Headscratchers / Watch_Dogs

• How does Aiden's phone not short circuit when swimming?
  • It is not that hard to waterproof electronics.
  • That's very obviously a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation

• What the hell is Kinderhook? Jordi reminds Aiden of it to indicate him the type of shit he's in after their second mission together. It makes it seem like the two have history (which contradicts Aiden's logs) or there's some unestablished event that happened which both of them know (like a disaster or major incident). As far as this troper can tell, there are several towns in the US with that name. It can also just be an event in the W_D universe that hasn't been elaborated on...
  • Probably just a Noodle Incident.

• Couldn't Aiden and Clara simply take a boat to the island with the Bunker? Even in the flyaround of the facility there is a boat docked at its pier.
  • It's very inconvenient, no guarantee that they'd be able to get anywhere with access to the Bunker, and if they need more electronics it'd be better to just drive it there rather than risk the water damage.
  • Alternatively, they just want the bridge control to make sure Tobias doesn't make any unscheduled visits. They may also want to know what he knows about the Bunker. Remember, they only know it's on the island somewhere, not where it is specifically or what condition it's in. They could find all this out themselves but it's just more convenient to track him down given they're super-hackers.
  • It may be less about needing the remote and more about not wanting anyone else to possess it, remember Aiden wasn't the only one who was tracking Frewer, if someone else captured him and took the remote, even if they didn't know they'd find Aiden they may have sought out the Bunker, which would've compromised Aiden's hideout.

• What kind of rock does Nickie live under where she doesn't know that her brother is the vigilante? In just about every news broadcast of him they have his name and a picture of him.
  • Wasn't she kidnapped for the majority of the game? I thought they didn't confirm Aiden's identity until sometime during ACT III.
  • Up until act 3 nobody knows who Pierce is, by which point she's been kidnapped. Prior to that there were no images released of him, so no way for her to put two and two together.
  • Seems to be tied to the percentage of the game completed. When tackling all side missions first, it is possible for Aiden Pierce being known to be the vigilante as early as the tail end of ACT I, just post prison mission..
    • It stands to reason that Aiden wouldn't be well known during the prison mission, given that if he was well known as a vigilante then, even with the hack relabeling him as John Smith, chances are they would've identified him as Aiden Pearce, for that matter the whole point of the Prison Mission and the missions building up to that is that Aiden is trying to silence a witness who could ID him, which would suggest his ID wasn't public knowledge at the time, which would confirm that at the time the Nicky was kidnapped at most he was rumoured, as for Damien exposing Aiden's activities, that's halfway through Act 4.

• So, The Final Battle: You and Damien face off, Jordi shows up with the Face–Heel Turn, you pitch him over the railing and finally end Damien, then you look over the railing, no Jordi. 2 questions: What, exactly was Jordi's new contract? If it was to kill Aiden, why not hang out at the bottom of the ladder and cap Aiden when he comes down? Second question: How did he live? I went back out to the lighthouse and made the jump off that railing.....it didn't end well.
  • He landed one level below. That's a plainly survivable drop. The contract was likely to keep the other person present alive. Well, that falls through. So, contract terminated. However, they still have an outstanding contract with Aiden, so they make sure it gets wrapped up, and they get paid.
    • The contract wasn't to keep the other person present alive. If you lose the quick time event the hired gun shoots Aiden and tells the other guy "you're next." It seems likely that Blume contracted him. They have the money and persuasive power to do so.
  • He's a pragmatic guy, presumably he decided that he'd lost the advantage, without the element of surprise he would be more at risk facing Aiden 1-on-1 so he decided that surviving to take 12 other contracts was better than risking death for that 1 contract.

• The last mission: Why did Damien take over ctOS. What was his endgame? Also when Aiden was coming for him was he just expecting to die? Were there no traps at all at the lighthouse?
  • Damien's endgame with the ctOS was pretty much A God Am I. Just possessing access to it meant he could do anything he wanted from controlling the populace to enriching himself by billions. Damien, who was a hacker primarily for the sense of power it gave him, was so drunk on it he didn't have many plans other than to indulge himself for as long as possible.

• What the hell is a Fixer and why are there so many of them in Chicago?
  • A Fixer is a person who does odd jobs that are most likely illegal. For example say a drug dealer gets robbed, they can't call the police because they will get arrested. So they call a Fixer to get the money back, kill the robber, or some combination of the two. A Fixer might cover-up evidence a crime has been commited or help a person who has the money get out of a bad situation (involving either law enforcement or the mob). There are many in Chicago because of the city's large organized crime rings.

