Ubisoft’s VP of creative, Lionel Raynaud, has said their decision to let Watch Dogs slip from a November release until late-May meant they could keep ”several systems” they would otherwise have cut.
There just wasn’t enough time to polish them otherwise, but now they’ve gone over everything. The team has focused the most on ”interactions with hacking,” especially ‘chaining’ hacks.
Considering the underlying theme of Watch Dogs is ‘hacking as a superpower’, it’s great to hear they really worked on making sure hacking was fun and diverse in the game.
”There were several systems that were not going to be in the game if we released in November,” said Ubisoft’s Lionel Raynaud at GDC. ”There’s always the discussion of, ‘should we leave them for the sequel, or do we take the time to finish them?’ And we decided to take our time and do it right.”
”It’s made a big difference - we’ve polished everything. The things we’ve developed the most are the interactions with hacking, and how in many situations being smart with chain reactions can offer something unique from any other open-world game. If we weren’t able to deliver this aspect, it wouldn’t feel new enough to be worth a new IP.”
Ubisoft has quite the challenge on its hands with Watch Dogs as it represents a whole new IP, with a significantly underplayed theme as its ‘core’ and bringing it all to next-gen platforms. Many things could go wrong but they’re optimistic enough for sequel plans, so let’s hope all the hype is justified.
”There are always things that you have to keep for the next game. In this case, the extra time allowed us to put a lot of our ideas into the game, so we are happy with that,” he continued. ”Yes, we have ideas. Some ideas that we weren’t able to get into the game would not have made a difference, while other, bigger ideas that naturally emerged during development were so different that we felt they would have changed the experience.”
”The consistency that we have achieved with the characters, structure and narrative would have been difficult to maintain if we put in the other ideas that we had. So where we are now is keeping these ideas safe for the next game.”
Watch Dogs is finally nailed down for a release this May on PC and consoles.
”Personally, I have very few regrets on Watch Dogs. I can’t think of many things that I would’ve liked to have put in the game - I’m quite happy with what we were able to deliver thanks to the extra time that we had.”
”It’s always a huge challenge when you to develop the technology, the IP and the process on a new platform all at the same time. It’s crazy. You need to split your risks and make sure you do it right,” said Raynaud. ”We took a lot of risks and that’s one of the reasons that we needed more time - to reach the level of quality we wanted.”
Ubisoft is also tackling a rather dark subject matter, at least in part, with Watch Dogs as Aiden Pearce takes on an insidious human trafficking operation within an extensive criminal empire. As with Far Cry 3, Ubisoft again proves they’re not shy with tackling these kinds of themes in their triple-A franchises.
Watch Dogs releases on PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4 May 27th.
