The demo presentation for Watch Dogs was one of the highlights of Tuesday's PS4 conference. While the escalation from stopping a petty thief to shooting up goddamn cop cars was nothing short of ridiculous, the chance to hack into and subvert a city-sized collection of systems sounds brilliant. But there's something that Ubisoft are being particularly coy about - the game's multiplayer.
They've teased it. At the end of the latest video, the perspective shifts to a security camera being hacked by another player. It suggests an asynchronous online mode, in which players are tracking each other... for some reason or other. In an interview with Kotaku , Watch Dogs creative director Jonathan Morin hinted at the role of multiplayer within the game.
"Watch Dogs is all about hyperconnectivity," said Morin. "To me, that has to mean all the time and anywhere. So yes, other people are out there all the time, when you don't expect it. Whether you're playing single-player or multiplayer, it's happening. You're saying asynchronous but it's much more real-time than that..."
So are those players helping or hindering protagonist Aiden? "I think both are interesting questions," Morin continued. "We'll let players do pretty much what they want on those terms. And I think that what's interesting is that since we're creating a fantasy that you can progressively control all of Chicago and monitor everything... if you can do that... you need to ask yourself if Aiden Pearce can do all of this, can anybody else out there do the same thing? And the answer is absolutely yes."
Sounds intriguing, to say the least. Watch Dogs is due out around autumn.
