Watch Dogs - Not Really a Hacker Story

11-08-2024

Edited: 1 year ago. - Updated title.

A Post 10 Years in the Making.

The original Watch Dogs® is a game I got introduced to by my best friend; he had it for the Xbox, and it was probably my first look into a more mature take of the hacker world; the tone of the game and its story is dark and gloomy, the weather of its setting—a Chicago-inspired remake called "Windy City"—usually rainy. This darkness (and wind!) is even appreciated in its release trailer gameplay.

Since both my friend and I have attention disorders, we probably went on to do something else and that was that, but Aiden Pearce remained in my mind. His tanned leather jacket, his baseball cap, his inconspicuous demeanor, his hands-in-pockets walk... his mask. "The Fox", a vigilante hacker from the fictional Chicago had now hacked my neural pathways, and set the image of a broody, troubled hacker in my mind for years to come.

Now, older and with a (hopefully) fully developed brain, I can sit and play through the story of this game, and I have to say; it is an enjoyable experience. Characters are overall well written, the story is compelling and the underlying conflict makes for an interesting setting. It has its flaws that I will discuss later in more detail, but I have one small issue;

It is (mostly) not about hacking... and that may not be a bad thing. Let me explain.

What I imagined happened (before researching into the development of the game) was a series of events that went down something like this:

Dev: "sooo, we have this story planned out, it's a revenge story"

Exec: "cool tell me more about it"

Dev: "[...] so he eventually becomes a vigilante hacker to track his nieces kil-"

Exec: "hacker? as in hacking?"

Dev: "y-yeah?"

Exec: "oh imma market the shit out of this one"

Luckily for you, I don't have to imagine anymore. We know the initial sales pitch for the game was the notion that you could control an entire city with the push of a button ³, so I imagine the characters were built around that premise. What came out is a dark story, centered on loss, revenge and Aiden's inability to let go of the past, but hacking is not a necessary word that comes naturally into this story definition, heck, one could perfectly leave it out entirely and the story would be fine.

One thing that I cannot figure out is "was Aiden a hacker on the Merlaut job, or was he the infection mechanism for Damien's malware?". In the backstory, we know Aiden and Damien worked as a duo until the infamous Merlaut job, where they (mostly due to Damiens greed) tripped another hackers alert which got a hit placed on Aiden, costing his niece's life after his car got shot and crashed. This question would have been really relevant if we could have played in the backstory, and seen a bit more of Aiden's 31337 H4CK3R 5KI11Z (elite hacker skills) before he transitioned into his darker, more mature character.

Sadly, we only get the Merlaut introduction, where we get the notion that Aiden is in this for the money, and he is. This is eventually expanded when starting the story, when Aiden reminisces of his family migrating from Ireland to Chicago, his abusive and criminal father, and how he also had his hands dipped in the criminal side of things, hence how he got to the Merlaut in the first place.

Throughout this story, hacking is a means to an end for him, never his actual pursuit, so it makes hacking take a secondary role in the story. Hacking is the vehicle, a medium in which the interactions between characters take place. In defense of our main character, we do see Aiden continue to use his ctOS exploits to pursue the leads of his niece's death, so I can assume he has some hacking experience (I just don't want to accept he's probably a skid).

So... What is Watch Dogs® Even About?

Watch Dogs® is a vigilante story. It would have worked just as well if you had made this with superpowers, detectives, robots, whatever, but hacking was the selected manner of interaction chosen by the writers, and with great care.

Please don't misunderstand; the lack of attention to the hacking aspect is not so much a breaking point but more of a "I want this analysis to be a real applause and standing ovation for the people in the writing room", because their good writing reflects on the development of the game. It still is a veritable qualm I have with it, but I'll talk more on this later.

The city is rich and full of NPC's which are made even more interesting and alive by the ctOS tidbits of very private and very personal information (thank you, convenient Profiler!) as well as the dialogues you can sometimes have with them. The inclusion of media coverage on your vigilante actions gives depth and character to Aiden because it allows a third party view of what he's doing and the impact he's having.

