Humanity: The Best Way to Improve a Video Game Franchise
The last time I can recall falling head over heels for an E3 surprise reveal was during Ubisoft’s 2012 press conference, where they showed ten minutes of gameplay footage for a new franchise called Watch Dogs. The footage showed a man using his phone to hack into a security guard’s radio to sneak into an event, listen in on people’s calls, then mess with the traffic lights in order to cause a crash and assassinate a bad guy. If you like that kind of game, it looked incredible, and it was nice to see actual gameplay instead of the then trendy full CGI trailer. I remember thinking, “Oh, an open world game where you can hack everything, including the city itself? Neat-o!”
Two years later, Watch Dogs hit the shelves. I hated it.
Gameplay wise, it was fine. The ability to take out a whole room of guys by hacking explodable equipment around them or follow someone by hacking security cameras was fun. Driving and combat, less so. But overall, if gameplay was all that mattered, it was acceptable, if a little forgettable.
But gameplay isn’t everything, and my hatred for Watch Dogs didn’t stem from hacking or shooting or driving. It was born out of our hacker protagonist, Aiden Pearce.
The story is simple enough: After using his skills to hack a bunch of accounts at a hotel and steal a ton of money, Aiden’s identity is revealed and someone sends a hitman after him. The assassin accidentally kills his niece, and Aiden sets out to avenge her in a version of Chicago that has just incorporated a computer system called ctOS. This system handles the grunt work of running a city, from changing the traffic lights to surveillance.
As sympathetic as Aiden’s motivations may be, Aiden is, to put it mildly, a piece of shit. He has no problem with collateral damage, no qualms with murder, and despite Aiden being well aware of the fact that his actions ultimately led to his niece's death, he never examines what he's doing in any meaningfully way beyond simple acknowledgment. And honestly, there's a chance I could've lived with his moral bankruptcy if I also didn't think that Aiden is as dull as dishwater and lacking in any substance or signs of life.
Aiden is a cold lifeless man who lives in a cold lifeless world that takes the bleakest possible view of humanity. Or to be more specific, it tries to feel like a cold lifeless world that takes the bleakest possible view of humanity. It’s a game from the school of thought that the presence of darker elements is the same thing as actually telling an affective dark story.
This philosophy permeates throughout the entire game, be it from gameplay to design, and as a result, Watch Dogs feels completely dreary and hollow for dreariness and hollow’s sake. Even the game’s version of Chicago feels less like an actual functioning city and more like a representation of a city. An environment designed for you to screw around in as opposed to a functioning breathing place. I would tell you about some things I did in its confines, be it in the story or just driving around, but what little I remember is barely worth mentioning.
I finished it for some reason, I shrugged, and then I walked away. Assuredly Watch Dogs 2 was coming, but my desire to play another game in this franchise was dead and buried.
A few years passed. Sure enough, Unisoft revealed Watch Dogs 2 at another E3. I thought it looked stupid.
The game came out at the end of 2016. A lot of people whose opinions of these kinds of games I trust said they liked it. I raised an eyebrow and said, “Fine, I’ll play that one day.” But I don’t think I really meant it. Flash forward to 2018. I had just beaten Celeste, an incredibly hard platformer that thoroughly kicked my ass. (Also a game we’ll assuredly be talking about come the end of the year.) I needed a big stupid AAA game, and Watch Dogs 2 was there to provide.
Now, to go back to that reveal trailer, there was plenty I didn't like about it, but there were two issues that stood out. The first was that if I thought Watch Dogs was going for an unsuccessful “Hey, look how dark and fucked up this game is” vibe, it seemed to me that Watch Dogs 2 was going for a “Hey, look how meme-y and ‘fun’ this game is” vibe, and that, to me, can be even more obnoxious. The other thing I didn’t like was that guy in the sparkly spiked vest and the mask, whom we will later know as Wrench. I just found his whole aura breathtakingly cringy, and after seeing him do his regal “come in” gesture, I wanted nothing to do with this game. Sometimes I get angry about things that don’t matter.
So anyway, I kind of love this game.
This time around, we're in San Francisco and the surrounding areas and cities. You play as Marcus Holloway, a young black man from the Bay Area who was convicted of a crime he did not commit because the recently installed ctOS 2.0 said he fit a profile. As a result, you join a group of fellow hackers to take the system down and punish the people responsible for creating and maintaining a system that’s ultimately being used to oppress people.
Much like its predecessor, it’s far from perfect. There’s some flaws in the gameplay, the story feels less like a cohesive whole and more like a series of random tonally inconsistent episodes that (sort of) build to an end, and most importantly, the game goes from being one of the best examples of representation I’ve seen in the medium to completely fucking it up.
