Given the futuristic setting, big brother themes, and the sheer amount of damage you can do with a little bit of computer savvy, it's hard for Watch Dogs not to be a bit reminiscent of the original Deus Ex. Now, there's one more recent you can draw parallels between the two games.
Be honest for a moment. When you think of a "hacker," the first image that springs to mind likely isn't the most violent or in-shape individual. It's probably more akin to someone wasting away while awash in the warm glow of a giant computer screen, in a dark room littered with crumpled chip bags. An armed commando goes about doing damage one-way, a hacker another. Which is why it figures that it's much the same process in Watch Dogs.
Given the amount of control afforded to players as protagonist Aiden Pearce manipulating Chicago's CtOS, the proverbial "eye in the sky" that regulates everything in the city from ATM transactions to raising bridges, it should come as little to no surprise that you can go about completing most of the game's missions from the relative safety of stealth, instead of going out guns blazing Rambo style.
This is exactly what the game's Senior Director, Dominic Guay, recently told Polygon. "About 95% of missions you can completely stealth through, or flee or chase without having to shoot," he said. "So it's really player choice-driven. There are a very few, very limited amount of missions that will force you to kill people."
With everyone connected into the grid of Watch Dogs' Chicago, exploiting all that available information is arguably the point of Ubisoft's "hack everything" concept for the title, so you might as well take advantage of it. Leave the gunplay for something else. After all, the last thing Pearce needs is another close brush with the law.
In addition to the game's campaign mode, players will be able to try a variety of other stealth tactics in the game's multiplayer, the details on which will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Watch Dogs hits PC, PS3, PS4 Wii U and Xbox 360 on November 19 in the States, and November 22 across Europe. It will be a launch game for both next-gen systems upon their respective release dates.
