Ubisoft Montreal's creative director Jonathan Morin has spoken to Edge about the need to balance the various elements of Watch_Dogs and how it stacked up against the competition at this year's E3.
Commenting on how Ubisoft has combined the various elements of the game Morin said, "It's been four years [in development]. There's no way, even if you have talented people, they cannot synchronise that many things super-fast. So stuff like driving, we've been at it for four years. With shooting, we brought it [from elsewhere] into our engine and that was our starting point, then we changed it based on our needs."
He also adds that Watch_Dogs aims to prove to players that shooting your way out of a situation isn't the only way to play the game.
"If you have an openworld and add a vigilante aspect to it, people shoot at the player and they want to shoot back – but we wanted a universe where shooting back's not the only way to play. And I guess the challenge is to bring players to understand those elements so that they become second nature to them, even though they have a gun in their hand. That's not an easy thing to do."
Watch_Dogs was one of the biggest surprises of E3 2012 but this year it had to go up against a number of impressive open-world titles – some of them, such as The Crew and The Division, from elsewhere in Ubisoft.
"Usually, if you have another E3 it's because you fucked it up along the way," Morin says but he insists it was always the plan to show the game again this year. Speaking about the games Watch_Dogs is set to compete against he noted, "there's some great games but I think we have great new game dynamics along with eveything else. And I think it's something most players enjoy: getting to a point where they can play out a situation in a different way, as they're playing."
Watch_Dogs is set to be released on November 22nd for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U and PC. The game is also coming to PS4 and Xbox One but until we have a confirmed release date for those consoles it won't be known exactly when Watch_Dogs will be hitting next-gen.
