5 Reasons Watch Dogs 2 Is One Of Ubisoft's Best Video Games

The name Aiden Pearce is not attached to a particularly memorable character. Some may think "The Vigilante," some may think "The Fox," but most will think "the boring antihero that video games want to forget."

The Watch_Dogs 2 cast, however, shows that Ubisoft can completely reimagine possibilities. Marcus Holloway is a young, angsty hacker with admirable ideals and not-so-admirable methods. The achievement with Marcus's character is that while other developers have created black men who happen to be protagonists, Ubisoft created a protagonist who happens to be black. Through his interactions with other characters, Marcus’s race manages to remain relevant to the story without ever feeling forced or counterproductive - something few titles have accomplished.

On the sidelines are Wrench, a sensitive kid whose reason for wearing his animated mask is sentimental and empathy-inducing; Josh, a vulnerable teddy bear with Asperger's who struggles socially to relate to his teammates but is ultimately the most likeable of the entire cast; and Miranda, a middle-aged councilwoman revealed to be transgender, whose attitude defines her as confident, stalwart and powerful.

Ubisoft gave remarkable power both literally and figuratively to generally abnormal characters by completely removing the stigmas behind them. Conveniently, because the game is set in California, it is far easier to erase the stigmas of things like mental health and gender identity due to the game being set in such a socially progressive region.