Watch Dogs 2 - Catch All

mrlogical wrote:

Just played a later mission that is started by finding the cell phone belonging to a member of your crew...spoilers

Spoiler:

The mission where you find Horatio is dead. I had been wondering throughout--why is Horatio so rarely around with the rest of the crew? When you're in Dedsec HQ, you can often chat with Josh, Wrench, Sitara, and later Ray, but I almost never found Horatio in there. He often didn't seem to be a part of the team cut scenes either (though maybe I just didn't notice/forgot) for those). When I first had to go find Horatio's phone, I was waiting for a reveal that he'd been a mole the whole time, explaining his absences, but apparently not (unless there's a twist coming). I wonder if he was added to the plot late or something?

The later I get in the story, the more I feel like the pace and depth of the plot is really inconsistent. Some of the story beats seem like they jump over time and events in odd ways, some seem to expect me to know characters I've never heard of, some seem to urgently follow the last mission's events while others seem totally disconnected... It's always a challenge with open world games, and I am liking this game much more for the systems and the general vibe, but the story is not hanging together for me.

One random bit of speculation about the plot that I assume I am wrong about but will spoiler anyway:

Spoiler:

So Ray, the legendary hacker who joins up with the crew after the Burning Man-alike event, looks a lot to me like Dusan. And he seems mysterious enough. At first I wondered if he simply was Dusan in a goofy outfit, but since that appears not to be the case, I wonder if they're related? And/or if Ray is otherwise a bad guy of some stripe infiltrating Dedsec? Just a theory for those of you who know the answer to scoff at, I will wait to find out how wrong I am, but it seems like something's up with that guy.

Theory Response:

Spoiler:

Ray was in WD1, he was a former developer for Blume who helped create some of its behavior prediction/modification algorithms (without knowing their purpose). When he did, he tried to undo his work, Blume tried to kill him, he's been on the run since.

As to your spoiler:

Spoiler:

I think part of it was just he's the only one we ever see who has a job... though now I wonder if he has a job because they knew they couldn't have him around all the time. I knew something was up when he was in like every MAIN mission, but like zero of the side missions.

Just finished this game last week and am trophy hunting for the Platinum on Ps4 now. A few thoughts:

1.) Marcus is excellent. A much more realized character than Aiden Pierce ever was. Just having a likable and interesting main character made this game have so much more life than WD1.
2.) The supporting cast really seemed like a bunch of stereotypical hipsters when I started, but I have really come to genuinely like this over the course of the game.
3.) The hacking seemed a bit more streamlined since the first game. Less options, but the tools at your disposal were more powerful and fun to use.
4.) The MP is a MESS. I'm trying to get the final Multiplayer trophies and they are taking FOREVER. I'm itching to try the co-op missions but I keep getting kicked out of sessions.
5.) This game really allowed me to process some things that happened in 2016 with aplomb. I got to hack a Martin Shkreli-esque guy, fight for the people, and kick some ass. In a lot of ways this game as cathartic for me.

WD2 didn't sell well from what I've come to understand. I'm hoping we get a sequel, or at least some good DLC.

Ah, thanks Demosthenes for that info re my prediction.

Spoiler:

The only characters I remembered from WD1 (of which I only played ~5-10 hours) was Aiden Pearce and his Iconic Hat, but that makes sense.

I keep getting big 'You've been disconnected from the Ubisoft server' messages even though my other games don't have any problems. Really annoying when you are playing the single player at the time and couldn't care less if you are connected. It's a bit like a TV station throwing up a sign saying 'We are having problems interrupting your current programme with adverts' every five minutes.

Higgledy wrote:

I keep getting big 'You've been disconnected from the Ubisoft server' messages even though my other games don't have any problems.

Ditto. Not sure if it's a real issue or a bug, but it would pop up on screen at the most times and take me out of the experience.

