WMG / Watch_Dogs

The game will be set in the Assassin's Creed universe.

The themes are similar (fighting against the conspiracy that runs the world behind the scenes), the UI aesthetics are similar, and they're both from Ubisoft. The use of modern technology to monitor and control people is something that the Templars have already done.

• Following this idea...
  • Can't believe I'm saying this, but it's confirmed.
  • No, it's not.
  • It actually is. There is an entire presentation one can find in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag over the ctOS project being advertised to Abstergo in the real world hacking section.
    • Potentially Jossed - One of the "Randomizer" videos you can uncover (its on one of the servers in the Bunker) shows a kid playing one of the Assassin's Creed games while his dad sits next to him trying to figure out why the bad guy is talking after he was killed ("Cause its his confession dad!" "That... doesn't make any sense..."). The kid then bemoans the fact that the dad is ruining the experience for him. May also double as a Take That against Assassin's Creed. Though I suppose with the technology at Abstergo's fingertips, they could be making Assassin's Creed games... but I don't see why they would.
    • You mean Assassin's Creed: Liberation? The game that is a video game in the AC universe.
    • Actually, in Watch_Dogs there is an Easter Egg where one of the targets is actually Olivier Garneau, the CEO of Abstergo Entertainment from Black Flag.
    • Game Theory has an episode on the subject that breaks it down very well.

Aidan is Erudito

He has the skill capable of getting into Abstergo's systems (and all this just from the demo, no less). You could say that the mobile players he calls on to help him are people he has convinced of Abstergo's grand conspiracy (and on a metafictual level, Erudito's messages are uncovered by us, the players, who are also the same people that help Aidan so it all neatly wraps together).

This is [insert series]: The Game

• Person of Interest
• Daemon

The ending involves Aiden putting Chicago, if not the world, back in to the Dark Ages by shutting down the ctOS

• Why the world? The ctOS is explicitly stated to affect cities in the US, not anywhere else.
  • Perhaps other countries adopt their own version of ctOS that are all linked to one another. Aiden shutting down the Chicago one would be a domino effect on the others.
  • Since the game has some pretty open ended missions, maybe the final mission will have a choice to shut down the ctOS? It may be tied into a multiple ending sort of thing.
  • Somewhat confirmed. Aiden has to shut down the ctOS temporarily to keep it out of Damien's hands, even if it makes him enemies with Ded Sec.

The game is a Genre Throwback to 1930's/40's Two-Fisted Tales pulp-novel vigilante stories

Aiden is a non-superpowered vigilante who relies on skill, weaponry and gimmicky gadgetry to fight crime. Additionally his outfit is a more modern version of the classic pulp-vigilante Coat, Hat, Mask. Basically, Aiden is The Shadow for the information age.

• Confirmed. He acts and generally plays like a pulp hero, right down to a tragic backstory causing him to go after criminals. He is essentially a modern pulp hero.

If there's a sequel, the story changes depending on your karma level

It's like playing Infamous 2 where people react to you if you were good or evil.

Aiden will become a, at best, Type IV/V Anti-Hero, if not an outright Villain Protagonist, by the end of the game.

His crusade will spiral out of control and pretty much anyone will become a target.

• Jossed, he only kills those directly responsible for his niece's death Marice's death is optional though, you can choose to either shoot him or walk away

Aiden will become an ally of the Assassins

The game is confirmed to take place in the same verse as the Assassins Creed game and the Templars are partnered with the company that owns Ct OS. Since Aiden already has access to it, opposes injustice, and has combat skills to match, I could easily see him becoming a friend to the assassins.

