The Watch Dogs Delay Gave Aiden Pearce Next-Gen Thumbs

Among other things.

In a post on its blog, Ubisoft asks players to pay close attention to main character Aiden Pearce’s thumbs. Refined, more realistic thumb movement is just one of the polishes that the developer were able to give the game during its delay from last year to its new date of May 27.

“We animated Aiden’s thumb movements so he’s better at hacking,” (Animation Director Colin) Graham chuckles. “For example, when he hacks a tower, you’ll see he clicks on the screen properly with his thumb. We didn’t have that quite right before.”

Colin also goes into detail about some of the animation challenges in the game, like making sure similar NPCs aren’t placed too closely together to break realism, and how simulated civilians will react to certain events based on what they should be able to perceive.

“If you pull out your gun, what level of reaction do they go to then? Some people will react to your gun and others will react to the people that are panicking. They haven’t seen you. They don’t know what’s causing it. But they do know something’s up,” Graham said.

Graham said that next-gen has removed bottlenecks that limited NPC animations and variety and that Watch Dog’s “reactive” simulated citizens also mean more unique encounters. It all leads up to a big promise that it will be interesting to see if Ubisoft can keep.

“You will never see the same thing twice, guaranteed,” Graham says. “Your experience is unique. You go around this corner and the ten people that are there will be ten completely different people. Ten different profiles, ten different backgrounds, different actions, different combinations of actions.”

[Source: Ubiblog]