Ubisoft Q&A: WATCH_DOGS and the Power of a New Generation

Merciless

In “WATCH_DOGS,” you are Aiden Pearce, a former thug that’s able to hack into anything and turn Chicago into your ultimate weapon. Check out the Xbox Wire interview below with developer Ubisoft Montreal’s Senior Producer Dominic Guay, Creative Director Jonathan Morin, and Lead Story Designer Kevin Shortt, and stay tuned for more news and insights from other renown developers of the hottest and most anticipated games coming to Xbox.

What are you most excited about for developing on new generation hardware?

Dominic Guay, Senior Producer: From the start, our mindset has always been to innovate. When you have the privilege to build a new IP, you need to push the envelope, to create a game experience that will surprise players. A new platform means we have even more options to innovate and to magnify our vision for the game. Being there at the beginning of a new generation, with a new IP, is a very exciting thing.


How will a new generation of hardware impact/change/revolutionize the future of your title/gaming

Jonathan Morin, Creative Director: I think people are already changing the way they play games. They are interconnected, they play something and they talk to a friend at the same time who might not even be using the same machine. That is what we want to tap into. We want to make sure players can play our game in different ways. We want them to consider the fact that other people are playing “WATCH_DOGS” elsewhere, in different modes, some in single player and some in multiplayer.



Thanks to this new generation of hardware, for the very first time, I think players will feel that playing “WATCH_DOGS” is a lot like living in our day to day lives, with our phones, with our multiple friends everywhere in the world. We really want to make sure that for the very first time, players will be able to blur the line between any kind of modes a game can offer and create one single experience where connectivity is omnipresent.

The original demo showed a sprawling city with tons of interactive NPCs, how has the new generation affected the versatility with the environment?

Jonathan Morin, Creative Director: We really want to give “WATCH_DOGS” a serious tone; human dramas are a big deal for us. Video games tend to go very light on that type of subject, so we want to go deep. So if you cause a traffic light accident, we want to ask ourselves what is going to happen to the guy behind the driving wheel. We want to reach that level of detail.

Thanks to the next gen, we can push the limits; we can make the player believe that when …read more

Leave a Reply