, and to me that made up for it.

Although, if they'd dropped the Vigilante thing he was doing and let him be a member of DedSec that might have been better. Or recycle some of the plot of Deus Ex and have him work for Blume but then realize that they're baddies. The plot as is sort of feels like it was changed at some point either because they rushed production or cut out some stuff for future sequels. I was a little disappointed that the whole 'DedSec vs. Blume' thing took a backseat to the stuff with the gangs and Aiden's old partner.

I liked Watch_Dogs overall, though. The gameplay was solid, and I confess I got a bit of a voyeuristic thrill spying on people. And, in it's defense, the story kept me wanting to know what happened next, so it must have been doing something right.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

It's the whole thing of people calling him 'dull' and 'boring' when really people don't get it. He lost his niece, one of the only people he had in his life that really brought him joy and happiness, and she was take away from him, the whole thing technically being his fault.

So obviously he's destroyed mentally by it. Wouldn't you be?

 

[IceStar100]

It's the whole thing of people calling him 'dull' and 'boring' when really people don't get it. He lost his niece, one of the only people he had in his life that really brought him joy and happiness, and she was take away from him, the whole thing technically being his fault.

So obviously he's destroyed mentally by it. Wouldn't you be?

I never though of that tell now. Intresting.

 

[briankoontz]

Sandbox gameplay requires emergent characterization, where a player's actions in controlling the character defines that character. Emergent characterization is probably quite a few years away (at best) from happening, so developers often choose to not let a singular characterization get in the way of multiplistic gameplay.

 

[Brownie80]

Nah Watch Dogs is entirely bad. Crappy shooting, generic cover mechanics, and god-awful missions. Red Dead Redemption had some of the best missions ever in a sandbox game. Leave it to Rockstar to make great missions. It's entirely lacking, it's GTA with out one smudge of polish. And the main character is a chubby white guy batman wannabe.

EDIT: Please detect that this is sarcasm. Except the RDR part and the last part, but most of it is sarcasm.

 

[Something Amyss]

it's the dead eyes, both are empty to the core.

And Tom Cruise is so Vanilla, I thought the movie "Vanilla Sky" was going to be a biography until someone made me watch it.

It's the whole thing of people calling him 'dull' and 'boring' when really people don't get it. He lost his niece, one of the only people he had in his life that really brought him joy and happiness, and she was take away from him, the whole thing technically being his fault.

So obviously he's destroyed mentally by it. Wouldn't you be?

Most people don't lose all personality because they lose a loved one. And those that do aren't the kind of people that you would write fiction about. In fiction, characters need to be compelling. There are probably a million or more ways to work with the loss of a loved one, and they chose to go none of those routes.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Aiden doesn't have a definitive personality because he is a slate by design.
That's literally by the nature of the game's genre. Few games can pull that off believably.

Vice City's Tommy Vercetti pulled it off by basically retelling Scarface; once Tommy lets the power and drugs go to his head, it's very VERY easy to explain any sort of erratic behavior. He isn't supposed to be "likeable" by normal standards because he isn't normal and never was. Tommy Vercetti is a walking power trip, which is exactly the personality that works best in a "Do whatever the fuck you want" sandbox game. (and why Saints Row 2/3/4's Boss acts exactly like they're king shit of everything)

Ubisoft's mistake was trying to give Aiden a framework for a personality that's redeemable. In practice, you can either be Batman, or a completely amoral homicidal lunatic. One of these personas fits the dangerous, angry, character full of regret that Ubisoft pushes, while the other comes across ridiculous.

The fact some head shrink dictates a possible roleplay psychosis sounds like Ubisoft was trying to have their cake and eat it too. Which still isn't a proper defense for Aiden's character, or at least it's as believable as a Scooby Doo villain being manipulative and clever. Sure, the game(show) alleges it was being clever, according to the ingame characters, but good luck convincing the audience playing(watching) of that.

 

[sXeth]

Oh I got the impression well enough that Aiden was kind of being a try-hard "badass" deliberately. Then again, they never gave us any time of him actually being whatever his alleged personality was. Other then the flashback where he seems normalish talking with his niece in the car.

The obvious problem is they tried to make a hero/anti-hero crimefighter, and dumped them into an sandbox crime game... and left all the crime elements intact.

 

[Zhukov]

For quite some time I honestly thought they were trying to depict a high-functioning autistic person or something similar. The way he interacts with other characters makes him seem like a man with a social disability.

Turns out that's apparently just how baaadaaass vigilantes act.

...

It's the whole thing of people calling him 'dull' and 'boring' when really people don't get it. He lost his niece, one of the only people he had in his life that really brought him joy and happiness, and she was take away from him, the whole thing technically being his fault.

So obviously he's destroyed mentally by it. Wouldn't you be?

Losing loved ones does not in fact mentally destroy people. They get profoundly upset, yes, they mourn, sometimes for a long time, but then they move on. People have been dying for, well... for as long as there's been people and their loved ones have been coping with it throughout.

Besides, if they were going for 'mentally destroyed' then they actually need to show what kind of person his niece was and what kind of relationship they had so we could appreciate what it meant when she died. Instead she dies in the intro sequence without having said a word and they're just like, "Alrighty, kids dead, title screen deployed, hero's got his vengeance boner on, you know the drill, time to start killing motherfuckers."

 

[Jason Rayes]

I can't say I was exactly a huge fan of Aidan as a character but I actually quite liked Watch Dogs itself, a pretty solid open world game with some fun gameplay. If a sequel improves as much on the first as AC II did on AC, it should be a solid game. My main complaints with the game were more to do with Aidan flat out robbing everyone, especially considering he chases down robbers left and right and beats the stuffing out of them. Given that he has access to everyone's information it would have made more sense that he set his phone up to highlight people whose bank accounts were the profits of criminal enterprise or something, that way they could at least justify as stealing from criminals to fund his war on crime. Otherwise he is just a bit of a hypocritical douchebag.

 

[Pree Fajardo]

I agreed with none of the criticisms of Aiden Pearce, I didn't think they were fair at all to be honest. After playing through Watch Dogs a few times and not to mention completing all of the side missions in the game, Aiden is a bad-ass nothing more and nothing less, a "grey hat vigilante". I thought the audio tapes explained him well enough and I actually identified with him, I don't know who people were expecting him to be. As for the game itself, I thought it was very good, it had the most strategic freedom I've seen in any game in a very long time for one, the side missions served purpose into showing why he was called the vigilante and though the shooting mechanics were great, the game did not reward you for reckless gunplay. It is true urban stealth sandbox that explored some interesting criminal masterminds(mainly Aiden, Iraq, T-Bone and the DedSec group, I also liked the fact that Clara's vocational was tattoo artistry outside of her being a hacker at heart, which is believable) w/ an implausibly narcissistic villain(Damien Brenks). Like Assassin's Creed and L.A. Noire, it was a pretty intellectual experience that made me use my wits and it is the only game so far, until Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain arrives, to make tactical use of the day and night cycle. It definitely takes after the worthy Splinter Cell series like alot of you already said. They could've used more weather changes such as snow especially for a city like Chicago and some of the character designs were stupid(Defalt's mask was corny and though I liked Iraq,I can do without that dreadlock piece on top of his bald head.

I also liked how they explored how blackmail is worth alot of money in the criminal underworld and how hackers are the new masters of deception, Watch Dogs dark clouds ebook explores Aiden deeper as well. Aiden was cool with me, he was perfectly imperfect.