It’s a fine premise, though it hurts the storytelling because the game doesn’t really have a villain. The new protagonist is Marcus Holloway, a black nerd who joins a hacking collective called DedSec to battle against Blume, a faceless corporation that maintains an invasive surveillance network and sells information to the highest bidder. So what is Watch Dogs 2 about? For starters, it ditches everything that people disliked about the original. That’s not the game’s fault, but it makes for a strange experience when events that are portrayed as fiction have already happened in reality. I have very different thoughts about Watch Dogs 2 than I would have before last week’s US Presidential election. The cultural climate in North America is as bleak as it’s ever been, and the game’s polite approach to activism doesn’t seem bold enough for the issues that it wants to engage with. The catch – and the source of my ambivalence – is that it no longer feels like a reflection of reality. Watch Dogs 2 is both likeable and laudable, while the overall tone is far more consistent. You spend most of the game tapping into phones, cameras, and city infrastructure to create distractions (and sometimes mayhem). Though it has guns, Watch Dogs 2 is about hacking, with missions and mechanics that are designed for stealth rather than murder. The first Watch Dogs was an exercise in toxic masculinity and the sequel is better in nearly every way. What’s weird is that Watch Dogs 2 arrives at a moment in which its optimism feels undeserved. The cast is socially diverse and optimistic, while the game itself suggests that the efforts of private citizens can keep corporate corruption in check. Ubisoft’s latest features proxies for companies like Google, Facebook, and Uber, and you interact with the world through your phone rather than an automatic weapon. In that regard it speaks uniquely to the present. Watch Dogs 2 is an open-world action game about hacking and digital privacy set in and around a colorful version of San Francisco.
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