The game's cast is as colourful and interesting as its setting.

The tonal shift is delightful enough, but what’s even more welcome is that the opening mission shows a better understanding of the insidious relationship between the tech industry and law enforcement than the original game managed in its entire duration. Marcus begins his quest against the inhuman oligarchs of Silicon Valley by having to buy some new trousers after sneaking out of a one-night stand’s bedroom. Aiden opens Watch Dogs 1 by shooting a hitman in revenge for murdering his 6-year-old niece. The gun-toting murder machine Aiden Dogs is nowhere to be found, instead you now play as the much younger, much less tortured Marcus Holloway. Lack of corporate oversight coupled with absolutely zero anticipation probably goes some way to explaining how it ended up being one of the greatest open-world videogames ever made.

It seemed like a mistake at first, something Ubisoft had pencilled into their schedule under the assumption that the first game was going to be a smash hit. It’s hard to imagine a game that had fewer expectations than Watch Dogs 2. Manage cookie settings Above: a Ubisoft game with personality. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. That really should have been the end of Watch Dogs, and for many of you it probably was. The whole thing reeked of a design by committee obligation created solely to hype the potential of the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One, one of those swanky trailers for a launch title that’s destined to be quietly cancelled and forgotten about – but this one, inexplicably, made it to release somehow. The protagonist – Aiden Dogs – instantly became the poster boy for bland, uninspired leading men in videogames. It was a dour, joyless slog that had no idea how to actually engage with any of the themes or ideas raised by its near future Big Tech Dystopia setting.

Released back in 2014, it represented the absolute nadir of Ubisoft open-world design. The original Watch Dogs was an all-time stinker.

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