Ubisoft Says Watch Dogs 2 Will Take Risks To Improve the Franchise

I was quite torn about Ubisoft Montreal’s Watch Dogs. It featured some rather fun gameplay, cool ideas and a nicely realized city, then coupled it with one of the worst stories and most obnoxious lead characters in AAA gaming history.

So it’s good to hear that Watch Dogs Creative Director Jonathan Morin believes in taking risks with the inevitable Watch Dogs sequel, because if it ends up being a glorified expansion pack with a new campaign for Aiden Pearce I’ll pass.

“You have to carry on taking risks”, Morin told magazine GamesTM. “I will not do this job if there is no risk in it, that would just be boring. You shouldn’t prevent yourself from trying something just because it’s hard and the solution is not apparent.”

Morin’s ideas expressed in the interview including letting players create their own stories with items like Watch Dogs’ profiler and refraining from filling in too many narrative gaps. He also said there might be more focus on the “alternate realities” created by Watch Dogs’ multiplayer features that let players infiltrate each others’ worlds.

Another reason for optimism, Morin admits the franchise can be better.

“I don’t think Watch Dogs is perfect in any way and there’s a lot of room for improvement”, Morin said. “But you don’t always see this when you ship a game. We deliver what we believe the brand should be at the time. But afterward, when you cool down after five and a half years [of development] and take your vacations and people play the game, certain elements become clear. They let you continue to bring what you envision to the next level with the fans included this time, which is where I think it really gets interesting.”