And that had very little to do with the meaningless reputation meter, which appears to have no consequences whatsoever. I actually felt a pang of guilt when I accidentally ran someone down and then saw that they were on the waiting list for a liver transplant, and as a result this is one of the few open-world action games where I rarely went on a violent rampage. It’s a small thing, but it’s surprisingly effective at humanizing them. Scanning a pedestrian or thug pops up a brief, randomly generated personal history – some fact about their hobbies or lifestyle, plus their age, occupation, and income. This techno-thriller fiction is all about the power of information in a super-connected city, and one of its cleverest and most distinctive tweaks to the open world genre is how much information it gives you. Fortunately they never happened when anything interesting was going on, but they’re definitely noticeable and get progressively worse as the story goes on. Everything runs at a smooth 30 frames per second, however, after playing for a few hours I did start to experience frequent slowdowns when new mission objectives were loading up. The rural area of Pawnee balances out Chicago’s urban sprawl, and it all looks great, especially at sunset or during a rainstorm. Watch Dogs’ completely open map is another big strength: it’s huge, diverse, and intricately detailed. ![]() ![]() Character animations are elegantly done, too. An enthusiastic and cavalier fixer, a gang leader who I affectionately refer to as Avon Barksdale: Superhacker, and a soft-spoken mob boss steal the show and make it a likeable and well-acted group. Fortunately the supporting cast is much more interesting. It’s remarked at one point that he’s suppressing his personality, so it must be intentional, but it doesn’t make him a strong character. Our hero, Aiden Pearce, is an empty trenchcoat as far as personality goes.
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