Building an open-world game ain’t easy.
Without a strong foundation, everything can
quickly collapse. In the case of Watch Dogs
that foundation is the Disrupt engine, the
product of over four years of dedication and
tests and trials. In that time Ubisoft Montreal
has built an engine that’s both flexible and
efficient, while allowing for an astounding
level of detail and a seamlessly online
environment.
Senior Producer Dominic Guay breaks down
this awe-inspiring engine into three parts:
dynamism, impact on the city, and
connectivity. And because the Disrupt engine
was built specifically to power Watch Dogs,
we also uncovered a healthy helping of new
gameplay details to go along with all the
tantalizing tech talk.
Dynamism
The surface layer of the Disrupt engine is
focused on what Guay describes as
“dynamism,” or the simulation systems within
the game: “In our city we simulate the way
people drive cars. The electricity is simulated.
The water is simulated. The wind is simulated.
Everything reacts to everything. Making all
those systems talk to one another is where
you get branching reactions.”
Take the rain, for example. When the sky
starts to open up, civilians will pull out
umbrellas. The lights reflect off wet surfaces.
We can see the wind shifting the direction of
the rain and blowing debris around. Even
leaves and trash on the ground will begin to
appear damp and weighted down by moisture.
These small but significant details lend an
unparalleled level of immersion to Watch
Dogs.
Even the clothing comes to life in Watch
Dogs. It boggles the mind to think about just
how long was spent getting the simple act of
Aiden putting his hands in his pockets to look
just right. The wind pulling at a passerby’s
clothing will cause them to tighten their
jackets. “Everyone on the street should have
clothing simulation,” Guay says. “We want to
see it blow in the wind and move with them.”
These are merely the “details,” though.
Something major like a car crash will create a
widespread ripple effect. Civilians will get
caught up in a traffic jam and start honking
or even leave their cars to investigate. Others
will be injured in the wreck. Onlookers will
alert emergency response teams. It all
combines to offer an unprecedented amount
of realism in a videogame.
Impact
As important as those details are, a game isn’t
made with raindrops and dynamically
generated bullet holes alone. Also important
are the ways in which a player can affect the
entire city, primarily noticeable through its
residents. While there’s no simplistic back-
and-white morality system in Watch Dogs,
Aiden’s actions will trigger reactions from the
game’s NPCs. We got the breakdown from
Animation Director Colin Graham: “The
reputation system isn’t a good or evil meter.
It’s actually the perception people have of
your actions. It completely affects how the
city will react to you. If you run around just
taking everybody out and killing tons of
people, the citizens are going to think you’re
kind of a jerk and they’re going to call the
cops every time you do something wrong.
You’re going to get spotted by the media
more.”
In other words, should you choose to play the
game in a more openly violent fashion – gun
constantly in hand, killing indiscriminately in
front of civilians – the people of Chicago will
be more liable to turn on you. They will call
the police when they see you, and your face
will wind up on the news a lot more often.
“We think it’s much more empowering to the
player if he feels like he has made an impact
on the city,” Guay elaborates. “We want him
to make his own decisions instead of us
forcing decisions on him.”
Connectivity
In Watch Dogs, you can go from being
connected and online with other players to
being fully disconnected – without affecting
the world or changing the environment.
That’s no small feat, and this seamless
connectivity is another key pillar of the
Disrupt engine. “There’s no loading or
matchmaking or waiting for a game to start,”
Guay says. “That means that every single thing
in the game needed to be ready to be
synchronized with the network. Every aspect
of animation and physics and the AI needed
to work online with other players.”
But don’t worry about thousands of stalkers,
hackers and griefers ruining your day. When
you’re in your game, you won’t see other
players just running around wreaking havoc.
That would diminish the immersion Disrupt
works so hard to build. The only time another
player will actually enter your world is when
they accept a contract with your name on it.
From there they can creep through your city
streets, stalking you until they decide to
strike. They will appear to you as any other
Chicagoan, just like you would appear
nondescript to them should you invade their
game. There will never be two Aidens on the
screen.
Though the engine is built with this
connectivity in mind, it can be turned off for
players who prefer to explore unhindered by
any outside influences. The multiplayer will
also be unavailable during story missions, so
you don’t need to worry about hackers while
you’re in the middle of an important
moment.
Flexibility
We know not everyone will be rushing out to
buy the new PS4 or Xbox One right away and
that’s totally okay. Enter the “fourth pillar” of
Disrupt: The engine was built for next-gen,
but it’s flexible enough to allow owners of
current-gen systems to still get an amazing
experience. “We knew we would have next-
gen hardware coming out before we ship,”
Guay says. “But we started off knowing we
wanted to support PS3 and Xbox 360.” The
trick is in knowing how to scale things
appropriately for both console generations.
This allows designers to keep the overall
experience the same. “On current-gen
systems we may need to cut down the
number of people on the street a little, but
it’s still the same game. You don’t get the
same sense of the crowd, but it allows us to
scale certain bits and keep the same
experience.”
Graham illuminates the graphical differences:
“Players are going to know they aren’t getting
a bad experience if they play Watch Dogs for
the current gen, but the next gen is the real
HD experience. You can zoom in another
level. You can have better shaders, better
simulation on the wind or the water, more
particles, better atmospherics… Basically
anything you can get with more computing
power.”
So have no fear if you plan on playing Watch
Dogs on the PS3 or 360. There are no
trimmed-down mechanics to make you feel as
though you are missing out on the core
experience. Watch Dogs is truly a next-gen
game – not just in terms of offering cutting
edge graphical performance on the next
generation of consoles, but also when it
comes to the gameplay, the immersion and
the seamless online experience. And that’s
due in large part to a great foundation: the
Disrupt Engine.
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