Watch Dogs: Reputation system designed to keep players in check
By Chris Lacey
In Watch Dogs there will be a reputation system to ensure that players behave themselves in the city of Chicago. If not, citizens will form opinions based on your actions.
If you behave reckless – driving crazy, attacking innocents – the people in the city won’t regard you in high esteem.
This also applies to the media, as they will show Aiden’s face more, and call him a menace.
However, if Aiden takes a more cautious approach, the people will be optimistic in their feelings about him.
“It will be more questioning. Is he a good guy? Is he a hero? Is he a terrorist? They are going to start raising these kinds of questions.”
“The media will still report on you, but maybe not in such a negative tone,” Lead Writer Kevin Shortt explains this on the Ubi Blog. “It will be more questioning. Is he a good guy? Is he a hero? Is he a terrorist? They are going to start raising these kinds of questions.”
Shortt mentioned in Watch Dogs it’s not like most in-game morality meters. “The reputation system isn’t really a good-versus-bad kind of system. We really wanted it to just be the citizens reflecting back on you and what you’re doing so that you think about it more. The game doesn’t suddenly tilt one way if you get a bad reputation. It doesn’t make it exponentially harder. It should just make you consider your actions and what you’re doing.”
“If you’re seen as a really good guy and you start shooting cops, the meter is going to go down pretty fast, ” added lead gameplay designer Danny Belanger. “If you do the crime detection a lot and you save people to redeem yourself, your reputation will go back up, but you have to work for it. It will take some time and good deeds.”
The thing to understand is that players are given freedom to make their own choices, but if the world doesn’t react to those choices everything begins to feel false.
The meter acts as a gauge for you to see how the city feels about you and how the citizens will respond when you act.
There will even be moral choices that go beyond the reputation meter. Shortt described multiple scenarios where moral ambiguity will play a role.
“What will you do when no one is looking? When your actions don’t have an immediate consequence, can you still justify them?” These choices have no impact on your reputation in the game, but the main goal is to make you ask these kinds of questions.
This kind of system seems interesting and it can add some real value to the overall gameplay experience.
Watch Dogs releases on May 27 for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
You can leave a comment below with your thoughts about the reputation system.
[H/T: Ubi Blog]