In fact, a huge part of my experience of immersion in this game was the world being responsive to Aiden's (my) actions; ctOS is a crazy scary technology, but one that ultimately enables Aiden with all of this private information, to pursue clues about Lena's death, as well as an entryway to the increasingly darker underworld. Hacking served the writers well as the playing field for all of the interactions in the story. I guess one could argue that ctOS is actually the main character in all of this.

This is why "hacking" was the chosen concept. This is what sets this story apart from many others that may as well be very similar. This is why "hacking" being a secondary topic is tolerable; it allows the real meat of the story to shine and move fluidly, and the hackable city really shines in that aspect.

Smart Dumb Cities.

Watch Dogs® screams in your face from beginning to end about the danger of hooking everything up to the internet, this "everything" being not only devices that lacked an internet connection now having one, but I mean literally everything; social media profiles having every single tidbit of data about you, "smart" devices that listen in on you at home, cameras in every corner of the street recognize your face, in your home, at work... sensors that trace your moves, record your steps, count your heartbeats.

Aiden is an unauthorized case; he gained access through exploits (and if you need me to explain why companies don't care enough to protect your data, go read my other posts), but Blume? The literal big bad wolf of the setting? They get unfettered access to you, and everyone you care about. I'm sure I don't have to point out the obvious similarities between the game world and our real world. In that sense, the game almost feels prophetic.

Aiden being erased from the ctOS database and becoming a "John Doe", an "Error: Facial Recognition Failed" is such a cool concept. It's like an act of defiance against a system that surveils your every move, truly an embodiment of hacker (more specifically cypherpunk) ideals ⁴. The bitter reality of such a huge surveillance system is even more apparent in the story. Blume's adverts throughout the city read things like "better security" and "less crime", yet the entire chain of bad people involved in Lena's death... weren't flagged? Where was the system then? What was Big Brother doing when Lena died?

Sad to say these critiques never really surface in the game's main plot. There is never anything past some mild annoyance from Aiden towards ctOS or surface-level disapproval of it, the same deep surveillance system that somehow never flagged any criminals when his niece was killed. This part feels really more of a flaw or a rush in the writing, specially when it was included in it's E3 press conference ³... a huge oversight that would have added a lot more depth to the world had it been included.

The first hacker we encounter, Clara, has nothing much else to say but "Big Brother is bad" as a member of the first game's very flat representation of DedSec. The exception to the rule would be Raymond "T-Bone" Kenney, a hacker who's being persecuted by Blume for his past actions (discussed later) and had a direct part in developing the invasive algorithm in ctOS, but still, it is more of a regret piece than it is actual criticism of the inherent power structure in all of this.

The in-the-face-obvious reproach that "it was never the point to protect civilians" or even a more dramatic "authority can never be trusted with power" never really comes in more than unsatisfying subtext (or a seldom watched launch short nowhere to be seen in-game). I do think this is a central critic that everyone should take away from the game, and it makes me sad it wasn't explored deeper.

Jordi, Clara, T-Bone and DedSec.

MAJOR STORY SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK... YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Jordi was a nice character. It really reminded me of the Yakuza series mostly due to his clothes. His personality? A psychopathic weirdo hell-bent on making awkward jokes while hauling body bags or torturing people. He's the real deal, a man cut out for his job. Then again, his relationship to Aiden is a work one, in spite of Jordi's advances in dialogue to grow closer to him. He's our first comic relief in an otherwise very dark, brutal setting, and I appreciate him for it.

My first actual "physically recoiled at this" moment of the game was the hacker-helper nicknamed "BadBoy17" (how do you even get a hacker handle this bad and be taken seriously?) who we later learn to be Clara Lille, a member of the hacktivist group DedSec. She's a major character, or I should probably call her "Watch Dogs®' walking plot point". She is the enabler of the mafia to get information on Aiden and his family, which eventually gets Lena killed. She's Aiden's helper and enabler in finding all of the information he requires to pursue leads on Lena's death and Nikki's kidnapping... suffice to say she's this plot's main vehicle.

