Ubisoft have today moved to clarify the reasons behind the delay for their upcoming title, Watch Dogs.
In a conversation with CVG at GDC, Ubisoft’s VP of creative, Lionel Raynaud stated:
There were several systems that were not going to be in the game if we released in November, There’s always the discussion of, ‘should we leave them for the sequel, or do we take the time to finish them?’ And we decided to take our time and do it right. It’s made a big difference – we’ve polished everything. The things we’ve developed the most are the interactions with hacking, and how in many situations being smart with chain reactions can offer something unique from any other open-world game.
If we weren’t able to deliver this aspect, it wouldn’t feel new enough to be worth a new IP
Mr Raynaud also explained that several larger concepts were ‘saved’, possibly for a future sequel, stating the following:
There are always things that you have to keep for the next game. In this case, the extra time allowed us to put a lot of our ideas into the game, so we are happy with that. Yes, we have ideas [for a sequel]. Some ideas that we weren’t able to get into the game would not have made a difference, while other, bigger ideas that naturally emerged during development were so different that we felt they would have changed the experience.
The consistency that we have achieved with the characters, structure and narrative would have been difficult to maintain if we put in the other ideas that we had. So where we are now is keeping these ideas safe for the next game.
Watch Dogs will finally be released in May and we would love your thoughts on the comments above via the comment section below.
