Watch Dogs is Succeeding Where GTA V Failed

I was in; less than a minute after finding a place to hide right outside of a ctOS control station, I had infiltrated the server-room that unlocks access to one sixth of the Watch Dogs map. I didn’t fire one bullet, in fact I never even drew a gun, and the private security guards were never even aware that anything was wrong. From that moment on Watch Dogs redeemed itself from being just a GTA clone.

Let me back up just a bit and explain why the GTA comparisons are appropriate, and why seemingly every reviewer mentions the Rockstar behemoth when discussing Watch Dogs. GTA is an open-world game; but it’s a very specific type of open-world game, a game where the connective tissue between place is made of concrete and asphalt. This is a genre that hasn’t seen much innovation since GTA III back in 2001; it’s a genre that’s stagnant and largely uninteresting. Not all open-world games are like this of course; Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag was a great example of fundamentally changing how open-world games operate due to that games’ naval combat system. What makes GTA and Watch Dogs so similar is that they’re open-world games set in real (or inspired-by real) cities. The neighborhoods mimic real places, the cars mimic real vehicles, the buildings mimic real buildings, and so on and so forth. The purpose of these open-world games is to create an as realistic as possible representation of our world, and then invite gamers to play around in this sandbox. Problem is, there’s very little that’s compelling about that strategy.

Games, like other entertainment, have traditionally been about escapism. And even with movies, televisions, and books that are set “in the real world” the element that makes them compelling to us are strong narratives. We’re willing to “escape” to a realistic world if the characters we meet, and the journey they go on, are interesting enough. What separates GTA-style open world games from other media set in realistic worlds is that narrative takes a backseat to exploration; exploration of environments that are not all that different than real life environments. Assassin’s Creed succeeds as an open-world franchise because players explore different time periods with widely different environments than modern cities. And beyond that it has a gameplay hook – what are essentially superpowers. In Assassin’s Creed the superpower is unrealistic parkour abilities, and in Crackdown it’s ever-increasing strength, speed, and leaping abilities. Those unrealistic gameplay mechanics make exploring the realistic game world an experience fundamentally different from our real-world activities.

Want to leap that 10′ fence? No problem. Want to jump from eight stories up without breaking a bone? Let’s do it. Want to get from one end of a city to another by running across rooftops? Have at it. These things are possible in games like Assassin’s Creed and Crackdown, not so much in GTA and Watch Dogs. It also highlights why the jet-pack in GTA: San Andreas was so beloved, and why thousands of people have spent hundreds of hours trying to figure out the mysteries of GTA V in hopes of unlocking a hidden jet-pack. It turns out driving from point A to point B in video games is just as boring as it is in real life. Structuring your video games in such a way as to have this exist as the core mechanic – the glue that holds everything together – makes a game unexciting.

Other than graphics not much has changed to make driving in open-world games any less of a chore. GTA III (left) vs Watch Dogs (right)

To Ubisoft’s credit, at least they’ve attempted to change-up the driving formula a bit in Watch Dogs. I wouldn’t call it a total success, but I can’t overstate how important the optional cockpit view for driving is in making the experience just a bit less boring. But a cockpit view isn’t the only game mechanic that makes Watch Dog stand out from GTA; hacking can be used as well. You can change traffic lights, raise road blockers and spikes, open/close gates, burst steam pipes, and raise/lower ramps and bridges. The hacking adds a whole new element to driving during missions.

But hacking isn’t limited to driving, it’s one of the key gameplay enhancements that sets it apart from GTA, and other games like it. It creates a new type of experience in open-world games by essentially giving Aiden Pearce (the protagonist) a superpower; hacking is his superpower, it’s that gameplay hook.

Lets return to that ctOS control station mission I describe above, here’s how it works using Aiden’s “superpower.”

You drive to a ctOS control point location, get out of your vehicle and find a nice, cozy, spot to hide behind – a wall, a concrete barrier, a car – whatever it may be as long as you’re out of sight from the guards.  You look up and around to find the nearest camera. Hack it, this then gives you line-of-sight access to more cameras. You then hack the other camera to get a new line-of-sight of the ctOS complex. You do this camera-dance until you find a specific camera with line-of-sight views to the control panel. You then complete a hacking-minigame to get access to the ctOS control room to complete the mission. It’s essentially a puzzle; like something you’d find in an Uncharted or Tomb Raider game.

In case that didn’t sound exhilarating, it’s not, but it is incredibly fun, interesting, and engaging. You trade the guns-blazing approach, for a twist on stealth gameplay. There is now this third way of completing missions that doesn’t require sneaking around pillars and doing silent takedowns – a gameplay style that many of us dislike. Instead you can just hack your way through enemies, a seemingly minor change that has dramatic results in the way you experience the game. And those changes are for the better, as without them Watch Dogs would indeed just be a GTA clone with little in the way of differentiating aspects. The hacking mechanics turns this game from an also-ran into a quiet evolution of the genre…finally.

As a bonus, check out this Rev3 Games discussion about open-world games, they touch on similar points, especially about the blandness of driving-heavy games within the genre.