I would definitely argue that her death being in the cemetery, right over Lena's grave is a planned story point from the start of the development cycle—definitely a bit cliche—but it allows us to conceptually understand Aiden's darker growth throughout the story; her death means the last regret for Aiden, and allows our protagonist to lay "Aiden Pearce", his normal, more naive identity to rest along the rows of graves, and let "The Fox" shine through in full glory.

DedSec in this first installment of the series is... underwhelming, to say something. We clearly see that the design language for it's street-pixel-art was there; their logo appears when you hack the servers and get little tidbits on private lives of NPC's, leaked by DedSec's Randomizer program. Besides Clara stating she's a member and Jackson Pierce contacting them after Nicole gets kidnapped, they don't really appear much.

Aiden however has much to offer on them, specially negative remarks. In this game, DedSec is supposed to be some sort of Anonymous clone for the Watch Dogs® universe, their communications with Aiden cryptic and processed, their hacktivism in Blume's servers... but nothing past that. I disliked this mistreatment of DedSec when it feels like they simultaneously tried to be a source of help too, even offering Jackson their expertise when it was pretty clear that Aiden couldn't do it alone and time was of the essence, but once again, this is a vigilante story, not a hacker one.

The end of the game, where you hack the satellite and trigger a blackout has them asking Aiden to wait 30 seconds, yet he somehow decides against it. This struck me as really weird, specially seeing how Clara, a DedSec member, has heavily aided and even died due to Aiden's actions. Why won't he return the hand? Is it because now, as "The Fox", he has become the only moral authority he can trust with the power and access? I don't really know, and I guess all I can do is speculate, but still, douche move Aiden.

The introduction of Raymond "T-Bone" Kenney to the story was a godsend. He's the real deal, a bona fide hacker, the kind of person I always manage to find and make friends with at real life hacker conferences. He's a tinkerer, a maker, a guy who is passionate about the code he writes. For the game's release, he probably came off as paranoid and a bit obnoxious, but hell, if I was him and had my hand in developing ctOS's invasive algorithm, I'd be pressed too, specially with how common it seems to be for people to hire hitmen (fixers) to kill others in this universe (I see you too, Boeing ⁵).

T-Bone starts off as the comic relief, a stowaway, paranoid nobody who also committed a big sin in the past. According to his backstory, Raymond Kenney was a disgruntled Blume developer, who planted a virus which caused the Northeast Blackout of 2003 ⁶, before escaping and going off-the-grid. I'm not surprised he was the lead role in Watch Dogs® DLC Bad Blood ⁷, with a lot of people singing praises on it—T-Bone was meant to be the main character of this story, if it was to be about hacking at all. He even has the same development that Aiden has, and that is heavily explored in the DLC. I am glad they took the decision to switch the main character for it.

Back on the main game, T-Bone quickly evolves from "paranoid" to "actually right", and proves his hacker credentials when we start to see just how big of a legend he is; he has his trapped-to-the-nuts playground to fend off fixers, and he's then tasked with breaking the encryption he developed, which may sound like buzzwords for the uninitiated, but this is a huge task. Besides it, he traces back JB "Defalt" Markowicz's hack, when he infiltrates their system (previously stated as "unhackable" by Clara), steals the data (it was clearly not), and deletes it from their servers (get pwned). T-Bone makes Clara look like a skid, he's clearly 31337.

JB "Defalt" Markowicz's is rarely explored in the main plot, besides serving as a weird deadmau5 clone who's hack takes the lid off Clara being the information broker that gave the culprit information on Aiden's family, leading to the tragic hit. The mission you have with him is the first in which you have "a hacker face-off" where you both hack the city in efforts to catch/loose each other. This was an obnoxious mission to say the least, the cops + the hacks + Defalt made for a pain in the ass combo, all for it to eventually end in me putting a bullet in (what I assumed to be) Defalt's head, because Aiden is not really a hacker, but the "Baba Yaga of Windy City" (more on this later).

Defalt's character is more thoroughly explored in the DLC, and if you're thinking of getting the game, do get Bad Blood. It adds a new dimension to both T-Bone and Defalt by exploring the first's big Blume hack, where the blackout had fatal repercussions, and Defalt's brother was amongst the victims. I get why they didn't put this in the main game, it probably would have completely made us forget about Aiden, as it does make the vigilante Watch Dogs® into a hacking Watch Dogs®.