(Though to be fair, the gameplay does a much better job of leaning on its strengths than the first game did and there's a lot of great writing in individual scenes within said story.)
However, Watch Dogs 2 won me over thanks in large part to Marcus and his group of hackers.
Aiden is motivated by revenge, pure and simple. He has no real connection to anyone around him and his actions are rarely prompted by anything other than a lust for blood. Marcus, on the other hand, has a genuine desire to help people. Marcus has been fucked over by the literal system, but he sees himself as part of a bigger whole. When he gives a speech in the beginning of the game, (albeit a drunken speech with admittedly cornball writing) he doesn’t talk a whole lot about what happened to him. He talks about how people are being lied to and having their lives ruined, and that they can do something about it.
Aiden Pearce didn’t give a shit about anything that happened to anyone. Thus, neither did I when I was playing him. Both games give you the option to hack random civilian’s phones. As Aiden, I would do this all the time. As Marcus, I didn’t do it at all. It’s not in his character, and I didn’t want to break the illusion of the game. As Marcus, I also didn’t kill anybody unless I absolutely had to, unlike Aiden, who I basically turned into a mass murderer. As silly as Watch Dogs 2 can often get, and as severe as some of its ludonarrative dissonance problems can be (sorry to be that guy), when I was playing as Marcus, I felt like an actual person walking around in an actual city filled with other actual people. I felt a responsibility not to cause anybody harm.
As effective as Watch Dogs 2 was at immersing me into the world, what it did even better was breathe life into Marcus’s relationships with his friends and fellow hackers. In fact, this specific scene, in which Marcus and the group are trying to take control of a robot, is what made me fall in love with the game. (Couldn't find the isolated scene, so start this video at 45:14 and end at 46:28. I'd start the video at the right time for you, but something weird is going on with the embeds. Apologies.)
There are a number of things I like about this scene, but mostly, it’s how they talk to each other. I like how Wrench goes out of his way to assure Marcus that he isn’t taking offense to anything he’s saying. I like how Wrench and Josh (the guy in the green hoodie) fight, then make up two scenes later. I like how Marcus plies Josh with energy drinks only to stop Sitara from giving him another one later. It shows that while each are flawed, they all care for one another, and while they may give each other shit, they want to see each other happy. These people love one another, and though some of the methods of conveying this are a little Save the Cat-ish, they worked for me in execution.
Which leads me to Wrench. Although Wrench is often the guy who the trailer makes him out to be, he also has more going on. We eventually learn that his mask has less to do with his personality and more to do with implied social anxiety problems born from a traumatic childhood. Later in the game, his mask is taken from him, and it’s revealed that he has a large port-wine stain over one of his eyes, which couldn’t have made said childhood any easier. In order to get it back, you have to go on what is essentially a suicide mission with very little pay-off. Specifically, you have to infiltrate an abandoned warehouse filled to the teeth with armed guards and security. Yet, I was more than happy to do it. I had been through a lot with Wrench at this point, and although I found myself rolling my eyes at him a lot, I actually became quite fond of him along the way. So when I was tasked with retrieving his mask, the same mask I was mocking so much in the reveal trailer, it had a sense of stakes for me. I took my infiltration seriously and I didn’t want to botch it. I knew that if I died, I could just try again. But I wanted to nail it for a very simple reason: I wanted to help my friend.
My point is this: Watch Dogs was a franchise that I had completely written off. I was done. However, after Watch Dogs 2, I’ll be more than happy to buy Watch Dogs 3. Watch Dogs 2 does play better than the original game, but that’s not why I want to come back. I want another game for the simple reason that this franchise has proven capable of generating actual emotions from me. Unlike the first game, Watch Dogs 2 made me want to spend time with its characters in its world. Of course, a hypothetical Watch Dogs 3 could squander all this good will. But it could just as easily learn from its mistakes, like killing off its other prominent black character and pretending it didn't happen, and get even better.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realize that this isn’t the first time this has happened with me and a franchise. For example, while I didn’t hate the first Assassin’s Creed, I did feel like it was a bit shallow in the character and story department. Assassin’s Creed II (I think) does a much better job with both, and as a result, I will always have somewhat of a soft spot for the series, despite its ups and downs. I can make similar comments about the Titanfall franchise or Grand Theft Auto and a few others.
So I say this to you, franchise creators: I follow gameplay, but more so, I follow my heart. Earn my feelings and I’ll support you. I can’t guarantee that our relationship will last if you go in the wrong direction. However, there was once a franchise I swore off, but now I want more because it flexed its humanity. Of course, if you get better at creating driving or shooting mechanics, that’s fantastic. But more importantly, show me compassion. Show me a product that seems like it was made by human beings who can think and feel. Then I'll be more than happy to stand in your corner.
