5 Things We Learned From Watch Dogs 2’s E3 2016 Gameplay Demo

Area Hacks

During the mission shown during Ubisoft’s E3 press conference, it was revealed that Watch Dogs 2 would allow players to perform Area Hacks. These hacks allow you to affect a specific area, rather than just individual people like you could in its predecessor. While you’re still able to hack just one person, Area Hacks allow you to distract large groups of people quickly so you can pass by undetected.

For example, in the Dedsec infiltration mission shown at E3, Marcus was seen sending a text to multiple people in a specific area in order to head down the road undetected. A quick and easy way to allow you to continue with your mission.

Other Dedsec Members in Your World

Shortly after the little demonstration of how Area Hacks work, the Dedsec infiltration mission showed off the integration between single player and other online players. Other online players, such as your friends, will show up around the San Francisco Bay area as other friendly Dedsec members. You can greet them using emotes, and at the press of a button can join up for co-op play.

While it looks to be easy to jump into an online game with your friends, it also seems that Ubisoft isn’t forcing you to play with friends if you don’t want to. As shown in the trailer, you can always use an emote to greet your fellow Dedsec member and then carry on with your single player mission, with no further interactions or distractions.

Multiple Missions to Pursue

Watch Dogs 2 looks set to put one of the key problems of the first game right. Despite the fact that Watch Dogs had a huge open world to go ahead and explore, the game’s mission structure was very linear. In Watch Dogs 2, you’ll have multiple missions to pursue at any time you want.

All you have to do is open the Dedsec app through your phone, select which mission you want to do, and then go ahead and complete it to progress the Dedsec takeover of the world. Being able to go ahead and take on whichever mission suits your style of play, or just whichever mission you feel like doing at the time looks set to make the whole game feel far more diverse and varied than its predecessor.

Mission Freedom

Once the player had properly begun the mission, it was explained and shown that each mission would have a number of different ways in which it can be completed. During the infiltration, for example, the player could run in all guns blazing, take a ghost approach into the penthouse apartment in order to hack the computer, or there was a way whereby the player didn’t even have to go inside the room.

Each of these different approaches will require you to use different items from your tech armory to your advantage. Whether you use it to take out or sneak past enemies, the nature of each mission and the possibilities open to the player with the tech at their disposal makes Watch Dogs 2 set to be a much more varied game than the first.

Marcus Has an Emoji-Adoring Friend

While we knew that Marcus probably wouldn’t be alone in the rise of Dedsec against their enemies, we didn’t know just how involved these other characters would get. Well, it turns out that Marcus will have a group of quirky Dedsec allies, including Wrench who seems to have a love for emojis.

Wrench seemingly played an active role throughout the mission, talking Marcus through each stage and offering him at least one method of completion. Of course, the player doesn’t have to take his advice and can go about the mission the way they want. But all we know for now is that these characters will be there to support you as your build your army of Dedsec members.