Hacking

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Aiden Pearce hacks a bank account in Watch Dogs.

Hacking is a primary theme facilitating gameplay and story throughout the Watch Dogs series.

Summary

Hacking serves as a fundamental concept and mechanic in Watch Dogs. Protagonists, their allies, as well as many of their enemies, possess a significant understanding of technology that allows them to engage with various devices in creative and atypical ways. The games feature hackable objects, which range from everyday items like cell phones and electronics, to city infrastructure like pipes and traffic lights and road bollards, to even explosives. The player utilizes their access to manipulate objects in the world around them to their advantage, granting them the ability to tackle situations where they would otherwise be outmatched.

The CTOS

Conceived by Blume Corporation with the stated goal of administrating metropolitan infrastructure, CTOS (CenTral Operating System) aggregates and connects vast quantities of digital information and devices together to facilitate monitoring, upkeep, and security of various city services and the citizens that use them. The tremendous level of harvesting of information about people and their private lives results in a surveillance state, where everything is observed, monitored, stored, and scrutinized to identify and flag anything or anyone deemed a "risk."

During the events of Watch Dogs 2, Blume operates CTOS 2.0 in San Francisco, a more powerful and invasive iteration of the original CTOS.

Appearance

Watch Dogs

The hacking mini-game in Watch Dogs.

In the first Watch Dogs, hacking is introduced as a core mechanic used by protagonist Aiden Pearce. Aiden uses his hacking abilities to interact with cell phones, traffic lights, road blocks, CTOS boxes, and more, to try to exact revenge on the people he sees as to being responsible for the death of his niece. Having breached it for his own use, he can also use the Profiler to gather personal information about people around him. Some people's phones can be hacked to reveal text messages, phone calls, and objective-related information, or to drain their bank account to earn money. Within the game world, the player can find various ingredients for crafting items. Some of these items include one-time-use hacks to jam comms or initiate a total blackout in the area.

When hacking into some devices, the player must complete a mini-game to progress. The mini-game consists of rotating pieces to direct electricity to the endpoint, with more challenging instances also featuring a time limit.

Watch Dogs 2

Watch Dogs 2 expands on the hacking mechanic from the first game to introduce new ways to approach and accomplish mission objectives and challenges, an improvement that is further enhanced with the addition of the RC Jumper and Quadcopter to allow for more exploration and a better view of surrounding areas.

Its protagonist, Marcus Holloway, is a hacktivist looking to get back at Blume after he was wrongfully convicted for a crime, based solely on CTOS 2.0's "predictive algorithms" that claimed he was responsible. To accomplish this, he joins DedSec and works with his new friends to strengthen their hacking abilities.

Watch Dogs 2 does not limit the player to only be able to hack objects that are within a direct line of sight. The NetHack View feature lets them see and hack objects through solid obstacles that are otherwise inaccessible. NetHack also makes enemies and hackable objects more visible.

While the previous game's hacking is limited to contextually relevant actions performed by a single input, Watch Dogs 2's more robust hacking allows the player to have more control over what exactly hacking an object does. For instance, objects like electrical panels and steam pipes could be hacked to lure an enemy closer to them, and then set to explode automatically when they get close. A player could also stick an IED to a vehicle, then hack the vehicle to drive straight into a group of enemies and detonate the IED to take them all out at once. An NPC can be hacked to read their texts, put a police APB on them, or just to replenish botnet units. Hacks such as those for causing blackouts or jamming comms no longer require crafting, and instead have a cooldown timer.

The hacking puzzles from Watch Dogs return, but they become larger in scale and are placed within the environment, requiring the player to move around, use cameras, or their RC Jumper or Quadcopter to complete them.

Realism

Close-up of Aiden using the Smartphone to hack.

Although sometimes vaguely rooted in real-life hacking concepts such as social engineering and malware, the hacking in Watch Dogs is heavily fantasized for the sake emphasizing its impact of hacking on the world and role as a tool; the player can focus on rather than the act of hacking itself.

The games feature plenty of nonsensical "Hollywood hacker" technobabble and visuals, with various techy terms tossed around, and lots of popup windows and fast-scrolling text being shown on screens.

Many hacking-related actions, such as hacking people's bank accounts or eavesdropping on their phone calls, are accomplished effortlessly by tapping icons on a cell phone. While not technically impossible to hack with a phone, it is far from a convenient or intuitive way of performing such technical tasks, which themselves are far too complex to be achievable by just tapping a button or two.

Virtually all of the hacking happens way too quickly compared to any real-world equivalent. Since hacking in real life often consists of hours of tedious reading and solving problems through trial-and-error and troubleshooting, it is reasonable to exclude this aspect of "realism" from the games to not bore or confuse the player.

Gallery

Watch Dogs allows the player to hack ATM machines for more cash.

Watch Dogs' hacking of people and objects is limited to a button press for performing a single action.

Profiling in Watch Dogs 2 gives the player multiple options for how to hack an NPC or object.

Watch Dogs 2's hacking puzzles utilize an objective's surrounding environment.

Watch Dogs 2 introduces NetHack, which highlights enemies, objectives, hackable objects, and other items of interest.

Watch Dogs 2 allows the player to hack cars to control their movements.

Trivia

• The developers of Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2, Ubisoft Montreal, consulted with Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab for inspiration and improving hacking realism in the games.
• When performing a privacy invasion, the "nmap scan" targets 127.0.0.1, the IP address that devices use for loopback purposes. This is likely to deter anyone trying to copy the game from attacking a real IP address that belongs to someone. This is present in all Watch Dogs games.
• In Watch Dogs 2, software like Powershell Empire and Metasploit Framework make an appearance.