Ubisoft Needs to Figure Out a Direction for Watch Dogs

gamerant.com:

Over its three entires, the Watch Dogsfranchise has had a major identity crisis. The series began in 2014 as a darker story about a vigilante trying to get revenge and has since turned into a wild open-world game where the player has control over literally everyone. No two entries in the series are alike, and the only thing connecting them is the hacking mechanic. While the Watch Dogs series has provided some fun open-world hijinks, it is in desperate need of a clear direction.

The majority of franchises under Ubisoft have clear identities. The Assassin's Creed franchise has brought players across history to combat the Templars, the Far Cry series has given players open-world sandboxes to cause as much mayhem as they can, and the Tom Clancy brand has encompassed many special ops titles. While there have been variations in these specific titles with the new RPG approach for Assassin's Creed and the direction that Ghost Recon has gone, these series still maintain a semblance of similarity. Watch Dogs, on the other hand, has released a different type of game for each title, and that makes it very hard to figure out what the series is all about.

Watch Dogs Does Not Deserve to Be Retired

In 2014, open-world fans were treated to the first entry in the Watch Dogs series. The game followed vigilante hacker Aidan Pearce in the streets of Chicago. He went on a quest for revenge against those who were responsible for killing his niece. The game was darker than later entries in the franchise and told a pretty grounded story with a futuristic backdrop. It introduced players to a new world and gave them control over a hacking mechanic that would turn the open-world into their playground.

Watch Dogs 2 released two years later and took the