Even though I wasn’t able to get any hands on time with Watch Dogs, I was able to get access to the promo booth Ubisoft was running that showed some exclusive new footage of the game.  The demo was in two parts, the first part was the same scenario that was shown in the Ubisoft Press Briefing, where Aiden aides his hilariously named cohort “T-bone” out of danger.  Even with a human playing the mission, it looked almost exactly the same as the pre-recorded run.  I don’t know if this is because there is only one way to play the scenario, or if it is the Ubisoft approved method of completing it.  Either way, we didn’t get to see anything new.

 

The original footage began when the demo finished the mission and entered the Open World section of the game.  It showed Aiden walking around the city, exploring, stopping crimes in progress and hacking electronics to his heart’s content.  At one point Aiden stumbled across a guy beating up a girl, presumably his girlfriend.  Aiden interfered and the guy took off running, and our demo player escalated the situation by pulling a gun and trying to shoot him down.  Domestic abuse is a horrible thing, but trying to gun a guy down in a crowded street?  Aiden is hardcore.

 

Ubisoft also introduced some of the multiplayer content of Watch Dogs.  Other players will be able to join your game and attempt to hack your character’s phone.  This triggers a cat-and-mouse game, where the hackee attempts to track down the hacker and kill him.  It seems mildly entertaining, but I wonder how viable that play style will be upon release.

 

I was disappointed I wasn’t able to actually play the game, but seeing some new footage and content is always nice.  Compared to all of the other games I was actually able to play at E3, Watch Dogs is getting pushed to the back burner on the stove-top of anticipation.