On Vigilantism and Aiden.

I hope we all know Batman, Gotham's own vigilante. He shares a lot of commonality with Aiden "The Fox" Pearce; both have traumatic pasts, both have decided to use their past as fuel for their actions, both use their power for good, both are hella rich... Maybe I'm being too much of a generalist, but you get my idea.

One big difference in both of these characters is the way they use their power, or more specifically, the way they define "good". At the start of the game, Aiden came off as almost narcissistic to me; a ghost-chasing maniac obsessed with revenge and protection of his family, a stark contrast with the heroic and noble qualities of Batman, and this is OK.

I found Aiden's story to be almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, one where his dangerous actions cost her niece Lena her life, and after the tragedy he deludes himself into thinking this is all for her dead niece, so that she can rest in peace... yet after all is said and done, Aiden stands alone, having put the family he swore to protect in danger's way again, resulting in them abandoning him for safety; a too-close-for-comfort repeat of what led Lena to her early grave in the first place.

It is a complex topic, and it takes courage to create a main character so morally grey. I assume the moralistic outlook of him at the start is made to give the player a justification to like and root for Aiden, to think that "this is all for his family", but it is obvious at a glance that Aiden holds nothing back when it comes to using his power to quench his thirst to know just who was it, and why they did what they did.

Aiden's quest is ultimately one for himself, one to seek the answers he never got so that he can finally be at peace, and one that shows us that maybe man is no more beast than beast themselves. We grow alongside Aiden, and come up to the terrible conclusion that he feels alive and at peace once he finally kills the one responsible. We may start the story with "Aiden", but we end with "The Fox", one that has wandered too deep into the mountain, never to come back.

I like the concept of a vigilante hacker that starts off naive, but eventually even his own internal monologue comes off as disingenuous. Somewhere along the story a disconnect happens, probably around the point where his nephew gets kidnapped by the boating guys—I don't think it starts with his sister being kidnapped, as it is seen more as a result of his past rather than a consequence of his present. This disconnect culminates with Clara's death, the final body in Aiden's pile of regretful corpses.

Clara's death is a touching moment. Probably the graphics being old and kinda wonky dissociated me from the emotion (the way she falls is kinda funny), but it is clearly the turning point where Aiden says his final goodbye's, and we now only see "The Fox"—one that will proceed to tie every loose end of this messy case, whatever it takes.

Dig Two Graves.

Aiden's relationship with revenge is a tough, persistent one. If he is "The Fox", this revenge is the fox trap—once he's past the threshold, there's no way out. Damien's character was perfectly hateable, a really good villain once you understand the depth of his narcissism.

Once we're introduced to him, he starts rambling on about how "they crippled him" and that he wants revenge. It made me think "huh, maybe him and Aiden aren't so different after all", but meeting him in person we can see exactly why Aiden dislikes him so much. He's a sleazy douchebag, a perfect depiction of a snake in human form. Even his body language is squirmy and gross.

As the story progresses, it is clear that he has a different angle—not revenge, but instead to gain political benefit by manipulating Blume executives through blackmail. The worst of the worst. I think besides Dermot "Lucky" Quinn, the game's main antagonist and direct cause of Lena's death, Damien is the first character we kill remorselessly.

The appearance of Lucky through the story and your interactions with the mafia through Jordi really make it all burn with a tinge of discomfort. You've worked for the same guys that killed your niece, and this guy that's been giving you jobs and helping you out? He's one of them too. I like that Jordi shows up at the last mission, and you have to injure him to proceed, because it shows the stark contrast between him and Damien, both cut from the same cloth, yet one has hurt you personally, and for the other, it is merely a job.

It also highlights one thing with brilliance (funny pun since the Damien mission is on a lighthouse) about revenge, and that it is not absent of betrayal, regret, grief and a never ending trail of rage and hurt, one that pursues you wherever you go. Damien was hurt by the heist, and he thinks you have abandoned him, so he goes against you. Your actions in consequence drag your family again into this, and eventually catch up to them, so they have to leave town. Clara dies a tragic death, Jordi "betrays" you.

