Over the years, the GTA franchise has been targeted by several mainstream games, but none have dared to step head-to-head against Rockstar’s giant. Today, we will talk about Ubisoft’s iconic series, “Watch Dogs,” and how the most hyped game of the decade went missing against this gold standard!
With GTA 6 release marked on our calendars, the franchise will step into a new dimension of open-world chaotic sandbox, and I doubt any game will even match its footsteps! Well, revisiting the hotline, all I can say is that GTA built a years-long legacy which Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs can’t even comprehend.
According to many reliable sources, Watch Dogs was directly compared to the GTA franchise right after its launch, especially GTA V, which generated expectations that developers never thought of! The competition was so high that while meeting with expectations, the entire Watch Dogs franchise went into the cold abyss of “games that street will never forget.”
Reasons Why Ubisoft Failed Against Rockstar Games
Ubisoft has always been my favorite since the time I started gaming! From Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, to Tom Clancy, Ubisoft has delivered a sucker punch to competitors; However, the studio lost its charm with these games due to an abundance of games with next-gen graphics and cinematic storytelling. Personally speaking, Ubisoft did great by releasing the Watch Dogs series, but that was in the distant past, and now it has been utterly failing the entire fanbase with mid-games!
Why am I blabbering about Ubisoft’s downgrade? Well, the studio never reflected trust and created a cultural dominance that Rockstar’s GTA did over the years. From GTA San Andreas to GTA V, the game created a family that understood Rockstar’s way of cooking games! For the gaming community the entire GTA franchise became a generational thing, with sky-high hype throughout the industry and revenue-busting games that felt real, making the series legendary and a pillar for open-world sandbox.
Compared to Ubisoft Studio, Rockstar announced a few games with an elongated gap between their development and release, which points towards creativity and also gave them time to polish animations, gameplay mechanics, and world-building. Ubisoft, on the other hand, released several games during a time period that exhausted their developers and animators, a system-driven studio that never listened to their fans and never cared about revenue generation. For once, if they slightly cared about revenue generation, Watch Dogs or any other iconic title would have rocked the community with their storytelling and gameplay mechanics!
Why do you think the legendary Assassin’s Creed got severe hate over time? The answer’s crystal clear: Ubisoft removed the core of the entire series, which captivated gamers across the globe. Similarly, the studio treated the Watch Dogs series with the same intent , which had enough potential to go Gojo vs Sukuna mode against the GTA franchise.
Why Watch Dogs Miserably Failed Against GTA?
The game was dead serious from the start, with explosive parkour mechanics, a hacking system, and a storytelling unique from other open-world games. The game was considered G.O.A.T until someone once said, “Too much greed is a recipe for disaster”, and Ubisoft Studio was playing with fire back then!
We hadn’t seen a game like this ever before (who thought that they could hack helicopters and bank accounts in an open world). Indeed, a wasted potential, as it all went wrong during the E3 controversy, when Watch Dogs was revealed for the first time with awe-inspiring graphics and gameplay; however, during the launch in 2014, many players objected to the downgrade brought in the final version and compared it to the demo. The only sole reason why Ubisoft sucks at building trust. Another reason that led to such a catastrophe was Ubisoft’s open-world identity crisis.
Every game felt the same, with a stuffed map, and the same missions again and again in different world settings made players frustrated.
Besides overhyping such a phenomenal game, the studio went blank when GTA introduced its online role-playing version that became a money magnet over the decades. Moreover, when the time came to shine besides GTA with Watch Dogs latest instalment “Legion”, Cyberpunk 2077 entered the chatroom and stole the spotlight.
Anyways, Watch Dogs is a must if someone wants to experience a blend of tech, stealth, and a chaotic environment, just like GTA. Walk alongside a journey of vengeance with Aiden Pearce and Marcus Holloway, to unravel the dark secrets of ctOS and corruption made by large corporations!
Final Verdict
It's not about the game, but about the Studio that promoted it and released it to the world! Maintaining and building a brand image of a game does take a lot of guts, and Ubisoft lacks here. You can hear me rant out on Ubisoft and their doings to such bangers, but the word limit is what restricts me here!