Still not finished with this game, but I've been enjoying just slowly chipping away at it. I am curious how far I am in the main story if someone wouldn't mind ball-parking it for me:

Spoiler:

I am just past the mission where the Blume CTO spoils the party and then you end up at what seems like it's supposed to be Burning Man?

My routine is typically to hop in and do a couple missions, buy some clothes, get a couple research points, and then hop off, which is not how I typically play open world games.

MountaineerWR27 wrote:
Spoiler:

I am just past the mission where the Blume CTO spoils the party and then you end up at what seems like it's supposed to be Burning Man?

I did a lot of side-mission stuff but that seemed like the midway point. The back half of the game is just as good as the first, but they add in some neat (albeit small) wrinkles to story and gameplay.

Higgledy wrote:

I keep getting big 'You've been disconnected from the Ubisoft server' messages even though my other games don't have any problems. Really annoying when you are playing the single player at the time and couldn't care less if you are connected. It's a bit like a TV station throwing up a sign saying 'We are having problems interrupting your current programme with adverts' every five minutes.

I get that too, but it hasn't stopped me from taking part in coop/bounty hunter activities so I think it's just as likely to be a false message?

For anyone who's on the fence and is looking at potentially getting it on PC, it's apparently 33% off at the moment on steam. I really enjoyed it despite one particular turn in the story I was not a huge fan of towards the end.

I hit a brick wall with the mission where...

Spoiler:

...Lenni traps you in her bunker and you have five minutes to play Pipe Dream to defuse the bombs in order to live/progress...

...and honestly, I think I've had enough. There just isn't enough there to make me want to repeat that sequence ten more times in order to progress beyond this point.

Rat Boy wrote:

I hit a brick wall with the mission where...

Spoiler:

...Lenni traps you in her bunker and you have five minutes to play Pipe Dream to defuse the bombs in order to live/progress...

...and honestly, I think I've had enough. There just isn't enough there to make me want to repeat that sequence ten more times in order to progress beyond this point.

I mean you if you think you've had enough that's fair enough, but I didn't find the sequence tough (got it first try).

Spoiler:

It's split into four quarters, and once you've got one quarter solved, the stuff where she moves your pieces that you've already set into position won't affect any already completed quadrant. I felt the time limit was pretty generous. It may help to use a flying drone to zip around as your POV if you haven't tried that.

juv3nal wrote:

I get that too, but it hasn't stopped me from taking part in coop/bounty hunter activities so I think it's just as likely to be a false message?

It'd be better if they weren't so big and distracting.

I keep going backwards and forwards on liking this game. There are lots of little things that I find annoying and unsatisfactory but there are things I enjoy. Yesterday I was really down on the game but, as I went to steal a rather tasty sports car, a civilian walked to the car in front of me. I thought she must be the owner but she proceeded to break into the car and steal it out from under me. As she sped off into the distance the police arrived, sirens blaring, and arrested somebody else.

IN WD 1 I found the real game was in the convoy and hideout missions so I've been running around doing random side stuff (main mission stuff has tended to be my least favourite thing in Ubisoft's more recent games.) As a consequence the game feels very unfocused and patchy. I suspect I need to play a run of main mission stuff to get grounded. The one or two main missions I've played have been fun.

I wish the stealth was better. The game feels tuned for fighting people with guns rather than for satisfying stealth. If you don't alert anyone it's fine but get spotted by one guard and every guard in the area makes a beeline to your exact location. Possibly realistic and possibly a super effective strategy from the guards point of view (especially if they are all heavies with automatic shotguns :P) but no fun game play wise. Yesterday I switched from playing WD2 to Sniper Elite 3 and the stealth in that is pure joy by comparison.

I don't usually agree with people calling for the removal of guns and gun fights from games but I think this game would be better as a gadget/hacking stealth game with very few guns. In a sense there is no reason why most guards couldn't be armed with tazers, pepper spray, etc (like the police in the UK) with only the high end, late game guards having pistols.

It occurred to me that a spoof Pokemon game (Digipoke stop?) would work well in a game like this. Also missions where you film the police and try to record police brutality.

