PS4

Watch Dogs: Legion - Resistance Edition

Unlock new content for your journey in London with the Resistance Edition: - Copy of the Watch Dogs: Legion game. - The Resistant Pack: unlock Lynx, a new hacker character with an animal-inspired mask and outfit, and receive one week of VIP status to help you earn in-game currency faster.

Adventure

Time to beat: about 49.6 hours

Overview

Watch Dogs is a 2014 action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the first installment in the Watch Dogs series. The game is played from a third-person perspective, and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Set within a fictionalized version of the Chicago metropolitan area in 2013, the single-player story follows grey hat hacker and vigilante Aiden Pearce's quest for revenge after the killing of his niece in a botched assassination attempt. An online multiplayer mode allows up to eight players to engage in cooperative and competitive gameplay.

Watch Dogs is an action-adventure game, played from a third-person view. The player controls hacker Aiden Pearce, who uses his smartphone to control trains and traffic lights, infiltrate security systems, jam cellphones, access pedestrians' private information, and empty their bank accounts. System hacking involves the solving of puzzles. The game is set in a fictionalized version of Chicago ("Windy City"), an open world environment which permits free-roaming. It has a day-night cycle and dynamic weather system, which changes the behavior of non-player characters (NPCs).

In 2012, Chicago becomes the first city in the world to implement ctOS (Central Operating System), a computing network connecting every device together into a single system, developed by technology company Blume. While conducting an electronic heist at the Merlaut Hotel, hacker Aiden Pearce and his mentor and partner, Damien Brenks, trigger a silent alarm set by another hacker. Damien tries to find the hacker, giving himself and Aiden away. Fearing for his family, Aiden drives them to safety in the guise of a surprise trip to the country. On the way, hitman Maurice Vega attacks them, resulting in a car crash that kills Aiden's six-year-old niece Lena.

Beginning in 2009 with ten people and expanding to over a thousand, Watch Dogs was developed over five years (from prototype to finished game) on a budget of about $68 million. Before its announcement in 2012, the game had the working title of Nexus. The initial sales pitch was the notion that one could control an entire city with the push of a button.

Ubisoft announced Watch Dogs at its June 4, 2012 E3 press conference, confirming it for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. A QR code that appeared in the first gameplay demonstration as viral marketing led to a website called DotConnexion, which contained information about the in-game world. PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U were announced in early 2013 as additional platforms for Watch Dogs, which was scheduled for release later that year. Originally set to be released that November, the developer delayed it until early 2014 to "not compromise on quality". The final release date was set for May 27, 2014, before its release for the Wii U on November 18 in North America, November 20 in Australia and New Zealand, and November 21 in Europe.

Watch Dogs' reveal at E3 2012 generated favorable reception from critics. As reported by leaked marketing material, it received over eighty E3 awards and nominations and G4tv called it a "truly next-gen adventure". At E3 2013, the game received over fifty awards and nominations. The following year, Ubisoft was accused of graphical downgrading after a NeoGAF forum post compared its 2012 visuals to 2014 video footage.