'Watch Dogs' release is today, hack away gamers

Have you always wanted to be a vigilante hacker? Well you can in the third-person open-world game Watch Dogs. Ubisoft has enlisted the help of Kaspersky Labs to help make the hacking seem as real as possible, and not over the top Hollywood style.

Watch Dogs, senior producer Dominic Guay stated, "They (Kaspersky Labs) have really hardcore experts on hacking. We send them some of our designs and we ask them feedback on it, and it's interesting to see what gets back."

Joystiq says that Watch Dogs isn't focused on hacking at a granular level, despite being fictionally fertile ground for the clichéd hacking minigame. Instead, it treats hacking as a shortcut to manipulating doors, cameras, cars, laptops and ATMs in a futuristic "smart city" based on Chicago. The centrally computer-controlled urban environment is a sprawling basis for the game's traversal, shooting, stealth and driving systems.

"It's not about the challenges of climbing a wall," Senior Producer Dominic Guay says, recalling the simplification of movement in Ubisoft Montreal's flagship series, Assassin's Creed. "It's finding the path I want to follow.



"It's not about the minigame that will let me open the door, it's the fact that I'm making a plan. I'm making a plan of how I'm going to chain hacking, shooting, traveling the city and driving to achieve an objective."