• Where is that confirmed?
  • Confirmed (Assassins Creed and watch_dogs in the same universe that is) here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw-XPazD3WM Blume Corporation sent a project presentation to Abstergo advertising the very same Ct OS system used in watch_dogs.
• Could be subverted in that while it's set in the same universe, the Assassin/Templar conflict may have little/nothing to do with the story.
  • It turns out that the Assassins put out a hit on Olivier Garneau of Abstergo Entertainment (although he's mislabeled as CEO instead of Chief Creative Officer) under the guise of "child abandonment", for Aiden Pearce to execute.
• Jossed. Neither bits from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag ever come up in-game.
  • However, Assassin's Creed does show up in-game, in game form. A randomizer video on one of the bunker servers shows a kid playing one of the AC games with his dad watching. Dad then proceeds to ruin the experience by questioning game elements.

The game is a BioShock alternate universe.

There's a man, a city, and a lighthouse.

Ubisoft's decision to try and canon weld Far Cry, Assassin's Creed and Watch_Dogs was a relatively late-game idea.

Considering how Assassin's Creed establishes that EVERY conflict is part of the whole Assassins vs Templar war, it seems kinda weird that Blume and the whole ctOS would be relatively unconnected with the whole war. Same with Vaas, since he can't exactly stand on either side of the war (he's chaotic evil, while the Templar's and Assassins are lawful evil and chaotic good respectively). Essentially, it seems Ubisoft just wanted to make it's own "universe" for the sake of having one no matter how disparate the individual games are from each other. I wouldn't exactly be surprised if The Crew or pretty much any non-Clancy/non-Rayman game hereafter has some reference to try and place it into the Ubiverse.

Clara didn't die.

Just like the mook from the opening of the game, Clara survived her injuries, and was transported to the hospital when the police responded to the firefight at the cemetery. Aiden doesn't know about it, because he was at that point laser-focused on getting red-hot revenge on Damien.

• Or she deliberately faked her own death, as in the recording right afterwards she mentions that she's "good at disappearing".

Aiden will be in an Enemy Mine situation with Blume in the sequel

Sure he's number one with a bullet to Blume, but they'll end up needing each other to face a more extreme Ded Sec. Of course, Aiden knows soon as they're taken care of, Blume's coming for him next.

Why Jordi is an Unperson in ctOS

He is most likely someone who's a high level executive for Blume or close enough to someone who could delete every last bit of info from him from the grid like he never existed.

Aiden accidentally activated Belwether when he set ctOS to profile crimes "before they happen."

He asks the system to find situations that lead to crimes, and this triggered Belwether to influence people into causing the crimes to happen; thus giving him what he told the system to find. Granted, this mostly influenced people who were on the brink.....

Blume is using technology derived from First Civilisation technology in ctOS

Specifically in Belwether, which is not only capable of influencing the entire population of Chicago without much difficulty (to somewhat creepier levels than just plain old subliminal messaging would), but is also hinted to be intelligent on some level in the audio logs. As watch_dogs and Assassin's Creed canonically share a universe (with mention of ctOS in ACIV and Abstergo Entertainment's CCO being a target in WD, and having disappeared while visiting Chicago during ACIV), it wouldn't be impossible.

• More specifically, it would almost certainly use an Apple of Eden, since this seems to be the Templars' ultimate goal as demonstrated at the climax of the very first Assassin's Creed. This probably means that the higher-ups in Blume (and Lucky Quinn, who was pulling their strings) are Templars, and maybe even T-Bone, as the lead designer of ctOS, is a former Templar or was at least privy to their secret, or figured it out on his own.
• This would also mean that the Assassins would almost certainly appear at some point, even if they aren't specifically named as such in-game.

Aiden has been Belwether'd

In Bad Blood Aiden's 3rd audio log has him literally talking about a banana bread recipe which seems frivolously out of character until you realize that Belwether can use anything as it's imprint. The entire recording could be confirmation that he's been targeted.

Jordi will hunt down Aiden's Family

He already notices this as his weak point early on in the game. And W_D was not subtle at foreshadowing. True Damien's actions could be the thing that Jordi's chat was foreshadowing, but maybe in the back of his head he, like Aiden knew that they could easily be at odds and was or considered planning something.

