That's because Holloway isn't just a hacker, he's also a maker who uses a 3D printer to build his own weapons and tools. In Watch Dogs 2, you can still pick up a normal gun and shoot people - but it's optional. While the first game was more about the power to directly spy on people through their phones and webcams (yes, webcam spying is a real thing too), Watch Dogs 2 will explore the more subconscious ways that big companies, with their mountains of seemingly benign data, can find links in that data and manipulate them to target and influence you. ( Update, November 14: Heck, Facebook may have influenced the campaign by *not* trying to influence it.)ĭirector Danny Belanger tells us that "big data" is a big theme of the game. That's after Facebook was accused of suppressing conservative news stories, and after the hit Netflix show House of Cards explored the idea of using a search engine to spy on users' queries in order to win a political campaign. While the actual mission is more about infiltrating the social media mogul's swanky penthouse suite and downloading evidence with the press of a button, the possibility of under-the-radar social media manipulation is something the real world's been wondering about. One of the first Watch Dogs 2 missions shown at this year's E3 seems eerily relevant today: you're attempting to prove that a huge social network is attempting to unfairly influence an election. There's one that looks an awful lot like Google's self-driving car on the campus of a company called "Nudle" (get it?), but it drives like any other. Just don't expect to find fully self-driving cars. In my brief Watch Dogs 2 demo, I was able to control a '70s VW bus that way: a vehicle that didn't always have electronic fuel injection, much less electric steering and throttle systems.
Not every car, of course, should be vulnerable to such a hack. As a result, Fiat Chrysler wound up recalling 1.4 million vehicles. Last year, security researchers demonstrated a variety of ways to remotely activate a car's braking and steering over the internet. New hero Marcus Holloway can hack the steering, throttle and braking systems of the vehicles around him to use them like huge remote-control cars.īelieve it or not, hackers have proven that sort of hack could work, too. Sure, it was a bit far-fetched to imagine that protagonist Aiden Pierce "had an app for that," but the hacks were actually grounded in reality - such as these wireless traffic signals that got hacked in Michigan.īut in Watch Dogs 2, the traffic signals almost feel irrelevant, because you can literally steer other cars out of your way.
In the original Watch Dogs, you could unlock and start any car with the press of a button, then escape pursuits by hacking traffic signals and raising bollards (huge vertical steel posts that emerge from the ground) mid-getaway. Also, check out how close Watch Dogs 2 looks to the real-life SF Bay Area with our comparison photos. Since the game's out tomorrow, November 15, we thought you might like to read it. Note, November 14: This piece was originally published June 22, 2016. Will life imitate art a second time? At the 2016 E3 show, we took a look at Watch Dogs 2, now set in a photo-realistic San Francisco Bay Area, to see how many liberties the game has taken with today's technology.
That's when whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed just how close we've come to creating a surveillance state in reality. Four years ago, you might have laughed at the plot of Watch Dogs: a video game set in a present-day Chicago where the authorities eavesdrop on citizens to prevent crimes before they happen.
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