Watch_Dogs
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
The player character takes part in a bar drinking-game mini-game in which Aiden drinks shots of alcohol, and alcohol is served in bars throughout the world.
As ordinary play the player hacks and drains strangers' bank accounts, steals cars, and shoots or evades police; a reputation system penalizes harming innocents rather than rewarding it.
Scripted dialogue includes strong profanity such as 'fuck'.
The player fights human enemies with handguns, shotguns, rifles, an extendable baton and vehicles, with blood on impact; no dismemberment, gore or lingering wounds.
The plot is driven by revenge after Aiden's young niece is killed, and it depicts human trafficking, murder and exploitation as central story events.
The game's ctOS pedestrian-profiling feature displays one-line private facts about passers-by that openly reference sexual behavior and habits; no sexual activity is shown.
A poker minigame lets the player wager in-game money that cannot be cashed out.
Some non-player characters wear revealing attire; no explicit nudity is shown.
The story references a trafficking ring in which women are auctioned; the sexual exploitation is referenced in the plot rather than shown as an act.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Watch_Dogs is a third-person open-world action game set in a fictionalized Chicago run by an all-seeing city network. You play Aiden Pearce, a hacker seeking revenge after a botched hit kills his niece, and you use a smartphone to control traffic lights, cameras and security systems, siphon strangers' bank accounts, and read private details about people you pass on the street. Play mixes driving, stealth and gunfight combat against human enemies, with realistic gunfire and blood but no gore. The mature core of the story is a criminal underworld of murder and a human-trafficking ring in which women are auctioned. It contains strong profanity, an alcohol drinking minigame with an on-screen drunk effect, poker played with in-game money, and text profiles that reference people's sexual and drug habits. Online play pits up to eight players against one another in hacking and racing, but the game has no voice or text chat.
How it's framed
The game casts Aiden as a vigilante: stopping crimes and sparing bystanders builds a positive reputation while killing civilians or reckless driving builds a negative one, so harming the innocent carries an in-game cost rather than a reward. Its darker material — trafficking, murder and the death of a child — is framed as the corruption Aiden is fighting against, presented as motivation for revenge rather than as spectacle to enjoy.
Details
- Developer
- Ubisoft
- Publisher
- Ubisoft
- Released
- 26 May, 2014
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