It's interesting that we hadn't seen anything of Watch Dogs since the first reveal. With Sony's PlayStation 4 event this evening, we’ve now moved from knowing basically nothing about the game to… not much more than that, really. Today's footage was a gameplay demo taking place within the title’s open world atmosphere, as opposed to the tightly pre-scripted segment from the demo before it. There was a huge focus on what the player is capable of doing using the game’s smartphone and it’s got a huge focus on hyper connectivity of technology in the environment and how you're able to interact with it to your advantage.
This brief glimpse showed that they player can interact with the world in notable unique ways. They were instantly given information about each NPC in the environment. It gave details about their employment, their income and a random fact. The scene showed that one of them was employed as a pro-life lobbyist.
Presumably as penance, their bank account was hacked into remotely, then the player withdrew their money from an ATM.
The demo showed that open world situations emerge based on scannings done with your phone. The player prevented an attack in an alley by finding someone that data showed was likely in danger.
While chasing down their assailant and then subsequently running from the police due to causing a scene, the player showed further interactions with electronical systems. Raising electronic barriers so cars would be wrecked when unexpectedly crashing into them and stopping a train in order to climb aboard and use it as an escape route.
No word on a release date, but we have our suspicions it’ll be out by the end of the year.
Be sure to read this post for our full coverage of the PlayStation 4.
