Poll: Will "Watch Dogs" actually work?

[VaughanyT]

I don't actually have any strong opinions on this, but I thought it was an interesting question. I saw the gameplay demo for Watch Dogs, as did most of the world, thinking "Holy crap, this looks awesome!" Then again, it is a very ambitious project. Open world gaming with unparalleled player interaction with the world and the possibility for other players to drop in and out at any time. I didn't read up on everything that was unveiled at E3, but it could be too ambitious if not done properly. Just wanted to know what the rest of you thought about its potential...thoughts?

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

On current gen consoles? No way.

Next gen? Sure.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Concept: awesome. Gameplay: looks boring as fuck. At least half of that trailer was just walking, and probably random factoids popping up when you hover over random npcs. It kind of reminded me of Assassins Creed actually, where that slow walking around looks kinda cool, but that's not how its going to actually go down.

 

[Jamash]

On PCs, yes, but on consoles with only 512mb of RAM, I don't see it pulling off the kind of consistent gameplay demoed at E3 without some deep cutting sacrifices and shotcuts being implemented.

It'll probably be a very contained game with each mission scene being limited to a strict cell with very little scope for true freedom of movement or exploration, much like L.A. Noire.

It will still probably have the guise of being an open world, but I wouldn't be surprised if once your entered a gameplay location, you couldn't move too far away from it without cancelling the mission.

Unfortunately with it being a multi-platform release, I don't see the PC version fully taking advantage of it's extra RAM and I'd imagine it will face the same limitation solely for the sake of consistency across all 3 formats.

Then again, I haven't really given it much thought as it only piqued my interest enough to watch the E3 video once, so I could be dead wrong.

 

[DarkRyter]

I really, really hope it does.

That demo was just magnificent.

 

[fozzy360]

Will it it work? Impossible to know until we play it. I'd like to hope and believe that it can work. There's a fuckton of potential behind this, and the possibilities for gameplay are certainly ambitious. I'm looking forward to seeing more than just those ten minutes we've seen.

 

[Suave Charlie]

I'm really hoping it does, I'm optimistic for all new IP's. Preferably I'd like to see it on the next gen consoles which Im assuming will launch for Christmas next year.

 

[Rednog]

Not sure, though I know I'm buying it because I've been waiting forever to have a game take place in Chicago.

 

[DocBalance]

I'll say that I really want it to work. It would make me very happy if it worked. I may have a little dance prepared if it does work.

 

[Jandau]

Depends.

Is it all really proceedural? The best example from the trailer would be the car crash. Did the player really stage it or was it scripted? Is the player allowed to intercept the car earlier in some different fashion? Can the player allow the target to reach the nightclub/gallery and then confront him? If it's all proceedural, then that's trully great and I'm especially impressed by proceedurally generated cover (the crashed cars and such).

If the game comes through on the premise, it has the potential to be legendary, but I'm cautiously optimistic at best - seems too good to be true.

 

[Andy Shandy]

By god, I hope so. Haven't been this excited about a new IP for quite some time. It has the potential to be truly brilliant.

 

[oliver.begg]

probally work more like hitman, where the "events" take place at a pre scripted location, there are lots of scripts, BUT, they are limited in area

 

[DeadlyYellow]

I'm not too hopeful for it. Seemed like it used the same tricks employed in GTA IV: important things are heavily scripted and prone to DIAS moments, while small details are randomized to give the illusion of a open world and different experiences.

 

[Don Savik]

I don't think the demo was that great. The presentation was amazing, the voice acting, the random bits of useless information added to the scene (in game though we aren't going to give a shit if some random passerby has type O blood and a bad credit score.....are we? are we really?) in a very nice way, the graphics were nice.......but.

Shooting. The second he stuck to cover all the tension just died from the moment. It was just another boring third person shooter at that point, and it was depressing to see such a great build up fail so horribly. I feel like this is going to be most of the game too, as much as we would hate to admit. The car being stopped at the exact intersection he was at? How scripted was that? What if the car got away? Would you get a "game over" screen? Would they make an entirely new story arc for that ONE scene choice?

I hate trailers like this because you never know what the devs want to hide. I have a gut feeling its going to be grand theft auto with a few hacking tools.

Also, they did a terrible job on the protagonist. You kill a bunch of people in an intersection just to kill some random Steve Jobs wannabe who was apparently involved in some crime thing? Was that really necessary? The motivation goes completely out the window when you casually slaughter helpless civilians. I dunno, I just got mad when he pried the husband away from his dead wife WHO HE JUST FUCKING KILLED IN COLD BLOOD FOR NO REASON and tried to tell him to get away to safety. Oh so you care about the husbands life, but felt it was entirely necessary to kill his wife and injury/kill a few more? I can sense great disappointment in this game.

