“Watchdogs” Character Trailer Analysis: Friends, Enemies, and Everybody Else
Jo Wylie ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Editor
In a city of 300,000 people, you’d be surprised how few you can trust…
The Watchdogs character trailer is here. With the game due to release later this month, excitement is ramping up for this heavily anticipated new game.
Only a week after Ubisoft released their Season Pass trailer, they sent out a new video – a character introduction to some of the characters around Aiden as we play the game. “Some are friends, some are enemies; sometimes, you won’t ever know.” Aiden warns in the voiceover as we get our opening shots of the team. It looks like all allegiances could shift depending on the moral choices you make in-game; it’s doubtful the gang kingpin, for example, will be too fond of a vigilante Aiden.
The first character we meet is Clara Lille, a 28-year-old tattoo artist, who apparently moonlights as the best hacker Aiden knows. He describes her as a “dangerous wildcard”, and her hacked information reveals she’s a member of DedSec, a famous hacking collective in Watchdogs’ world. French-Canadian, seductive and dangerous, we already know Clara is the person who gives Aiden his iconic smartphone, and her snatches of dialogue in this trailer show that she could sometimes be an information source for Aiden during story missions. Her parting words are a snappy judgment of the main character, who is apparently “not used to being a team.”
Aiden describes the next character, T-Bone Grady, as a genius – but quickly warns that he still plays with fire. We already know Grady as a playable character in the season pass, the trailer for which starts with T-Bone shouting, “I blow shit up. ‘Cause I ‘aint no hippy!!” He and Aiden seem pretty solid friends – they have to be, for an entire single-player campaign so T-Bone can fit into the narrative. A laid back, if slightly deranged drunkard, T-Bone certainly seems like he’s going to be a whole lot of fun, both to play and interact with.
The third introduction comes in the form of Jordi Chin, “A fixer whose morals change with the price.” Chin was the face that popped up when Aiden talked about people who you wont ever know if they’re you’re friend or enemy. He seems pretty amicable in this trailer, however, a joking disposition and a certain amount of excitement about whatever crazy plan Aiden is hatching now. He also gives Aiden some gear – “It’s a sticky bomb. It sticks.” Perhaps this hints to Jordi being one of the suppliers for gear, upgrades, or other such during the course of the game.
Finally, Aiden introduces two characters – Anthony Wade, nicknamed Iraq, an ex-soldier who “applies military strategy to gang warfare,” and his apparent boss, Dermot “Lucky” Quinn, a man who apparently rules Chicago’s crime world. Wade was the face on the screen when Aiden spoke about enemies, and they seem to have a few guns pointed at each other during his introduction, but Aiden is also seen approaching Quinn with a smile on his face. Maybe these are part of the world that changes its opinion of Aiden depending on the moral choices he’s making. There are a lot of ways to piss of a crime lord, after all.
Ending the trailer with his thoughts on who you can trust on such a big city, Aiden and the team can be seen in a quick fire collection of shots – notably, a charged shot of T-Bone and Lille where Lille is being held at gunpoint by a shadowy figure. There are also shots of the ctOS and DedSec logos, a bloody-knuckled Aiden and lots and lots of explosions.
With less than a month until release, which character are you most excited to meet in-game?
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