Here follows an excerpt from Aiden Pearce's fictional dating profile: "Aiden Pearce. 30 year old(ish) hacker currently residing in Chicago. A keen parkour enthusiast, race car driver, expert firearms combatant and complete computer whiz kid, Aiden enjoys moonlit strolls through Chicago hacking everyone in sight just for the fun of it." In all seriousness, what the heck is up with Aiden? We're given little to no backstory about our new protagonist other than he's basically had a bit of a sucky time recently and is trying to find out what is going on. We're just told to accept that Aiden is an absolute machine of a man who can do absolutely everything as long as he's wearing a coat and cap combination (no other clothes are acceptable). He's just there, primed and ready to have complete control over the entire world for no particular reason. When he's not zeroing in on bad guys and blowing them to smithereens with electrical boxes, Aiden is walking down the street hacking the poor people of the city and stealing their life savings. It doesn't really make sense, as Aiden seems to be both hero and villain at the same time (although there's absolutely no consequences for acting either way). There's little to no development on him as we progress either - he remains gruff-voiced all the way through, and bows out that way also. He tries to have a Batman vigilante moment at the end, but it doesn't quite work out for him. It's probably because cowls are more awesome than caps. In the sequel, we need more about Aiden. What happened in his past that gave him superpowers? Why is his phone uber-powerful and can hack into your neighbour's toothbrush and cause it to go on the rampage? Why can he hack a bridge, jump off it on a bike, leap off it, steal someone's bank account information, shoot them in the face with a grenade launcher and cause a city-wide blackout without breaking a sweat? We need context, Ubisoft! What else would you like to see massively improved in Watch Dogs 2? Hack into the system below and leave your comment!
Dan Curtis is approximately one-half videogame knowledge, and the other half inexplicable Geordie accent. He's also one quarter of the Factory Sealed Retro Gaming podcast.
