Opinion PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series X|S

A Watch Dogs Hero Shooter Would Be Better Than XDefiant

After the reveal of Tom Clancy’s XDefiant, I’ve been thinking about what other universes would be good for a hero shooter that Ubisoft could draw from. The one I keep coming back to is Watch Dogs. Already we’ve seen that game world shift from one with a protagonist to one where the player controls anyone in the city. If that’s the case, then why could you not simply have a ser of classes and then randomly generate characters? I think that this could make for a very interesting PvP adventure into the Watch Dogs universe, something that Ubisoft hasn’t had the guts to do for a good long time.

Watch Dogs is a world that’s all about using hacking and your surroundings. You’re not invulnerable, you’re a squishy person who will die if they take a bullet. That’s why the world fits as a hero shooter though. Characters could be split into classes, and those classes could have a specific set of skills that work dynamically with others. Stronger characters might be able to push forward by having hacks that work on cars, allowing them to create openings for other, sneakier classes. A stealth class could use an AR Cloak to hide in plain sight, allowing them to kill when the opportunity strikes, and a crafty class could have access to certain bombs and devices that cause devastating damage.

As you can see, I’ve thought about this a fair bit. I just think that there’s so much more potential in this idea than there is in what Ubisoft is doing. Sure, the company can make a good multiplayer game, pepper it with seasons, and foster communities, but that doesn’t mean the game is a good idea. It’s a blending of worlds that shouldn’t ever really meet, not in terms of lore anyway. I think this is what I keep getting hung up on time and time again. The lore doesn’t fit, so the game shouldn’t exist.

Watch Dogs is ripe for something like this, but instead, Ubisoft would rather push on creating more disjointed worlds than it already has. It’s not a good look for a developer that’s barely supporting games like Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and The Division 2.

You Might Also Like