How Watch Dogs Has Been Improved For PS4

[Ixion]

While the upcoming open-world title will be the same across all versions, senior producer Dominic Guay said the PS4 pushes all aspects of the game further.

"I guess the image I would give [compared to PS3] is that it's like a magnifying lens," he told Digital Spy.

"Every core pillar of the game is able to be pushed further. We're able to push the immersion. The fidelity of the graphics is one part of the immersion, but it's more than graphics.

"I'll give you small examples; it's like the fidelity of the wind, how it will have everything reacting as it blows through the city, the AI reaction when something happens, every AI has to make a decision on how they'll react to it.

"We can spend more time in the brain of each AI with a more powerful machine, saying, 'OK, how will I react to what just happened there? Where will I run to? Will I call the cops?', or stuff like that.

"Fundamentally the core, innovative part of Watch Dogs is the same on every platform. But on PS4 we're able to push every lever a lot further."

Watch Dogs will use the PlayStation 4's new touch pad to control Aiden Pearce's phone in-game, something which is described as a "direct translation" and a "really cool" feature.

The studio, however, is undecided whether the game will use the light and camera positioning system.

Guay is also a fan of the controller's improvements to existing inputs - such as the analogue sticks and triggers - saying they are "a lot tighter".

"We have a game with driving, shooting, a lot of navigation, so we need tight inputs - they did a pretty good job with that," he said.

Guay also went into detail about PS4 development, saying that it's "definitely easier to get in" as a platform.

"We did fine with the PS3 at Ubisoft Montreal, but we spent more time getting through the hurdles, if you want. We spent more time getting through the first hurdles because we could get our games to look good on the platform," he said.

"Now, very, very quickly we got Watch Dogs on [PS4], and it looks good, and we're happy with the performance and that's a good sign, and we're able to push the immersion level and interactivity of our game instead of trying to get things to work."

Discussing the surprise announcement of 8GB DDR5 RAM at the PS4 reveal on February 20, Guay said that it was "great" and discussed the benefits of having fast memory.

"If you have a lot of memory but it's very, very slow, it's not as useful," he said.

"[PS4 has] very fast memory. I mean, 8GB of RAM. What that means in short is that there's a lot less limit on your creators, on our artists, and details and the diversity of what they can create.

"For an open world game like Watch Dogs it also means something very important because if you have a game that happens in a small corridor, yeah, you can put a lot of detail in the corridor.

"Our game's in an open city where you can get into a very fast sports car and drive at 150 miles an hour, so typically what happens then is that you'll trade off scale or density but we don't want to do that, because in Watch Dogs you can hack anything, and if you end up in a street where there's nothing, then the game's truth kind of falls down.

"We want to have a lot of density in our city, a lot of people that you can spy into, and lots of things you can do. So that's density while keeping scale, and definitely memory helps a lot with that."

Earlier this week Ubisoft announced Watch Dogs as a PS4 launch title, and said that it would also release on Wii U.

Watch Dogs sees players take control of a hacker named Aiden Pearce, who has an entire city's surveillance system at his disposal, and can tap into people's electronic devices to gather intel on them and infiltrate security systems vital to the city.

It will feature innovative social features that allow users to access other players' games using smartphones.

Source

Cliffs:

-Better graphics
-Better AI
-Tighter controls
-More 'density'

[coolguy]

frist off there is more memory and more power to make this game the best verison....,,, thanks for posting

[claud3]

Well that is a given, since it is a much powerful console

[Titan]

I'm watching this game very closely. I keep telling myself I want at least 3 games within a month of buying the PS4. iNFAMOUS is already a lock for me. I have yet to see anything on if GTA V gets a PS4 version. But depending on if this game is as good as they say it is I may jus start off with three.

[scotty79]

Having had a wiiu and sold it on the back of this announcement I really hope they (sony) realize that it will take a lot of games inititally to get peoples interest.Hopefully they should be aiming for 30+ games in the first 3 months to ensure there is something there for everyone.

