The original Watch Dogs sold more than 10 million units when it debuted in 2014, and Ubisoft’s sequel to that game arrives on Tuesday on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. The first entry was a revenge story that offered a warning about the threats that hackers pose to smart cities.
Watch Dogs 2 is set in San Francisco (the original took place in a gloomy Chicago), and it has a lighter tone. It is a celebration of the hacktivism subculture rooted in the tech capital of the world. One example of that is a mission where the hacktivists, known as DedSec and led by protagonist Marcus Holloway, steal a talking smart car from a film dubbed Cyber Driver. The mission is a clear reference to Knight Rider and the K.I.T.T. smart car from the real television show.
The mission is yet another example about the parallels between the fiction of Watch Dogs 2 and the cyber-crime headlines in the real world. While Ubisoft considers this series to be a work of fiction, it is clearly incorporating all of the news about hacktivist groups like Anonymous and Lulzsec, whistleblower Edward Snowden, corporate hacks, Silicon Valley, and the ongoing praise of smart cities.
The massive world includes parts of Marin County (north of the Golden Gate Bridge), San Francisco, and sections of Oakland (across the Bay Bridge). You can even visit a few big tech companies in a mini version of Silicon Valley. The landscapes are beautiful and believable. All told, the world has 46 neighborhoods.
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Here’s a video of stealing the car.
And here’s what you do with the car once you’ve stolen it.
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