How Aiden Pearce Became the Narrative Undoing of Watch Dogs

Is Aiden Pearce the worst protagonist in video game history? Probably not, but the character suffers from Watch Dogs' inability to create any sort of genuine empathy for him. How did this happen and how have other games been able to get around this particular issue?

[christian hour]

TLOU spoilers hidden within. Ordinarily I would say if you haven't played it yet, tough luck, but considering the remastered version just hit and a lot of people have to wait until friday to play, I felt its only fair to give people a heads up as it's not apparent goign in to this article that there would be TLOU spoilers.

Agreed, I did not care about Aiden or his story one bit, his whacky asian friend cleaner guy seemed way more interesting than him and he was just as 2 dimensional if not even more so. It is probably the main reason I can't go back and play Watch_Dogs, Aidens just so boring and vanilla and is it just me or did it feel like the city wasn't really designed around the game mechanics?

[henrythomas284]

Aiden Pearce was as bland as they come.

[ThanatosDMC]

Yeah, it's funny how he mourns death and act like killing dbags is justice and you go around murdering everybody on sight and stealing their livelihood.

[Spinal]

Completely bland i cant play that game anymore.

He has no character no personality nothing.

[TheoreticalParticle]

He has a personality, it's just stupid.

The writing for the game is TERRIBLE. Every single verbal confrontation with someone results in a conversation that sounds like two people talking past each other. When Aiden has a conversation with Jordi, Jordi just ignores him, because that's Jordi. He's just going to do what he feels like. It makes sense for one character to be like that.

Every single other character when talking to each other, pays no attention to with the other party is saying and just rambles on with the speech that tells them what they want.

Why does Aiden care so much about his sister's family? No explanation. Where's his sister's husband? Never covered. It honestly feels like that character is supposed to be Aiden's estranged wife, and at some point some higher up went, "Nah, that's too cliche. Just make her his sister." And now it seems like, at some point in the game, Aiden's gonna fuck his sister.

Then there's the side missions. If you complete them, you get a bunch of information...information which is completely absent when you run into events in the game that should reference them. Which is, once again, shitty writing.

I love when Aiden talks about some dudes who mutilate people, or steal their organs.

Objective: Don't Kill.

WTF?

This game's just got its head up its own ass and is just so wildly inconsistent in tone and character. Fire the writers, get rid of Pearce, and wipe the slate clean.

[ZombieDust]

I am definitely guilty of getting hyped for games. And I havedefinitely been disappointed in the past, but still find something to like and at least be able to beat those games. Watch Dogs was not one of those games, looked great and Im from Chicago so the setting was cool to me, but no matter how many seperate times and no matter how hardI tried I couldnt find anyway to keep playing this game. It was bland in every way. Well the shooting wad actually good.

Excuse my spelling errors and such, on my phone.

[skydragoonity]

Titanfall was even worth the hype compared to this game

[DevilOgreFish]

I didn't find him too bad. kinda reminded me of max payne a little. he does have too strong of a raspy voice though.

[christian hour]

He has nowhere near the amount of complexity as max payne, the only similarities is they both have penises and shoot guns. The writing in the original max payne was pure homage to the noir genre. Watch_Dogs is an homage to the badly written cliche genre, if such a thing exists (and sadly I think it does D: )

[DevilOgreFish]

I did not say he's copy of max payen, i said he reminds of him, kinda. of course max's life was way worse and has a bigger narrative spanning across 3 games.

Besides that, Aiden actually looks more like Alan wake now that i think of it. same 5 o'clock stubble and wrinkled dress code.

[christian hour]

;o; Aiden Wake! You just blew my mind DevilOgreFlesh, bubs+ for you :)

[uth11]

Aiden has no moral high ground whatsoever. So the idea that I as the player have to bring justice to these 'terrible people' seems funny when I'm just as bad as they are, if not worse.

[Number-Nine]

what's worse is that he thinks he has morals. nothing more than a self righteous punk.

this is nothing new from the team that brought us Brody from Far Cry 3, and the Prince in Prince of Persia (2008).

[wls1012]

if you could have climbed like the assassins the game would have been so much better IMO.

[Baka-akaB]

"Is Aiden Pearce the worst protagonist in video game history? Probably not"

To me he easily is , at least one of the worsts . Guy makes you regret the "colourful" Desmond of all things

[My_Name_BTW_Is_Dante]

He was a good protagonist and luckily the game wrapped up his story. Now they can create a new story with a different character. I wouldn't want a sequel with Aiden again because they would likely just milk it and completely ruin his character.

[JohnS1313]

People sure love to attack Watch Dogs. It's a great game. Maybe the story isn't as good as other games but that doesn't stop you from playing it. There's a lot to do in the game.

[Sketchy_Galore]

Aiden Pearce and indeed Watch dogs as a whole is just the perfect example of everything wrong with the gaming industry these days. His character felt completely assembled by market research results, by spreadsheets and pie charts, as did the whole game really, without any kind of human imagination or soul behind it. Like they tried to include every element their research showed would make for a good game but didn't give any thought as to how it would all work together overall.

It's like every now and then you see scientists come up with a model of the most attractive human male/female based on years of surveys and tests. The mockup of this supposedly beautiful person always looks so bland and uninteresting, because you can't reduce what excites us entirely to test results and market research, not yet anyway. Rather than using market research to try and please everybody they should've hired a director with a creative vision to create the work that excited him personally. This would've made for a game that didn't interest some people but thrilled others (those that share the tastes of the creator) rather than a game that everyone knew they should technically be enjoying more than they actually were.

[skoorydook]

Wouldn't say he is the worst but he is duller than dish water

[memots]

How whinny overhyping entitled gamer Became the complete Undoing of Watch Dogs

[Naga]

Wow. I feel like one the only person on here who found Aiden's obsessive descent down the path of revenge to be compelling.

Viewing the story through that lens, his character is actually pretty damn interesting. SPOILERS: If not for his initial greed, he would not have been in the Merlaut to begin with. If not for his obsession with revenge, he would not have estranged himself from his family and society. He also would not have rejected Damien's initial overtures and his sister never would have been kidnapped. Nearly everything that goes wrong for Aiden can be traced back to his lust for revenge (which wasn't terrible unnatural). And in that way, I found it to served as a fairly poignant commentary on the pitfalls of that lifestyle.

Yet all the while, he struggled to "make things right", only digging himself deeper into a hole which he did or didn't finally escape in the end depending in that final choice.

I don't know, guys. Aiden is an imperfect, conflicted character who seemed very, very human to me. I know I'm in the minority here, but I loved every minute of that.

[aliengmr]

I think Aiden was probably the least of the problems with the narrative. It was disjointed in places, the characters were pretty much all garbage save for one or two, and really, the entire plot was just a bloated first act.

Overall it was just messy and not well thought out.