E3 2016: Ubi let the dogs out again. Here's everything you need to know about Watch Dogs 2

Watch Dogs, which came out in 2014 had a lot of love and hate going for it. Though the internet may project negativity, sales say otherwise and Ubisoft sold more than 9 million units worldwide. Fast forward to 2016, Watch Dogs 2 is upon us. It is slated to release on November 15 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This time around, we have a new protagonist, a new setting and a new way of doing old things i.e. to cause more mayhem. Here’s what you need to know about Watch Dogs 2. Marcus Holloway Ubisoft (apologies for sounding like a bad girlfriend here) dumped Aiden Pearce for a new, younger protagonist. Your name’s Marcus Holloway, a brilliant young hacker, who’s a black African-American, in his mid-twenties, can parkour like crazy and is surprisingly very physically fit for a candy-chomping, code crunching guy who sits in front of the screen for hours doing nothing but hacking. A definite oddball. Your motivation? You have been wrongly convicted of a crime you did not commit. Perhaps a typical case of racial profiling here? In any case, you are conveniently forced to join the secret hacker group, Deadsec (more on that later), to prove your innocence and to free citizens from the control of the ctOS system. At least, Ubisoft has moved away from the angsty Aiden Pearce, with his tale of revenge, to a hipster, punk, hacker guy that wants to liberate the citizens from corporation control. Marcus Holloway, contrary to what you might expect, doesn’t appear very likable in this video

Welcome To San Francisco Bay Area Old Watch Dogs was set in Chicago city, the new one in San Francisco Bay Area. Ubisoft has made it beautifully. It’s replete with iconic landmarks such as the famous Golden Gate bridge, crooked snake-shaped Lombard street, the Victorian style architecture called the “Painted Ladies” and of course, the old Russian Hill cable cars. Ubisoft claims that they’ve captured the San Francisco vibe, all the different areas, the feel of them, including the collection of people who populate. Even with their lifestyles and personalities have apparently been captured. ctOS 2.0 Of course under all this beauty is the tension, corruption and the premise of the game. The Super-invasive ctOS 2.0 has been installed by Blume corporation to oppress the innocent citizens in the name of control and profit. How surreal! ctOS 2.0 is now connected more deeply than ever before. Basically, it’s Ubisoft’s way of letting players cause more mayhem. Now you can hack individual and mass mobile phones to create distractions and know what people are generally up to. Remotely control any vehicle either for fun or to take down enemies Tag and create identities of people so that police can arrest them 3 Essential play styles As is usual in an open world game, you are given choices. You can either simply shoot everything on sight, go stealth and take down enemies, or hack almost every device in sight to take out the enemies. You can play the entire game without killing anyone. Of course, all of these ways have their consequences. Hacking everything just makes so much sense to take out enemies but can also slows down the action element in the game, for example. 3D printed weapons While not as elaborate as Fallout 4’s DIY weapon system, Watch Dogs 2 takes a lot of cues from contemporary life such as making your own improvised weapons or even just 3D printing your own. The melee weapons just didn’t work initially, so Ubisoft’s team actually did what Marcus would have done. They went online probed the internet for viable homemade weapons and ended up with a billiard ball that was attached to a rope. Their motion capture henchmen found the weapon to be really fast and Ubisoft loved it. You can use traditional guns and rifles for a GTA style shootout, but what’s the fun in that. Print out your own taser gun for a more humane approach. Deadsec In Watch Dogs, you hung out with a lot of weirdos, and in Watch Dogs 2 the main bunch of weirdos you hang out with is a hacker group called Deadsec. It’s reminiscent of real-life Hacker group, Anonymous . The main complaint of the first Watch Dog was that Aiden Pearce was running everything on his own. In Watch Dogs 2, with great power comes an even a greater group supporting it. But does the group really want to liberate or does it just end up replacing the oppressors? You can be sure Ubisoft will plant a twist. Hacker Culture Ubisoft has been careful to reiterate that they understand the hacker culture. Hackers are essentially people who look at the world differently and impact the society, known as Hacktivism , in their own way. All this, of course, is done with a serious but yet in a joke-trolling way as can be seen throughout the game. More Hacker Like For a game that is about hacking, Watch Dogs didn’t make you feel like a hacker. This time around you have a lot more in your arsenal than just guns. In addition to hacking almost anything in the game, you have quadcopters, RC jumpers and the like to help you stealthily hack into places, conduct reconnaissance and even take out targets. New Co-op play Unlike regular co-op games, where you start a co-op game from scratch, Watch Dogs 2 lets you nonchalantly encounter other players who can help with quests along the way. Players can drop-in drop-out and choose to play the entire game in multiplayer in a very Tom Clancy’s The Division kind of way. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be like The Division with players crazily running around breaking single-player immersion with their antics, or even like Far Cry 4 co-op where a player would suddenly and randomly appear in your game and do silly things to ruin the experience. Multiple Editions In the typical Ubisoft way you get three different editions with a special DLC for pre-orders (surprise, surprise). Deluxe Edition includes the Game, an exclusive sleeve, a San Francisco Map, lithographs and the Deluxe pack of digital customization items. Gold Edition includes the Game, the Deluxe pack and the Season Pass. San Francisco Edition with its Collector’s box, includes the game, extra digital content: The Deluxe pack and Zodiac killer mission, a Marcus Figurine, SF-themed laptop stickers, lithographs, and a San Francisco Map. Finally, you have the Free Edition, where you can actually hack into Ubisoft servers and download the game for free…just kidding! Players who pre-order any edition get an extra mission named Zodiac Killer: A copycat of the Zodiac Killer is murdering people and taunting the police with coded messages. Players have to decrypt the codes and hunt down the killer to complete the mission and get an additional, exclusive outfit that does, well, something, we hope. What’s the Price like? You can get the game on PS4 and Xbox One for Rs 3,499. The game is also available for pre-order on Steam for Rs 1,799 and Rs 2,499 for the Deluxe and Gold Editions respectively. The Steam editions are digital-only editions and you won’t get any physical goodies. There’s no word on an official retail copy for PC just yet. Check out the 14 odd minutes world premiere video shown just before  E3 . We marked the video without the annoying 15-minute countdown, just ‘cause we’re such nice guys.