This concept is explored further in the Bad Blood DLC, where you see Defalt and the other blackout victims' families are on a personal vendetta against T-Bone. He probably had to have dug a lot of graves, and many more. It is the dark side of vigilantism, or really the dark side about inflicting violence—it always catches up to you eventually.

The Mild, the Bad and the Ugly.

I have some other problems with the game besides the ones I already mentioned (which is to be expected). Some are narrative, some are mechanic-related, some are both, and I don't really know if I can fault it. More specifically, I don't know if to blame the game development, or the technology of the time.

There is a Time and Place for Everything, Aiden.

One thing that struck me as VERY weird in the story was the development of the story while Aiden's sister, Nicole "Nikki" Pearce, is kidnapped by Damien and his fixers to pressure Aiden into helping him look into the Merlaut's mysterious third hacker.

In the midst of this already chaotic and deeply troubling series of events for Aiden, he enlists the help of Clara to find information on Nikki's whereabouts, where she is dragged into this almost against her will and under clear threat to her life, when the hotel she went to see Aiden was blown to bits and raided by mafia goons.

Another thing, Damien's calls where Aiden is allowed to speak to Nikki go from sounding rushed and distressed, which is very normal as she is obviously on a high-tension situation, to sounding disinterested and even relaxed, even saying "yeah, they're taking care of me" in a chill tone at one point.

This broke the tension for me. I can forgive the open-world nature of the game, where you can spend your time leisurely between missions and the story will keep intact... but this? I could only think "aren't you supposed to be in distress?!".

When I threw reason out of the window was when a sort of romantic subplot between Aiden and Clara starts to appear, as they work together more and more to find Nikki. All I could do was vent my frustration to my room by screaming "Aiden, your sister has been KIDNAPPED and you're over here FLIRTING?!". Time and place, Aiden, time and place.

This narrative disconnect was disconcerting and a little bit disorienting. It felt really off-character and it makes me wonder if some hands were forced just to sell more interest/looks/emotional attachment to Clara, whom later ends up dying for... uh... plot reasons. Maybe these romantic advances are also plot reasons, or like a forced narrative move-along, which takes me to my next point.

The Invisible (Narrative) Hand.

I don't think I am alone in feeling that the story and the game was really deterministic. More specifically, the game's storyline is predetermined to make Aiden into a murderer, one that increasingly blurs the line between justified and unjustifiable killing (eventually turning him into "The Fox").

I thought of this on the "Role Model" mission, where you have to rescue Jackson, your nephew, after he gets kidnapped by the Racine boat guys (i.e. the mob). The mission tells you to eliminate bad guys, and so far, little to no consequences have chased you for killing your enemies. After you rescue Jackson and brutally murdered all enemies, it is revealed that Jackson has watched all your actions through the security cameras.

"Oh no!" I said, and reloaded the mission, intent on doing it in stealthy, non-lethal takedowns. The mission is called "role model" for a reason, so I had to give an example of great communication and peaceful conflict resolution skills, but no dice. Either Jackson was actually watching the MMA or the game was forcing me to beat these guys senseless before the cutscene.

"The look on Jacks's face. What did I do? I killed every one of them. What was I thinking? That's not who I am... is it?" - Aiden

At this point I decided to search, and found a StackExchange discussion ⁸ as well as many other links detailing the frustration with the game's seemingly scripted story development. Why give players agency and an "open world" when you take it away for the character development? Then again, I wonder if it was a technological limitation, but I don't know; maybe an extra, different cutscene where it ended in a similar fashion would've been worse? All I know is that this sucked, and it brings me to the third problem.

Aiden "Baba Yaga" Pearce?

I've heard a lot of people throughout the years call Watch Dogs® a John Wick simulator, and I gotta give it to them, they're right. I've also heard many of them justify the level of violence with the vigilantism, but I don't think this is quite correct, and have to point blame to the game design first and foremost.

Why? Well, first of all, we clearly see Aiden regret his killing throughout the game and in dialogues when on missions. Vigilantism, is more about justice and moral correctness than it is about senseless violence. Aiden eventually reaches his breaking point when his senseless violence catches up to him.

