What did ubisoft do wrong with Watch dogs?
I'm going to put this under a cut because major spoilers
to begin Aiden Pearce was hardly a likable protagonist. he manhandled Clara repeatedly, he treated Jordi like garbage & then acted like it was some bullshit betrayal when the man decided to work against him in the end, & (the real kicker, imo) he blamed fucking EVERYONE around him for something that was HIS OWN FAULT. Aiden was involved in crime, Aiden chose to hack the people he did, Aiden made his choices full well knowing there could be dangerous consequences, & then took no responsibility & ruined several people's lives in some fucked up misdirected sense of revenge instead of owning up for even a single second & saying "yeah, this happened because I made shitty choices."
Clara was an information broker, she was hired to obtain information on a man she'd never met before, a man who had crossed the wrong people in his own criminal activities, she did her job, then somewhere along the line decided in her deeper digging that maybe that particular subject deserved a bit of sympathy & decided to help him. yeah, maybe she shouldn't have kept her role in his niece's death hidden, but in all honesty I don't blame her, I wouldn't have told him either, & she's not the one who pulled the fucking trigger. she's not the one who told Aiden to get involved with the whole affair in the first place. she simply did her job & gave a name. & when Aiden finds out he fucking shoves her across the room & into the wall of systems in an impressive display of what would have been considered domestic abuse in any other situation. not to mention Aiden spends the entire game saying "I shouldn't drag her into this I'll only end up getting her killed" & then... ends up... getting her killed??? am I supposed to feel sorry for him?? he could have stopped it??? multiple times multiple ways??? fuck it.
now, Clara was one of three somewhat significant female characters in the series. her unfair plot-forwarding treatment, & Aiden's wet cardboard personality aside, the second female (his sister) spent the majority of the game kidnapped, & the third (Poppy) was also set up for a potentially awesome story arc & then just sort of... dropped. Poppy was trapped in a sex slave trade situation (which was also handled piss poorly. tbh, it feels like this game was trying to be The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but said "hey Lisbeth isn't actually that important, let's focus more on Mikael & maybe give him some anger issues") Aiden made this big deal about Poppy's situation, said several times he wanted to help her, she seemed like she had a pretty significant role to play. & then we just kind of left her at the auction & LITERALLY NEVER SAW HER AGAIN??? they set up this potentially interesting character & story & then it just... ENDED???
Dedsec contacts you at the end of the game & asks you to let them get in the system before you reboot it. instead of giving you a choice or making it seem like there's any sort of weight to the decision (after having built Dedsec up as this interesting shadow idea the whole game & once again going nowhere with the entire thing, much like Poppy) Aiden abruptly says no & that's the last you hear from them. now people argue that this could be setting up for a sequel, but even so it could have been handled better & tbh I can't say I expect a lot of people to be all that interested in a sequel after the disappointing flood of this first game.
every character in this game was infinitely more interesting than Aiden, which fine, that's my opinion, some people liked him, I didn't, but literally every character was screwed over for his bullshit refusal-to-own-up-to-his-own-mistakes manpain. & then he gives this fucking speech at the end that just makes me want to barf all over everything because oh I'm Aiden, the valiant pained hero screwed over by bad people but it's fine because I'm here to protect the city regardless gimme a fucking break.