• This one is Bad Blood related. During Ghosts Defalt shows mannequins representing victims of the 2003 Blackout, hacking the Profiler to show them as murdered but also showing how they died. We've got someone who died from bleeding out from a home injury because they couldn't call 911. Ok. Elevator failure. Ok. Mugging, sure she might have died even if all the lights didn't go out, but I'll let that one go. Escape from suicide watch while the power was cut and killing himself. Ok. Traffic accident, sure. Electrocuted while working on the power grid as it went out, Ok. Heart failure, home fire. Ok. Ok. But how does a blackout cause a drowning and CO2 poisoning?
  • You got me on the drowning, but the CO2 poisoning could have been because someone's smoke detector didn't go off while they were sleeping.
  • In the real Northeast Blackout, which was the inspiration for the one in Watch Dogs, at least one person died from CO2 poisoning after turning on a generator in his home.
  • Maybe they couldn't see where they were going and walked off a pier?
  • A likely explanation for the drowning death might simply be that they were taking a bath or showering, the power went out, and since bathrooms often don't have windows, it would be pitch black without a light. In an effort to get out of the shower or tub in pitch darkness, they tripped or slipped, knocked themselves unconscious, and then drowned in the water.

• This one is sequel related: How the flying hell is T-Bone able to show up in a hugely populated city like San Fransisco? Wouldn't he and Aiden be on Blumes -and therefore the Templar's- most wanted lists? I can get it happening in Chicago. Cause T-Bone and Aiden know the city and all its hidey holes. But San Francisco?
  • Both of them don't have CTOS profiles, so they'd only be able to be identified through physical sight.
• Why did Damien use Aiden for his plan? There are thousands of Fixers that could have been hired, as well as hackers for hire who wouldn't care what Damien was up to as long as his checks were good, and with the technological knowhow people like Aiden and Damien have, stealing vast amounts of money is really not hard. So why bother risking getting Aiden involved at all? He kept questioning Damien's motives and, ultimately caused issues for him.
  • I'm guessing a combination of either A. He considered it personal with Aiden, perhaps felt Aiden's severing ties with him was a betrayal, and/or B. It's heavily implied that Aiden was exactly that kind of person until he had a change of heart after Lena's death, so Damien assumed Aiden would be more accommodating.
  • While recruiting Ray Kenney, he seems to admit that even Aiden is a next-level hacker, saying that the two of them could have done "amazing things together". It seems that Damien chooses Aiden specifically because Aiden is above and beyond just the average Fixer, and to a degree he's right—the only reason that he gets his goals done at all is because Aiden is able to do things like discover the Bunker, infiltrate Iraq's fortress, etc. Plus, Aiden repeatedly alludes to Damien's ego driving him—it's entirely possible that Damien chose Aiden as a matter of pride, since he views Aiden backing out of the Merlaut job as the reason he was crippled in the first place. Or perhaps he just figures that if he doesn't have Aiden on his side then eventually Aiden will show up against him, so it's better to keep him on a leash.
• Why are the upgrades in any of the trees but hacking locked until Open Your World? The hacking makes sense, it's a phone with better tools on it for hacking than the old one but this doesn't effect Aiden's driving, his gunplay or his technical crafting ability.
  • Likely Gameplay and Story Segregation, but you might be able to argue that some of the higher-level crafting such as the IEDs might require better ctOS access to make a bootleg bomb that can be triggered remotely, or something.
• Why are the Pawnee Militia attacking Blume in Bad Blood? In their appearance in the main game they are employed by Blume as security, why did they suddenly turn on them?
  • It's entirely possible Blume blamed the Militia for everything that happened in act 3 with Aiden and T-Bone, using it as an excuse to cease using them as security, perhaps in favor of Umeni-Zulu, which would naturally anger the Militia.
    • Alternatively, presuming that Aiden used lethal force for the majority of missions in act 3, it's possible that the Militia blamed their contract with Blume for the loss of so many men, and they were the ones to cut ties.
• In the mission where you finally infiltrate the Merlaut you hack into a camera and get to profile Lucky Quinn and Mayor Rushmore. Rushmore's profile is flagged as red, like enemies in restricted areas, specifically highlighting his ties to Lucky Quinn, why then is Quinn's own profile not flagged, appearing as white like an ordinary citizen, despite his profile listing him as "Reputed Chicago South Club Boss"?
• Does Damien not realize Aiden's working with T-Bone? In the final mission when he detects the virus hack he mentions that he'd assume Clara had been the one to come up with it if she wasn't dead, but he never mentions Ray Kenny, the genius hacker who was part of building the ctOS in the first place? I mean he knew that Aiden was seeking to align with Ray, did he assume Blume's fixer team succeed in finishing him off or something?
  • Ray isn't exactly someone who announces himself. He was more like a secret weapon.
• Why do the smartphones lying around to use as attracts get shut down by the blackouts? I mean the Blackout mass hack is one thing, but I observed this phenomenon after hacking a transformer. I understand the main infrastructure, they run their power through ctOS but the smartphones are powered by an internal battery.
  • The blackout hack doesn't just shut off power, it shuts off the ctOS network for a limited time. Since all of Aiden's hacks bounce through the ctOS network, if it's offline then he can't hack anything. Like if you unplug your router and try to go to a website, the site is still there, but you can't get to it because the middleman has been disrupted.