You may have expected hacking, driving and shooting in Watch Dogs 2, but did you expect a discussion of Aliens Vs. Predator? How about a chat about what’s cool about Latin? Yes, the language. Ubisoft’s developers have hidden some odd and interesting stuff in their latest massive open-world game.
The Aliens Vs. Predator thing is the one most players will experience for themselves. It plays out as dialogue between main character Marcus Holloway and his hacker buddy Wrench during a drive to one of the game’s missions. They nerd out, of course:
That conversation may be a little on the nose for some people. It’s the kind of pop culture chat that Quentin Tarantino was peppering into his scripts a couple of decades ago and has become a movie trope. It’s more uncommon to see it in a video game.
Is Aliens vs. Predator too low-brow for you? Here’s a short chat some folks in virtual Oakland have about Latin and weed.
That is one of many weird conversations that the game’s non-player characters have, much of it good, though none of it quite in the league of what the Eidos developers have been putting in Hitman.
Do you prefer poetry? How about bad poetry?
Here is Watch Dogs 2’s Shit Poetry Contest, a batch of poems you can find (or miss!) in the game’s version of Burning Man:
Not to bring down the mood, but here’s something heavier that shows just how surprising and distinct a game about hacking can be. In this next clip, you’ll see a side mission that involves saving a man from asphyxiating himself in his garage—one of the most unexpected and interesting sidequests in Watch Dogs 2:
That was grim, yes, but credit to Ubisoft for mixing things up. If you’re going to make games with huge development teams, might as well have some of them drop some odd things in the game’s margins.
After all, it’s a Watch Dogs tradition: