Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2016
With the hype surrounding Watch Dogs, ultimately tripping in its own preview trailer's promises by delivering a fine but somewhat underwhelming experience, sales went well enough for a sequel to be greenlit. Read my review of the first game, here.
In a controversial change, Watch Dogs 2 leaves the main protagonist from the first game behind and restarts a new story and main character. Granted, the first Watch Dogs left little character stories to continue and a rather grumpy and bland main one, so it doesn't surprise me they left it behind. Location moves from an industrial, autumn themed Chicago, to a colourful summer vibe of San Francisco.
In addition, the darker and moody aesthetic of 2010 hacking is replaced to a modern and hip, light hearted vibe with a younger cast and moves into what at least feels nearer the 2020's. Does the sequel fix the mistakes of the original?
Let's hack our way in and take a closer look!
The game begins within a data centre, where you play the new protagonist Marcus Holloway, hacking his way into the main server. As he's doing so, he's being observed by the hacker group Dedsec, which we know from the first Watch Dogs. After a successful hack, he is offered a recruitment to fight against the city operating system called ctOS 2.0, a more advanced version of the one from the first game in Chicago.
After a lot of drinking at a beach party to celebrate, Marcus wakes up outside a seaside house where our first encounter with open world takes place. Finding clothes and vehicle, you need to make your way to Dedsec.
The impression of the sequel is a larger, more ambitious and detailed world to sink into. Beginning in an idyllic coastal house on the outskirts of town, your first mission leads you into the centre of San Francisco. Cleverly highlighting the diversity of the map. In the city centre you're introduced to the team which recruit you, this is where the Dedsec HQ is. Serving as place you can drop by to upgrade weapons and gadgets through a 3D printer, a neat nod to modern times.
Control over Marcus feels a little swifter and better animated than WD1, same goes for an improved aiming and gun feel when engaging enemies. Hiding behind objects also feels more grounded than the first game.
There's once again a one-button hack mode, but there's more stuff to hack like cranes and elevators. Interestingly, mobile maintenance lifts can be climbed into, then driven around and placed where you want them, opening for creative ways of climbing buildings and getting onto rooftops.
Another obvious change to gameplay is the less nervous car control, finally some weight has been added to the cars and the driving feels solid. That said, I felt the ease of distributing and blowing up chasing vehicles was easier with the roadside hackable objects in the first game.
Whereas Watch Dogs 2 succeeds at outperforming the original in visuals, side mission variety and overall gameplay improvements, it falls short with the story for my taste.
I get that the first game had a moody and dark revenge story we’ve seen so many times before, but what happened to the characters at least provoked feelings. There was an overhanging danger and sinister bad guy there which helped build tension.
Sure, there's a moment of sadness when the main cast, Wrench, loses his mask which means a lot to him as a protection from the world, and must retrieve it. But otherwise? It's just tons of chatter trying to be as hip as possible.
But otherwise, it just lacks a distinct cause as to what you're fighting, it just feels incredibly cringe as a bunch of juvenile banter, trying to be cool, chats away with technical jargon about hacking thrown in. I get that it tries to be over the top, but it just feels embarrassing most of the time. It doesn't really hit the nail on the head in conveying that. It needs to either be serious or go completely into comedy, the way its presented falls between two chairs.
Take the last Saints Row for instance, review here, it too has tons of satire humour and a laidback dialogue style to its cutscenes. But that’s a game where it goes all in into comedy, never taking itself seriously. Watch Dogs 2 tries both and succeeds at neither.
There's never a clear-cut bad guy either, just this media hippie guy that tries to control all the companies, but because of the light tone you never feel threatened or scared. What even did I accomplish at the end?! Big social media companies and surveillance is bad, and we must rebel with hacking, sigh. Couldn't we have gotten something darker and less on the nose?
Visually, on Xbox Series X, we inherit a 900p resolution from the Xbox One. It's a slight improvement over the 720p original in terms of raw resoltuion, and once again we get the benefit of the framerate boost to 60fps. The smoother and responsive camera and control with this framerate compensates a lot for the rougher resolution.
Technical data aside, this sequel is a big step up visually from the first game. Although WD1 still looks good, it has an early XB1/PS4 generation vibe to it. WD2 looks more modern and holds up incredibly well. I can imagine running this on a PC and cranking the resolution up results in a very impressive game.
Lighting is more varied, with various colour gradients during daytime and a lot of coloured light source during night making it very neat to drive around in both day and night. In general, there's just more colour, geometry to the environment and detail everywhere, making the streets look believable and alive. The balance of nature elements together with buildings, combined with the seaside of San Francisco makes for an incredibly attractive experience on the eye! With the colours popping it glows a positive vibe too.
There's also a lot of impressive interior detail in buildings you can enter, which also includes clothes shops that allow you to dress up Marcus just the way you prefer him. From stylish to hip-hop.
This focus on interior detail and large exterior builds what I feel Watch Dogs is all about; being able to sneak about various rooms and entry points within buildings, while enjoying the freedom of a Grand Theft Auto styled outside world driving about. Perhaps WD2 is a bit generous on offering fast travel points everywhere from the get-go, it makes the drive to mission targets almost redundant.
Going into the sequel I thought I'd prefer it, considering the increased positive feedback it received. Indeed, it upgrades the visuals massively and the open world is impressively alive with detail, variation and stuff to do. What falls through for me was its characters, modern humour style and bland ending. Fighting for a revolutionary cause I never had my heart into.
It's an example of a sequel that tries to fix the criticism from the originals generic story, changing it around to something opposite in style and mood, but it just doesn't hit the nail for me.
I prefer the darker setting in the first game, even though that story had its flaws too, but it at least felt like a fight against evil for the greater good. Or maybe I’m just getting old and the modern style of the seuqel goes above my head? It tries to be over the top and super nerdy, but just comes off as cringey.
It's without doubt an upgrade on a technical and gameplay level, just be aware of the shift in story style and atmosphere. As such, it doesn't really become better or worse than the original for me. It's more a matter of taste which one you choose to play; one is dark and moody, while the other is light hearted and colourful.
