Watch Dogs (stylized as
WATCH_DOGS) is a 2014
action-adventure game developed by
Ubisoft Montreal and published by
Ubisoft. It is the first installment in the
Watch Dogs series. The game is played from a
third-person perspective, and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Set within a fictionalized version of the
Chicagoland area in 2013, the
single-player story follows
grey hat hacker and
vigilante Aiden Pearce's quest for revenge after the killing of his niece. An
online multiplayer mode allows up to eight players to engage in
cooperative and competitive gameplay.
Development of the game began in 2009, and continued for over five years. Duties were shared by many of Ubisoft's studios worldwide, with more than a thousand people involved. The developers visited Chicago to conduct field research on the setting, and used regional language for authenticity. Hacking features were created in consultation with the cyber-security company
Kaspersky Lab, and the in-game
control system was based on
SCADA. The score was composed by
Brian Reitzell, who infused it with
krautrock.
Following its announcement in June 2012,
Watch Dogs was widely anticipated. It was released for
Microsoft Windows,
PlayStation 3,
PlayStation 4,
Xbox 360,
Xbox One, and
Wii U in 2014. The game received generally favorable reviews; praise was directed at the gameplay, mission and open-world design, combat system, hacking elements, and mission variety, while criticism was expressed concerning technical issues, the discrepancy in graphical quality between marketing and the real game, plot, and protagonist.
Watch Dogs was a commercial success, breaking the record for the biggest first-day sales of a Ubisoft game and becoming the biggest launch of a new
intellectual property in the United Kingdom at the time. The game has shipped over 10 million copies.
Reported issues and essential improvements
- August 5, 2013 - missing proper lod detail and missing map model altogether, very unstable. Requires 1GB kit to run.
- August 12, 2013 - has issues when you profile citizen/NPC characters causing the build to crash, the best solution is to disable dynamic shadows, clusters, and objects in the scry menu (press once A and B on a gamepad to open it) once it's done you can enable them back. Still crashes often randomly. A save file is available which has all skills/districts unlocked, as well as having blackout and jam comms in inventory. Requires 1GB kit to run.
- August 28, 2013 - has issues in story missions, causing the build to crash because of the wrong animation applied in build, a fix is available, although you can't progress some missions due to missing necessary NPCs in the game to progress further. Aside from that, it's very stable in free roam.
- September 21, 2013 - has the wrong gamma applied to a game causing the image to be bleak, a save file is available to fix it. Very stable and has minor crashes in story mode that can be skipped, making the full walkthrough possible. Can be run on 512MB models.
Build Date | Build Name | Status |
---|
July 17, 2013 | mrc-cp-main-cg-11375 | Unreleased |
August 5, 2013 | mrc-cp-main-cg-11726 | Starts |
August 12, 2013 | mrc-cp-main-cg-11805 | Playable |
August 28, 2013 | main-cg-package-1440.406 | Playable |
September 17, 2013 | main-cg-package-1461.101 | Incomplete |
September 21, 2013 | main-cg-package-1469.200 | Perfect |
October 3, 2013 | 1stsub-cg-package-54 | Incomplete |
January 15, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-13544 | Playable |
January 17, 2014 | mrc-cg-package-1602.201 | Playable |
February 10, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-13914 | Intro |
February 18, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14036 | Playable |
February 20, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14057 | Intro |
February 25, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14108 | Intro |
March 3, 2014 | | Intro |
March 7, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14240 | Broken |
March 11, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14300 | Intro |
March 11, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14308 | Intro |
March 24, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14483 | |
March 26, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14507 | |
March 27, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14521 | |
March 28, 2014 | 1stsub-cg-package-7 | |
March 28, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14535 | |
March 31, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14564 | |
April 1, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14576 | |
April 2, 2014 | | |
April 3, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14601 | |
April 4, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14614 | |
April 7, 2014 | | |
April 8, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14648 | |
April 13, 2014 | mrc-cp-main-cg-14676 | |
April 15, 2014 | watchdogs-cg-18 | |
April 23, 2014 | | |
May 20 2014 | watchdogs-cg-29 | |
June 28, 2014 | | Incomplete |
July 22, 2014 | buc-dlc-cg-package-459 | Incomplete |
August 21, 2014 | | |
August 25, 2014 | mrc-dlc-cg-package-736 | |
August 26, 2014 | mrc-dlc-cg-package-742 | |
August 30, 2014 | | Incomplete |
September 1, 2014 | mrc-dlc-cg-package-781 | |