For the past two years or so, there was one game on everyone's lips when it came to discussing the potential of next-gen gaming. Watch Dogs had a highly positive response upon first being announced, with its dynamic world and incredibly good looks. While Grand Theft Auto V looked to be a worthy entry in Rockstar's series, it was in Watch Dogs that people were hoping for a truly next-gen, open-world experience. When it was finally released after several delays, Watch Dogs was by no means a terrible game. However, it also wasn't quite the revelation that people were hoping for, and the phrase "Grand Theft Auto with hacking" was thrown around a lot. Above all though, the game just didn't look anywhere near as glorious as the early trailers and pre-release promotional material had suggested. Rumours that the game had received a graphical downgrade somewhere along development were confirmed, after a fan-made mod managed to unlock the graphical features that we first saw back at E3 2012. Everything that the mod unlocked, which included dynamic shadows, bokeh depth-of-field, light effects and increased rain density, were already hidden away in the game's code. This would make sense if it turned out most PCs couldn't actually utilise these visual effects, but many have reported that turning them on has made almost no difference to performance. Because all of the settings were already in the game's code, Ubisoft intentionally chose to give Watch Dogs a graphical downgrade, actively making it look worse than before. The reasons behind it all have yet to be revealed, but many fans have no doubt that something fishy went down during Watch Dogs' prolonged development.
