Exclusive: Watchdogs Dev Team chats with us

Well we all know that Watchdogs is one of the most exciting new games releasing this Monday i.e 27th May 2014.

All your questions have been answered by the fantastic development team of Watchdogs. So checkout and get all your queries answered.

How much Side quests complement main quest apart from suits and weapons?

Answered by Danny Belanger, Lead Game Design

There are many, many types of side-content for the player to engage in. There are split in multiple categories: Mini-Games and Augmented Reality Games (Chess, Drinking Game, Shell Game, NVZN). Side-Missions (Gang Hideouts, Fixer Contracts, Criminal Convoys) which are based on the core mechanics like hacking, stealth, combat and driving. There are also Digital Trips (Special Side-Content) which are special gameplays that bring a crazier and lighter side to the game. We also have many collectibles that can be found and are based on exploration and observation gameplays. I also have to mention Online activities as well because they merge in the experience at any moment the player is in Free-Roaming!

Will there be a companion app for the game on Smartphones?

Answered by Philippe Baude, Companion Lead Game Design

We have a mobile app called ctOS Mobile. It has its own progression; you gain XP points each time you play. When you cross a XP threshold, you level up and are rewarded with a Skill Point. Then you can spend your skill points in different family unlock. From Police Units and Patrol Cars to SWAT SUV and Helicopters, there is a wide variety of elements for you to manage and upgrade!

Both Companion and AAA players can send each other requests for race challenges. Only the Companion App player can create his own customized races via the Companion App race editor and then challenge AAA players from all around the world directly from his mobile device.

In the end, this is about winning and your objective is to stop console players from reaching their goal by passing through several check points.  Maintain the pressure on the console/pc player by maintaining your helicopter above his head and Dispatching as many Police Units as you can to stop him.  You can also anticipate his moves and use ctOS to your advantage.  You have the control of a city in the palm of your hand!

Our Companion is 100% free and will be available at launch on iOS and Android.

 Will the game be available for streaming on the NVIDIA Shield?

This is a question for Nvidia 😉

Which version of Watch_dogs is the the richest in terms of the graphics? PC or Console

Answered by: Paul Vlasie, Lead PC Engineer

For the PC version of Watchdogs, the content is the same as the next-gen version. From a technical point of view, we have added some additional features, such as HBAO+ and TXAA.

How would you rate in each (PC(a decent gaming rig), PS4, Xbox One & last gen (Xbox 360 & Xbox One))

Answered by: Dominic Guay, Senior Producer

Anytime you develop a multi-platform game you need to approach each platform individually, considering their own specificities. While Watch_Dogs offers the same game experience across platforms, we needed to scale some specific elements on each hardware. Our tech was built with this in mind from the start.

The only online activities that are not on CG are the Decryption Battle and the Free Roam mode.

Will be great to know how different it is in each. As in for Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, Wii-U (thought we do not have Wii U here in India 😉 ) 

Answered by: Dominic Guay, Senior Producer

It’s the same storyline, same gameplay, all the same mechanics and innovations. All the same missions, side missions, basically the same world and same experience.

What’s different is that we’re scaling the dynamism of the simulation and the details of the city and the gameplay. So it’s stuff like the amount of details in buildings, the amount of civilians and cars in the street, the details in the animation or how sophisticated some reactions are to some of your actions.

Decryption combat and free roam multiplayer modes are exclusive to Next Gen (PS4 / Xbox1) and PC platforms.

Can we enter buildings? Can we swim, fly helicopters and boats, etc…?

Answered by: Dominic Guay, Senior Producer

In WATCH_DOGS, players will have many opportunities to explore Chicago. Actually, we considered the various dimensions of the city when we built it: the street level, interiors, but also how Aiden can explore remote areas, back alleys, even the building’s rooftops. Also, Chicago has a large underground city that we are leveraging. Finally, remember: players can explore the physical side of the city of Chicago, but also its entire digital layer, invading the privacy of its citizens. As such, Aiden can get into interiors physically, but also by tapping into his ability to access and control any computer in the city.

Can we change our clothes?

Answered by: Danny Belanger, Lead Game Designer

The player has the ability to customize his appearance in shops.

Are the citizens interact able?

Answered by: Danny Belanger, Lead Game Designer

To build the city of Chicago in Watch_Dogs, we created a dedicated team called the “Living City” Cell. They are responsible for making the city as credible as possible and faced many difficult challenges during production. Many systems are interacting together at any moment and these required a lot of dedicated work. To name a few, the physics, the vehicle traffic, the civilians, the weather, city infrastructure, the dynamic time of day were some of the systems worked on during production. Add hacking any of the city systems on top of these systems and chaos can quickly emerge from the city. Creating a coherent experience through hacking the city systems was surely the greatest challenge, as having a lot of dynamism requires a high level of sophistication in the interactions between all of these systems.

I’m really looking forward to this game… I bet it’s going to be awesome but can someone explain a bit more about multi player?

Answered by: Jonathan Morin, Creative Director

When your console is connected online you are automatically in a “session”.  There could be millions of these occurring at once. What we are able to do is to dynamically merge and unmerge those sessions seamlessly. Players can free roam normally, going about their game and at some point they can either accept a contract or provoke a monitoring scan so that the next thing they know their objective seamlessly involves another player. Once the situation is resolved, we are then able to unmerge both players, and they’re able to go about their game to pursue their objectives as they were. The beauty behind this is that we can control the pacing at which this occurs and we can give you tools to also control its flow. It is such a natural online extension of what WATCH_DOGS is all about in the end. If we say that everything is connected, we have to consider that everyone is connected to.

Are there radio stations in driving cars like it happens in GTA V?

Answered by: Olivier Girard, Audio Director

Being a contemporary technologically focused game, we thought it would be more coherent for Aiden to use his tools to control what music he will listen too rather than flip through radio stations. Most of us play the music we like through our phones and various digital music devices and we wanted our game to reflect that. Through his music player, Aiden is able to listen to a wide and rich selection of music and yes, it is possible to drive around just listening to music, it’s actually one of the things I like to do best. What’s even better though is getting even more music to drive around to and through his hacking skills and his softwares, Aiden is able to acquire more music tracks as the game progresses. Since Music plays an important role in the gameplay of Watch_Dogs, not only as a collectable but also as a hacking tool, and since each track has to be custom formatted to fit all our systems,  it was sadly not possible for us to allow personal music to be used while still supporting all  aspects of the experience.

Of course you can expect to hear great tracks from various artists like NAS, Kid Cudi and Vampire Week-End but what’s got us really excited about our soundtrack is the way we’ve been able to predominately showcase Chicago’s amazing musical scene. We really wanted to capture the city’s flavor and it’s been a fantastic experience building a customizable playlist that not only supports the game but is also rooted in its iconic setting. We’ve selected awesome tracks from Chicago locals like the Smashing Pumpkins, Curtis Mayfield and Rise Against and we know they will really complement your exploration of Watch_Dogs’s Chicago.

How long is the single player campaign like?

Answered by: Jonathan Morin, Creative Director

 The game is very big and dense in content. I would say a normal player who does some free roaming as he play the main path will easily hit 35-40 hours to finish it. But a player who really want to do 100% of its content will reach 100+ hours easily. I am myself attempting the 100% mark right now and I’m at 30% after more than 40 hours so it is not a small universe to conquer in its entirety that is for sure.

Was this game made for new consoles? If so how toned down will the current console version be? I ask this since I have a PS 3 :)​

Answered by Yan Charbonneau, Producer Current Gen.

We hope you had a great time reading this QnA session 🙂 Gear up for our review and contest.