Secondly, the "Focus" mechanic. I bet this is the main culprit. It's Aiden's sixth sense, and really enables us the player to play around violence way more comfortably, specially when you upgrade it so it slows down time. It turns both stealth combat and high bullets-per-minute situations into Max Payne-esque movie scenes. Suffice to say, this is a mechanic that helps us feel at home with combat, instead of sneaking around. In the "tips" section of the loading screen, you can see it tell you "[Focus] allows you to better perform hacks when riding a vehicle or in combat", something like that.

Watch Dogs® is also a game in which most missions involve taking down enemies, and as we discussed before, provides no more incentive to doing stealth or sparing lives besides less damage taken and a couple more experience points. With this much focus on combat, I'm surprised they didn't choose fist fighting as their preferred dialogue method between characters.

This much attention to violence goes very well with the "Aiden is a murderer" plot, but it really makes the hacking take a spot far in the back, making it even less a game about hacking. It also tells on Aiden's crucial misunderstanding of vigilantism, which is seen as more altruistic by himself, as he believes he is acting to protect his family and seek justice for Lena in the absence of effective law enforcement. Senseless violence is not protecting anyone, and this really drives his evolution going forward.

Obligatory Hacking Pet Peeve

Yes, just as you read. I have to include an obligatory "THE HACKING IN THIS GAME IS IN NO WAY REAL NOR ACCURATE OMG THIS GAME IS TRASH AAA /s". In all seriousness, I did think the minigames were fun and everything, but combined with hacking as a theme taking a secondary role, the hacking depicted left much to desire.

Besides T-Bone's character, there was little techspeak (or as some call it, nerdspeak), you seldom interact with computers or hear about exploit development, or the inner workings of the ctOS system. I do like that ctOS was inspired by SCADA ⁹, and well, at the time of writing this, the Internet of Things grows every day, so maybe a reality like this is not so far off after all. It probably is already here.

I also disliked the lack of focus on privacy, as mentioned earlier. The deep, valid criticism to the surveillance machine and the abuse of power by corrupt authority should be pillar themes to the story, but once again, they are passing remarks. I think these only exist to cement Aiden's identity as a "vigilante hacker", where he drags the malicious out into the light, but they definitely missed an opportunity to explore deeper into the surveillance state.

This oversight hurts even more when you realize the Snowden Leaks ¹⁰ took place a little less than a year before release (and if you don't know what that is, get to reading). The entire deep surveillance machine that the game warned us about, it already existed in reality, and was probably listening in, just like ctOS did.

Gaming Success?

In spite of its staunch critics at launch and questionable management of the franchise by it's publisher Ubisoft (looking at you, Legion), Watch Dogs® was a good narrative experience that I enjoyed and would recommend you play it. I am by no means a harsh reviewer of games, in fact, I seldom think there's media not worth interacting with, but besides it's years and flaws, it was a good game.

I do have to say; not a hacking game. It is a vigilante game with hacking elements, themes and minigames. If you're looking to live "The Hacker Experience™" vicariously, you're better off playing the sequel, or learning how to hack yourself (psst, you can also check out this section to find other hacker-related media).

I had a good time with the characters and their interactions, I went around exploring and sightseeing fictional Chicago, I drove and walked instead of fast-traveling and I completed almost all side missions... I played this game and it made me want to write this blog post. While Aiden was a bit simplistic and the game not really about hacking, I enjoyed it.

I have to give props to the modding community of this game, specially the "Living City" mod ^{2 11}. It is an impeccable addition that really enhances gameplay in free roam mode. You can add shaders and more graphic tweaks to make your immersion go through the roof, and that is impressive for a game released on 2014 (10 years ago, wow). Modders really go above and beyond for this game and it shows the love they have for it. I don't think it will ever ascend to a cult-classic status, but the franchise has its moments.

This post is one of many to come on #hacker-media, and if you have any suggestions for one that I should check out, don't hesitate to reach out to me via email or my Mastodon :) you'll figure out how, you're not a skid like Aiden, right? I'll see you for the next one, thank you for reading.

#games #hacker-media #watch-dogs