Edit: Well. That worked.

I had been playing the co-op missions because I was so excited about playing co-op but trying to do stealthy, no kill runs on those missions is a thankless task. The stealth in the main story missions is a hell of a lot better and exactly what I was wanting from a sneaky, hacking mission.

I'm into the game now and enjoying being in the world.

Ok. This project got a bit out of control but it's done.

Spoilers for areas you might not have seen. NSFW language.

I got a free code for this via a Samsung purchase, and I am excited to watch doggos with friends on PC.

It has the best dogs to watch. You can pet them as well.

Thoughts:

This game has a hell of a lot of puzzles in it. Some of them are high quality but there isn't anything that would stump Jonathan Blow.

I get they want to make homeless people look dishevelled but a lot of them look like they've spent half an hour standing next to a particularly muddy corner during the world rally championships.

Occasionally I could do with a secondary 'cars on demand' service so I'd have a car to drive me to where my primary 'cars on demand' service put my car.

The bounty hunts are a lot of fun. Not sure why we always have to give an overwhelming advantage to invaders though. Some poor shmuck fighting off the contents of five police cars isn't going to be able to do a lot to stop me driving over him at 80 mph or causing his or her death in a similar undignified manner.

I continue to get frequent (and very large) notices about not being able to connect to the Ubisoft servers in between consistently connecting to Ubisoft's servers for co-op, etc.

Occasionally I could do with a secondary 'cars on demand' service so I'd have a car to drive me to where my primary 'cars on demand' service put my car.

...genius. There needs to be an app for that.

Demosthenes wrote:
Occasionally I could do with a secondary 'cars on demand' service so I'd have a car to drive me to where my primary 'cars on demand' service put my car.

...genius. There needs to be an app for that.

It would be good if there was the option to use DSF as a customer, too, like the taxis in GTA4. On that note, second DSF mission I did was picking up an eastern European named Roman who led me into an ambush by other cabbies mad at ride-sharing companies, which was a nice reference.

You can pet all the dogs, which is a feature every game needs.

I'm loving this so much I'm going to accidentally 100% it. I probably would have anyway due to my cheevo madness, but the first time I actually looked the other day, I had all the non-story trophies just from dicking around.

I also love not getting out of my car to do a mission. Had to destroy 4 Tezca drug shipments for part of one mission. Dropped my drone out the window, dropped 4 bombs, triggered them, and drove off inside of 15 seconds, in what I'm sure was supposed to be a bunch of sneaking around.

Definitely one of my GOTY contenders.

My partner was travelling the past few days, and the final DLC is about to drop, so I dove in headfirst and have probably gotten halfway through. (I dislike circling back to completed games for DLC.)

Too many thoughts for brevity, but enjoying reading everyone else's take. It's definitely an Ubisoft open world game, with all the good and bad things that entails. (Interesting side note, that I now associate the genre with Ubi rather than Rockstar.)

As with the first one, and pretty much every other game, I have completely disabled multiplayer.

beeporama wrote:

My partner was travelling the past few days, and the final DLC is about to drop, so I dove in headfirst and have probably gotten halfway through. (I dislike circling back to completed games for DLC.)

Too many thoughts for brevity, but enjoying reading everyone else's take. It's definitely an Ubisoft open world game, with all the good and bad things that entails. (Interesting side note, that I now associate the genre with Ubi rather than Rockstar.)

As with the first one, and pretty much every other game, I have completely disabled multiplayer.

I usually do the same, but the co-op is actually pretty fun, and seamless. Aside from one bounty hunter encounter where a guy holed up on top of the Golden Gate Bridge and disabled the window washer lifts, never had a bad time with it.

If you decide to try it out on PS4, shoot me an invite.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
beeporama wrote:

My partner was travelling the past few days, and the final DLC is about to drop, so I dove in headfirst and have probably gotten halfway through. (I dislike circling back to completed games for DLC.)

