Interactive Friction: Watch_Dogs: Episode 22: The Uncanny Valley Of Evil

The scene between Aiden Pearce and Lucky Quinn is by far the best scene in the game, aside from those between Aiden and Jordy. There’s a fair degree of subtext and subtlety in their back-and-forth that it’s surprising that the same people who created this scene also made the parts with Bedbug, Iraq, the prostitutes, and every other section of the story.

This is also the one of the few kills where Aiden Pearce may not necessarily be in the wrong. Even if you discount the revenge motivation here (and we have), it’s clear that Chicago would be an objectively better, less awful city should Lucky Quinn and his Chicago South Club fall.
At the same time, one could make an argument that killing anymore is morally wrong, no matter how evil that person may be. It may not make Aiden Pearce out to be the paragon of justice, at least an argument could be made that it’s morally acceptable to kill Quinn.

We have a couple of problems with it in the episode, but that’s less a problem with the scene and more an issue with the context that it was provided in. If the writing is this game was a little tighter, and there was less filler, this would’ve been a fantastic payoff.

This also happens to be the part where the game finally makes the decision to say something. Even if it’s a simple “Information is power” message, that’s more than the rest of the game has been willing to give. Exploring how much someone can do if they know all of your dark little secrets, if they can expose you at the blink of a button: That’s some very interesting stuff. On top of that, it ties back into the central premise nicely.

If the game ended at that point, I would’ve considered it a pretty strong finish to a pretty weak game. Unfortunately, we’re not done yet. Rather than use this point to wrap things up, we still need to deal with Damien. Even worse, we deal in this dumbest way possible.

And that makes me sad.

Interactive Friction: Watch_Dogs: Episode 10: Ultimate Cyber-Vigilante

And now we’ve gotten to it. Goddamn Iraq and Bedbug. This is easily one of the worst parts of the game. Not the worst, (Dear god. It gets much worse from here.), but it demonstrates how the writers took all of these elements and melded them together without really understanding the subtext and implications behind that particular combination.

Again, I know that people like Iraq do exist out there. There are gang members who go join the army for the sole purpose of learning their tactics and bringing them back home. However, that still raises the question of why the writers made the choice to use these tropes. Perhaps they simply wanted to justify having military-grade enemies to fight, but we already have no-face fixers for that. If they were trying to make some commentary about gangs and/or poor sections of the city, then that was gutted out at some point in a misguided attempt to be apolitical.

Bedbug is another problem, but for a completely different reason. He is a criminal, sure. But I get the distinct impression that he’s only that way because Iraq is that way. As uncomfortable as it sounds, he seems to be like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. And that’s on top of the fact that he’s clearly in the lower-income level. In different circumstances, he could’ve been a good kid. Knowing that these same circumstances make Bedbug very easy to manipulate, Aiden Pearce decides that he needs to get blackmail him in order to get access to the Viceroy compound.

Aiden Pearce has not been someone I’d like to root for since the very start of the game, but this is a real low. Remember, Ubisoft wants us to root for this guy. Despite spending all of this time beating up criminals (an enterprise funded by theft), and having no redeeming qualities whatsoever, we’re supposed to treat him as a hero.

I hate this game.