Non-Lethality Options
Sneaking up behind somebody in Watch Dogs and taking them down with an extending baton felt so satisfying. It presented Aiden Pearce as someone who knows how to take get the drop on someone, but doesn’t need to senselessly murder simple security guards hired to guard a tech company’s building, and it was way cooler and faster than the chokehold seen in most stealth games.
But with regards to non-lethality, that’s as far as his arsenal went. Any other enemy takedown involved lethal shocking from electrical panels, dropping pallets of cargo onto patrols, or the ever-expedient bullet to the head. The game made a laughable attempt to frame security guards as bad people who deserved to be murdered through displaying less than glowing details of them on Aiden’s profiler, but that’s hardly close to a proper justification.
Watch Dogs 2 could take on an approach of non-lethal options and really roll with it. If our hero is truly a vigilante, arm them with tasers, stun batons, and other tools to incapacitate foes. Instead of just hacking their phone to steal their savings, let us send security guards texts and phone calls that fake emergencies to get them out of the way. There are plenty of ways a potential conflict can be avoided without dropping cargo on their head or filling them with lead.