Too many thoughts for brevity, but enjoying reading everyone else's take. It's definitely an Ubisoft open world game, with all the good and bad things that entails. (Interesting side note, that I now associate the genre with Ubi rather than Rockstar.)

As with the first one, and pretty much every other game, I have completely disabled multiplayer.

I usually do the same, but the co-op is actually pretty fun, and seamless. Aside from one bounty hunter encounter where a guy holed up on top of the Golden Gate Bridge and disabled the window washer lifts, never had a bad time with it.

If you decide to try it out on PS4, shoot me an invite.

I really, really, really do not like real time multiplayer; being able to do things at my own pace without pressure is very important to me. But if I have some kind of psychological breakthrough, you're the first person I'll invite.

It's funny; I love open-world games, but I have yet to put more than an hour or two into one by Ubisoft.

Absolutely adoring the new open-world Zelda, FWIW.

And as long as I'm randomly randoming, I love multiplayer, invasions and all! I know not everyone does, and it's all good.

I think what hooked me was the first time somebody invaded me, I noticed because a purple dot showed up on the radar moving quickly toward me from a side street, followed very quickly by said invader getting splattered by my stolen cop car before I knew what happened, and I suddenly gained a couple levels.

The credits ran on WD2 last night. It was a fun little game to escape the day to day grind. That is, until the mission about

Spoiler:

Invite user data being used to sway an election!?!

Am I playing a game or reading current events?

Jucofett wrote:

The credits ran on WD2 last night. It was a fun little game to escape the day to day grind. That is, until the mission about

Spoiler:

Invite user data being used to sway an election!?!

Am I playing a game or reading current events?

Given when the game came out, they were eerily on the nose. Which, I mean, people would tell you DUH WE TRIED TO WARN YOU AND YOU THOUGHT WE WERE PARANOID. If I recall correctly, this was similar to a plot point in the original game, too.

Yep. It was relevant and prescient. Really good game.

I just realized Watch Dogs 3 has been announced. Almost a year away though.

Gameplay trailer announce thingy:

The whole inhabit every character thing seems really hard to pull off and potentially not fun even if executed perfectly.

Seems like a shame they're shifting back towards grim dark after largely nailing the tone with Watch Dogs 2. All they needed to do was take out the gunplay, and use those freed up controller inputs to do more hacky stuff.

On the other hand it is neat to see some AAA experimentation.

I wonder how much analysis of a series' success take into account the relative perception of prior games? Did Watch Dogs 2 do poorly because Watch Dogs 1 was hot garbage? Did they take that into account when assessing how much to deviate from 2? Or do they over-steer by not acknowledging 1 did a poor job of selling 2.

Man, different strokes but I loved the dark moodiness of the original, and I'm hyped they're heading back that direction. Gameplay-wise WD2 was terrific, but I found the story hopelessly flaky (and probably too imitative of GTA for its own good).

On the "play every character" thing, one of the videos I watched mentioned each playable character being fully voiced and having a personalized quest chain. So I reckon it may be something where there's actually a fixed N characters and whatever random citizen you recruit, it will always become one of them. But who knows, it could be something like the bad guys in Shadows of Mordor, where each one is cobbled together out of resuable parts?

Totally with you on the gunplay part though. Weakest part of the series, and pretty bad for ludonarrative dissonance as well (especially in #2).

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

On the other hand it is neat to see some AAA experimentation.

That's exactly why I'm stoked. I don't even like Ubi games much, but Clint Hocking at the helm means we'll get some wrinkles.

I am excited as much as I am surprised by it all.

Grim dark? Did we even see the same trailer? I saw one that featured an assassin grandma and a dude in a silly pig mask.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Grim dark? Did we even see the same trailer? I saw one that featured an assassin grandma and a dude in a silly pig mask.

In a gritty rainy hellscape, to be fair. After a game about gen-z hepcats faffing around sunny SoCal killing people for instagram likes, I'll take it