If there's a sequel, it will be set in St. Louis

In Bad Blood, it's mentioned during the Fox Hunt investigation that Aiden is now in St. Louis, presumably to further protect Nicky and Jacks—whether they like it or not—and is still a wanted man in Chicago. With ctOS systems being introduced elsewhere in the world, St. Louis—being a major city—will be getting one of its own, and Aiden will start using it to fight Blume in Missouri as well.

• Sequel confirmed and it's set in San Francisco.

Aiden will make a cameo in Assassin's Creed (2016)

We know AC 2016 is set as a side-story to the Assassin's Creed universe, and W_D is canon to said universe. Henceforth, Aiden would likely make a cameo. Potentially, he could be mentioned by the Assassins or Templars as having killed the Abstergo CEO (Which he did) or could also potentially be seen in some form of montage, or, most likely IMO, would hack the Animus at some point, possibly working in conjunction with Erudito.

Alternatuvely, Aiden and Ded Sec will be forced to ally against Blume.

It would make a touch more sense, seeing as Ded Sec appears to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist group, while Blume is simply a corrupt MegaCorp.

Blume will try to take over Abstergo through hacking... and fail epically.

With all the intel their AI has collected on organizations across the world, it won't take too long before Blume's analysts do the calculus and realize that Abstergo has controlling shares in the world itself, what with all their wacky (and effective) attempts to plant moles and structural loopholes in every major government. Blume has already given presentations about their opinion-controlling technology to Abstergo; they could sell their mainframe to the Templars and then use the very backdoors that Dedsec has been installing into their mainframe to hack Abstergo's databases for the keys to the kingdoms... at which point they'll meet Juno.

Watch_Dogs takes place in an Alternate History timeline where strong encryption was never legalized for civilian use.

See here. It sure would make the game's ease of hacking a lot more plausible, scarily so, in fact. Security is bad because the government mandates backdoors for authorities to break. That doesn't stop others in the know from abusing those same intentional flaws, however.

The Default in Bad Blood isn't the Real Default.

It is an established fact now that Default used decoys in the course of his work, it's implied that the guy we chase (and potentially kill) is one, suggesting some might be Hackers for hire. In addition Default's identity is a secret, so really it would be very easy for one of the relatives of the victims of the 03 blackout merely appropriated Default's Identity and approached Blume to offer his services in hunting Ray Kenny, given that he was working for free and hunting their priority target they probably didn't care if he was the real deal or not. As for the sequel saying Default's been off grid for some time it's possible that, if neither Default that died were the real deal, that the real one went to ground when he realized that people like Aiden and Ray had begun targeting him, as they are willing to engage with violence in the real world, not just the digital one, unlike him (We see, presumably, the real one hiding under his table at the club). It's entirely possible that he merely assumed a new handle.

Blume and Abstergo are both Templar Fronts

Throughout the Assassin's Creed franchise we've seen the Templars try to control as much as they can. It does not seem out of the box to consider the idea that Blume and possibly other companies are all owned by, or at least have high level members who are also members of, the Templars. Particularly if you compare CTOS and Bellwether to the Observatry from Black Flag and the Apples.

{[WMG: The third Bad Blood Aiden audio log is a deliberate Red Herring on Aiden's part.]]It has been widely discussed that the 3rd audio log Ray can find from Aiden implies that he has gone completely insane. Theories go from simply snapping to being hit by Bellwether. However what if it is something a lot less complex. Aiden is a POI for Blume, he has fixers after him, so it is entirely possible that he left the audio logs for them. Think about it for a moment; if you were hunting him and found that audio log the obvious conclusion is that he's gone insane. From there you have 2 possible lines of thought, the first is that since he's lost it he's no longer a threat, the alternate option is he's on completely Ax-Crazy, so most Fixers will be afraid to confront him. Therefore it is possible some of the heat will be off him. To back this up is that he doesn't seem that much more unhinged in his cameo in the sequel, so either he hadn't gone crazy or he got better.