4 Things We Need in Watch Dogs 3 and 1 We Can Live Without

Somewhere between 2014 and today, I’ve become a person who doesn’t just like Watch Dogs, but loves it. The premise of a major city becoming a playground for hackers, coupled with a Grand Theft Auto-style of gameplay, hooked me from the moment Ubisoft showed off the trailer for Watch Dogs way back at E3 2012, and I’ve been a fan since.

While the first game was far from perfect (I still choose to ignore Ubisoft’s…interesting depiction of Chicago as the game’s setting), the second one made some notable improvements in terms expanding its map and making the city- now San Francisco- feel more alive during operations and interactions with NPCs.

Now, rumors have surfaced that not only is Watch Dogs 3 in development, but that it could release before the end of 2019. After spending countless hours with the first and second game, here are a few changes it would be great to see implemented in Watch Dogs 3, and one feature that should have never seen the light of day to begin with.

1.A (Slight) Change in Gameplay

Watch Dogs has always had a strong “play your way” style, with players able choose their available side operations in any order, complete them however they please, and freely roam the city in exploration. The worlds of Chicago and San Francisco truly feel like they’re sprawling with activity and endless ways to cause trouble. In both games, however, I’ve found that massive level of freedom and the variety of play styles bleeds too heavily into the main operations and have even cheapened the quality for some of them.

In Watch Dogs 3, I would love to see more hacking during the main operations, which is ironic for a game whose foundation was built on the concept of hacking. During many of the later operations, especially in Watch Dogs, the hacking almost becomes an afterthought- stealing a guard’s keycard, changing a camera’s direction, or quickly hacking a door to unlock it- in favor of heavy gunfights and long car chases. Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2 are unique largely because of their hacking tools and tech-focused puzzles, and it would do the series good to put more of an emphasis on those mechanics, in the missions that are actually driving the main storyline.

2.Character Selection + Mission-Specific Outfits

Aside from open world RPGs, the option of choosing between a male or female protagonist has been growing increasingly popular in recent years; and if the new leak about Watch Dogs 3 releasing in 2019 has any validity, then Ubisoft looks to be bringing this trend to the game. I doubt playing as a male or female in Watch Dogs 3 will change the experience of the game, but simply having the option is something I’m looking forward to.

As far as character outfits are concerned, it would be cool if the success of one or two main operations were dependent on how your character was dressed. Players who enjoy stealth could have the option to neutralize a guard and steal his or her outfit. Hacking a pizza shop (please, just go with it) could require stealing a pizza hat beforehand. That was an off-beat example, sure, but you get it. Some of the character’s clothes could be used for more than just cosmetics, because nothing screams “I’m innocent!” quite like a bandanna over the mouth, dark sunglasses, and a messenger bag.

3. Bigger Map with More Impact

While the map in Watch Dogs 2 was impressive and far more expansive than the one we got in the first game, it still felt limited and repetitive once you knew the lay of the land and realized that not everywhere in the city was truly “open”.

I’m not saying the Watch Dogs team should steer the game into RPG territory like the shift Assassin’s Creed Origins brought to that series, but it would be great to see the next setting of the game more immersive and filled with more reactive NPCs. Watch Dogs 3 could also stand to have a larger, more well-developed cast of secondary characters.

4. A Tighter Story

At its core, Watch Dogs has always had a pretty simplistic storyline- the Central Operating System (ctOS) connects everyone and everything (cameras, traffic lights, ATMs, etc.) together, making it a hacker’s dream. In the first game, vigilante hacker Aiden Pearce uses the vulnerabilities within the ctOS to exact revenge on the people who killed his niece. Watch Dogs 2 introduces the ctOS 2.0 and its overseeing corporation, Blume. Our new protagonist Marcus Holloway, along with the and the hacker group DedSec, work to expose the corruption of Blume executives to bring the entire system down.

While those lines of narrative are easy to follow in both games, Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2 tend to lose their focus in the midst of all the side missions and explosions, and neither game really does much to get itself back on track later on. You can pick up the main mission several hours later, but by that point there have been so many small threads of story introduced and a few irrelevant characters thrown into the mix, you don’t really know what’s going on, but just go along with it anyway.

Return to Sender: Bounty Hunter Mode

Multiplayer was a huge part of Watch Dogs 2, and I think Ubisoft got a little carried away with the Bounty Hunter, a new PvP experience that automatically brings other players into your game when you cause too much trouble.

In Watch Dogs 2, players take “heat” whenever the destruction starts getting out of hand, but it’s not enough that a swam of police cars rush to the scene in hot pursuit. Now, if you’re making too much of a ruckus, bounty hunters are also brought in- players who are more than happy to hunt you down and take you out. The whole thing makes for a chaotic experience which (at least for me) was unwanted majority of the time.