The Franchise
- Fake American: A good majority of the cast are Canadians playing Americans, which is only natural as the games are mostly handled by Ubisoft's Canadian offices. There are, however, a few Americans who actually play their respective nationalities, such as Jerod Haynes and Randall Charles Wilkerson, two real-life Chicago natives, as cousins "Iraq" and "Bedbug", respectively, and the American Ruffin Prentiss as Watch_Dogs 2's leading man, Marcus Holloway. Watch Dogs: Legion also has many British actors voice the populace of Britain, such as Pascal Langdale, who is ironically noteworthy for his role as an American.
Watch Dogs
- The Cameo: Aisha Tyler appears several times in the game as herself. As does Phil Brooks
- Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
- When several reviewers examined the motive for Aiden's Roaring Rampage of Revenge (namely, his niece Lena being killed by the villains), a few made jokes that the villains had a major idiotic moment by killing Lena (who had nothing to do with their crimes) instead of killing Aiden. This would be a fair criticism, if not for the fact that the villains WERE trying to kill Aiden, and Lena was unintentionally killed in the hit attempt. This is reinforced by the Hitman with a Heart being constantly wracked with guilt over killing an innocent girl when trying to kill Aiden (and at the end, begs for Aiden to kill him out of this guilt.), and how the Big Bad didn't even know the hit meant for Aiden had killed Lena instead.
- Anita Sarkeesian's main critique for the game was her view of the sexism, stating one mission literally treats women as nothing more than objects and how it is designed for male gamers to get off on
. The mission she was commenting on was the Human Trafficking Mission in which the game was showing off the horrors of this attitude. Check out the Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel pages to see how normal people reacted to it all. She also calls the location a "Strip Club", when anyone who has played this game knows that this place is anything but that. Completing the mission also opens a side quest to out all the bidders on the slave auction and eventually kill the head of the ring. Aiden even goes out of his way to set it up for the girls to be rescued by the police. It makes the claim the scene is played for Fanservice instead of Nightmare Fuel and a Moral Event Horizon for the Big Bad all the more baffling. - Glenn Beck claims this game teaches kids how to hack. If hacking is just holding a button for a few seconds hacking is extremely easy. Also, the game is M rating and cannot be sold to anyone under 17. He also seems to make a big spiel about how the game teaches the players to do evil things with technology that fall into technophobia, missing the point that the game is trying to show how people are too free with their personal information and need to be more careful with it. He also mispronounces Ubisoft.
- This Common Sense Media article tells you that you must seek revenge against people who killed members of your family. Only one member was killed, and it was at the beginning of the game.
- Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Five of them. There's even spreadsheets◊ dedicated to tracking what editions come with what bonuses, and what retailers offer what Pre-Order Bonus.
- Prop Recycling: Many of the weapons in this game are lifted straight from Far Cry 3.
- Screwed by the Network: The Wii U port was delayed due to Ubisoft moving the team developing it to help finish the main versions (PS3, Xbox 360 and PC) on time, and when it ended up releasing six months later in November, it was a Porting Disaster and didn't include any of the DLCs (they eventually added the bonus add-ons in the Nintendo eShop after some backlash) and was sold at full price. Upon release, Ubisoft would state that this was the last M rated game they would publish on the console.
- Technology Marches On: Because the AI's moves are not scripted, it's impossible to get three stars on some of the Survival Chess puzzles on more powerful PCs. The intended solutions intentionally take advantage of mistakes the AI is supposed to make based on its usually limited capacity to think ahead. On CPUs faster than the game was designed for, however, the AI's increased forethought means it doesn't make those mistakes, leading to it going Off the Rails and causing the intended solution to completely fall apart.note
- What Could Have Been:
- Early gameplay demos showed that the ctOS mobile app could be used in the main game to assist players with missions. This feature didn't make it to the final release; instead, the app was retooled into a competitive multiplayer mode where the console player races through a series of checkpoints under a time limit while the mobile player uses the app to activate hacks and deploy police in an effort to stop them.
- The E3 2012 demo has several graphical options that were locked deep in the PC version of the game, which was unlocked by a modder. While they do make the game look better, some people who have activated them have noticed the gameplay slows down a little.
- This game was originally developed as a sequel to Driver: San Francisco, Ubisoft repurposed it as an original IP due to losing faith in the franchise.
- As detailed in this mod, vehicular theft, especially when stolen from someone off the street, was meant to negatively affect the Reputation bar. This was probably removed to make managing the Karma Meter less of a headache, especially in a pinch.
- Word of God: David Theriault has indicated the Alternate Character Interpretation of Aiden as a subversion of the typical gamer power fantasy is accurate.
