See ‘Watch Dogs 2’ Hack San Francisco In 20-Minute Gameplay Video

Ubisoft shared a new Watch Dogs 2 gameplay video Monday meant to showcase the upcoming PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC title’s open-world gameplay. The new video was taken from the Gamescom 2016 convention demo and comes complete with commentary from one of the developers as they walk through hacking, driving, customization, co-op play, and more.

Watch Dogs 2 animation director Colin Graham hosts the walk-through video posted to YouTube. The demonstration is done on an alpha build of the PlayStation 4 version of the game, so expect some hitches. For example, there’s a framerate dip during a driving sequence.

Graham starts out by showing some of the basics of how hero Marcus Holloway can hack into phones and cars while standing outside of Coit Tower in San Francisco. These are done contextually and will be different for whichever vehicle or individual is hacked.

One new feature in Watch Dogs 2 is the NetHack view. This is similar to the Detective mode from the Batman: Arkham series and highlights points of interest for Marcus. In this case, something interesting about a nearby individual’s cell phone results in the discovery of a Stingray cell tower interceptor device planted by one of the game’s evil groups. Marcus uses his quadcopter drone to hack into the Stingray and find its point of origin.

A car ride to the warehouse where the Stingray signal originates results in trying out some of the other open-world activities in Watch Dogs 2. Graham emphasizes the improved driving mechanics in the sequel along with being able to hack cars and traffic lights before dipping into a clothing shop to demonstrate how clothing options work. Each area of the game will have different clothes to purchase based on the style often associated with the area.

Marcus finds his way back on the road and at the warehouse where the Stingray signal originates. Using a combination of both the quadcopter drone and the hopper drone, he is able to scout the location and disable an electronic door lock without alerting any guards. He is eventually forced to distract and disable some of the human guards, but this can be done non-lethally if the player so chooses.

The Watch Dogs 2 demonstration then jumps to co-op play. The game’s co-op mode allows one player to join another player’s session and wander into their world. It comes with a set of co-op specific missions that can be played repeatedly, but are not tied to the main campaign storyline. These are more challenging missions than the pure single-player ones and will result in gaining followers and an online score based on how you perform. Score high enough and players can earn low- or high-end cosmetic rewards.

The Bounty Hunter multiplayer mode is also shown in snippets. This new mode shakes up Watch Dogs 2 and could actually be seen as a mechanic to encourage or discourage players to be destructive in their game worlds. A bounty can be triggered by causing a massive amount of chaos in a single-player session and cause the police to chase the offending player. The police will put a bounty on the player’s head, which invites other players to join in and hunt the player. Alternatively, a player can start a bounty on their own by going into the Contacts app on their character’s phone and hacking their wanted status.

The hunted is challenged to survive long enough to break their pursuer’s line of sight and escape. They can also choose to take the hunter’s head on and kill them for potentially better loot. However, every player killed will be replaced by a new hunter, and the hunted will still need to escape eventually to earn their rewards.

Note that players who do not want to participate in the Bounty Hunt online mode can opt out of it entirely. Watch Dogs 2 owners will be able to turn multiplayer off entirely or just the modes they are not interested in playing. So, a player could disable Bounty Hunt but still participate in Hacking Invasion and co-op.

Watch Dogs 2 is due out for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 15, 2016. What did you think of the walk-through video from Ubisoft? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via Ubisoft]