 

[XMark]

It's hard to tell who killed the dude's wife in that firefight, she was just kind of in the crossfire.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Watch Dogs. The demo was obviously heavily scripted, but it seems to be promising things like that to arise in the unscripted gameplay. If they can truly follow up on that, they've got a winner.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

Hopefully it can fill the role of pushing the medium forward leaps and bound Mass Effect was trying to fill before the fans betrayed it. Because, you're right. Absolutely right (ask how many people here I say that too.... it's a low number). The project is incredibly ambitious. It's trying to break the standard 'shoot n' move' way of play we've become accustomed to. It's try to be an entirely open world stealth game where you are, as far as everyone else is concerned, a standard nobody. For this game to work, it needs to just be fun. For this game to succeed in the way it can? It needs to accomplish a few goals:

-No tutorials.

This is more of a request than a need. If we're going to push this medium to the next level, this game needs to rely SOLELY on conveyance. Basically, we need to stop treating players like they're retarded or, in turn, they'll think the medium is a jerk for it. We need to show we learned how to work games this gen. And let the angels sing of a world where the game won't spend ten minutes telling me the right-trigger is for shooting.

-No loading screens.

For an ENTIRELY OPEN WORLD GAME to work, we need no loading screens. Final Fantasy VII accomplished this (of all the games to list why did I do this to myself....) and actually increased immersion. It was physically hard to turn that game off just because of the feelings of scaling that entire continent step by step. Watch Dogs needs to give us that feeling with the entire city. And it needs to do it by not breaking the flow.

-Not be a goddamned and flat out LIE like ACII was.

Ubisoft tried to be this ambitious before with Assassin's Creed II... that turned out to be a standard action game. It was even boring!! What happened? Well, Ubisoft knew how to impress everyone and make the game LOOK cinematic, but they just couldn't deliver. What they showed us is what we want, now don't try to broaden the horizons. If it's good, the horizons will broaden on their own. Want proof? Zelda. Hell, even FINAL FANTASY is proof.

-Choices that matter

Watch Dogs looks like pure interactive (and stealthy (which is synonymous with delicious in my mind)) entertainment. That's great. Give us dialogue choices. Make us have to make quick decisions with either quick results or long-term consequences. Make a character remember what I said and remind me of it. Increase the immersion.

-Sell well

Sadly, this game needs to sell. It needs to sell so damn well that it becomes as popular as Halo or CoD or AC. Why? It'll encourage developers. I want this game to do all of the above and sell so the new Infinity Ward can look at it, drop their jaws and say 'that's not our formula! o.o' and I want every other developer to realize this isn't CoD the second they play it, and the numbers need to justify this ambition.

To me, that's how ambitious this project is. Mass Effect tried to be gaming's next big heavy hitter and pushing the medium forward. In my opinion, it did it. It made the RPG popular again and choices have suddenly become a thing rather than 'Do you want just good or bad?' The issue is, the fans flipped out just too much at ME3. With that, it couldn't push the medium forward. It did everything it needed to at the time (as in, almost nothing above, but that's okay), it just had such a bad reaction that it scared other developers, it didn't inspire them. Let's hope Watch Dogs can do it. This medium needs a push. I'm honestly shocked someone ISSSSS taking a chance after Mass Effect's freak out.

Capcha: finger lickin good

You goddamn well better be, Watch Dogs. Make all those Ubisot jokes worthless.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

I think it's probably going to be one of those "awesome concept, boring/clunky execution" sort of games. I'm also wary of the demo since it appeared to be mostly scripted, so who knows how well the end product will turn out.

 

[dreadedcandiru99]

Shooting. The second he stuck to cover all the tension just died from the moment. It was just another boring third person shooter at that point, and it was depressing to see such a great build up fail so horribly.

Pretty much this. There was one E3 trailer thing that was all like, "privacy is dead, governments and corporations can find out everything you've ever said and thought and done and use the media to manipulate you into doing and believing whatever they want, hackers infrastructure suspenseful music," and I don't see why the game couldn't just be about that, rather than "look, we made a GTA-ish cover-based third-person shooter where sometimes you reprogram traffic lights." It's almost like they figured that we'd get bored and drift off if there wasn't a gunfight every fifteen minutes.

I'm not making a definite call one way or the other till I get some more information, but...yeah. More shooting. Whoop-de-freaking-doo.

 

[Elionmars]

I would LOVE for it to work, but there's a real risk with games like that of promising freedom and only meeting it half way. The hacking mechanic looks amazing, and I really want this game to be awesome.