[TGO]

"If you have a lot of memory but it's very, very slow, it's not as useful,"

I wonder what they're referring too?

[Metal Warrior]

"If you have a lot of memory but it's very, very slow, it's not as useful,"

I wonder what they're referring too?

Nothing in particular I'd guess, he's just emphasizing the importance of the fact that's it GDDR5 (as opposed to DDR3).

[Two4DaMoney]

"If you have a lot of memory but it's very, very slow, it's not as useful,"

I wonder what they're referring too?

720 being that the wii U doesn't have a lot of memory?

[Lefein]

I found that odd as well. What would have a lot of slow memory? ..and he makes it sound like it's super slow.

[Sylar]

Having had a wiiu and sold it on the back of this announcement I really hope they (sony) realize that it will take a lot of games inititally to get peoples interest.Hopefully they should be aiming for 30+ games in the first 3 months to ensure there is something there for everyone.

I would of thought 10-15 would of been plenty in that amount of time

[Kopkiwi]

I would of thought 10-15 would of been plenty in that amount of time

Agreed. 30 games in the first 30 months is going to put gamers behind the 8 ball straight off. I'm struggling as is with PS3 games releasing thick and fast and have a crap load to catch up on. I don't need PS4 adding to that.

[Aquanox]

Very interesting to see next gen pushing games further. I hope we soon start seeing games exclusively on high end systems.

"If you have a lot of memory but it's very, very slow, it's not as useful,"

I wonder what they're referring too?

Nothing in special, only praising the PS4 fast memory.

[claud3]

this is all well and good, but i want to know about gameplay and how long the main story lasts and what else you can do

[claud3]

Do not know if anyone known's or posted this

The News is that WATCH DOGS, is running up a completely new gaming engine

When Watch Dogs was first announced, a lot of people believed that the game was based on Assassin’s Creed engine, AnvilNext. It appears though that this is not the case, as Ubisoft has developed a brand new engine for it. According to Sebastien Viard, Technical Director on Watch Dogs, Watch Dogs is built on the Disrupt engine.




This is definitely good news as the AnvilNext engine suffered from a lot of issues. It will be also interesting to see whether the Disrupt engine is more friendly to multi-core CPUs or not. In addition, this new engine will be supported by both current and next-generation platforms, as Watch Dogs is planned for a cross-platform release.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/watch-...alled-disrupt/

[ShakesHead]

30 games in the first 30 months is going to put gamers behind the 8 ball straight off.

Only gamers who have to have every game. Besides, I'd rather have more variety than not enough to choose from.

[Syphon_Filter]

The game looked great and hopefully the developer will take full advantage of the PS4.

[ElieKatzQueer]

They published this 2 days ago:

http://www.examiner.com/article/watc...ments-revealed

It looks like there's an entirely new engine that they designed just for this game. That's really interesting.

[ShakesHead]

I'm glad they are finally revealing more about the game, I've been interested for a while but haven't been able to find much on it. This might be the first thing I play on my PS4.

[ElieKatzQueer]

How much is the PS4 btw?

[GreatSpaceKoaster]

Notice the article mentions the PS4 and the Wii-U as platform releases, but no mention of the next Xbox. I'm guessing they don't want to announce anything until the console is officially debuted.

[Completely Average]

Notice the article mentions the PS4 and the Wii-U as platform releases, but no mention of the next Xbox. I'm guessing they don't want to announce anything until the console is officially debuted.

It's already been announced on pretty much everything. PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, MS's next-gen Xbox, Wii-U.

And the lead development platform is the PC.

[claud3]

I posted the news about it running on a completely new engine

[INFAMOUS8]

Its going to be one of the few new IP's..... so I think it'll sell well. Gamers want new IPs.

[Bigdoggy]

I really liked Far Cry 3 and I am sure this game will be awesome. I'm all for Sandbox games

[claud3]

likewise, it's the replay value i am worried about and i heard a few other members saying the same thing

with a highly detailed landscape, it needs replay value to make it useful and not boring