My son started playing Watch Dogs Legion and is loving it. That made me super anxious to get into it too, but I promised myself I would finish Watch Dogs 2 first.
To speed things up, I put any VR or Switch games on pause to finish up. This time around, I’ll summarize days worth of playing to finally finish up the game. It was a great game, so it took longer to finish as I tried to enjoy it and not rush it too much.
Breaking in on Invite
After finding out that someone scammed DedSec with fake followers, it was time to find out who by breaking into Invite (I think that’s the Watch Dogs 2 version of Linkedin/or Facebook). Considering how I’m not a fan of social media, I was looking forward to breaking in there.
I blew up one of the guards by hacking his grenades to distract all other guards to that side of the building. It’s a technic I use a lot since I don’t invest in many of the firearms perks and opt for hacking. That allowed me to easily hack into the building and then use the security system to unlock the elevator to the CEO’s office.
I was able to get to her office to find out who boosted our numbers, but instead I got a warning that Marcus was now a wanted fugitive. That is when the man bun douche (his name is actually Dusan) showed up to let me know he scammed us and placed the APB on Marcus. Man buns are dumb and it made this villain even worse.
That douche had the cops waiting for me downstairs at the main entrance, but the joke was on them. I zapped one of them to distract and escaped out the back. It’s great being able to hack and distract to avoid gunplay when you want.
The Watch Dogs 2 Version of Burning Man
After getting owned by the man bun guy, the crew was pretty depressed and I couldn’t wait for when I would get revenge on him (did I mention I hate man buns?). To unwind, the crew ended up at a festival that looked a lot like a Watch Dogs 2 themed burning man. They called it Swelter Skelter.
There were some people to talk to and displays to interact with, but I was more interested with seeing all the sights and getting on with the mission. There were some pretty cool displays, but I was glad it wasn’t huge and got to talking with each member of the crew to rally them up for a hacker competition.
We ended up having to solving a network bypass (pipe puzzle) minigame to win the hacker competition. It was pretty cool to see the giant iron sculpture breathing fire when we won. The other half of our rewards was to meet the creator, Raymond Kenny aka T-Bone from the original Watch Dogs game. It’s been a long time, but I recognized him right away.
Hacking Nudle’s Server Farm
T-Bone let us know that Nudle (think Watch Dogs 2 version of Google) search data was being used by big bad Blume, so naturally we were going to hack them. Problem is we needed to get into the server farm. Lucky for us, Horatio worked there for his 9 to 5 and he had a plan.
It was a fun setup to get into Nudle, stealing one of their employee buses and using it to pick people up at bus stops. I usually don’t like those types of tedious missions, but it was pretty quick and relevant to the whole setup of the mission. I did have a little accident where I hit a cop and had to hack some street traps to get away before carrying on.
The campus was pretty close to the videos I’ve seen of Google’s HQ. It was pretty well setup, so I spent some time walking around to appreciate the hard work of the developers and artists.
During my little tour, I found the keys or nodes I had to hack. It would take a combination of distracting guards, using hacked cameras and the jumper drone to jack into the network boxes. Although the combination is familiar, there is enough variety to keep things fun at this point AND it was fun watching the chaos I created in a Google look alike location.
After a few close calls of guards searching for me and kicking my drone, I used the elevator to hack my way to the server farm. My favorite part of this mission was having to look in on Horatio in his meeting. He was meeting with supervisor who was a prick and accusing him of hacking (I was like duh he’s part of DedSec, but looking forward to getting even with his boss).
I had a surveillance camera view of their meeting and got to hack around the room to setup distractions for the boss. These parts of the game are a lot of fun and different from many other games. Once his boss was out of the way, we communicated the floor and code for the server room through the camera.
Once in the server room, it was a fun combination of network bypass puzzles and checking servers to find the data we wanted to download. I like these little breaks from having to run from guards and sneaking around.
We did get to check back in with Horatio where he was meeting with HR and his boss. It was revenge time because we moved the hacking evidence from Horatio’s account over to his boss. That put a smile on my face to see that prick have the tables turned on him.
Watch Dogs 2 DedSec Gets Hacked
After I had escaped the Watch Dogs 2 Nudle campus, a cutscene let me know that trouble was on the way with Man Bun guy meeting with the leader of Prime_Eight, Lenni. He was paying her for info on DedSec. The two groups were rivals, so I knew this mean I would be taking her down next.
It didn’t take long before the crew realized something was really wrong. My screen had bitmap style cats and poops running across. We had been hacked. Lenni confirmed her group was behind the hack. It locked up our data. She was not great to look at and her voice was even more annoying. Revenge would be even sweeter.
The crew was pretty pissed about the hack, especially Josh, but the first order of business was to confront Lenni. This part of the mission takes you to a nice neon and graffit bar where Lenni was getting a tattoo of a skull on her face that you can only see in black light (it was pretty cool, but she definitely was not).
Marcus asked nicely, but she was super cocky and dismissive, which amped up the amount of fun to be had taking her down. I also noticed she had a body mod with some electronic implanted under her skin on her forearm. I guess piercings and tattoos were not enough.
Our Dedsec crew found a biker bar where there were hacked ATM machines that Lenni provided to the biker gang, Son’s of Ragnarok. The goal was to destroy them to put Lenni’s Prime_Eight group in a bind with them.
The biker bar looked pretty good with the neon lights. I’m not a fan of the loud annoying Harley style motorcycles, but I had my fun hacking the motorcycles to crash into things and stir up the gang. With ability hack arrest warrant records already unlocked, I used it to call the cops on the gang.
After kicking this hornets nest, I used hacks to blow things up and drive the cars around the bar. These distractions allowed me find and destroy the ATMs with all hell breaking loose around me. Lenni was not pleased with all the money she would lose due to my action, so I was happy.
After Lenni’s meltdown, we learned Prime_Eight had a bunker where the decryption key to unlock our servers would likely be. Marcus attempted to hack Lenni’s body mod to get the location, but of course she caught him and scolded him for thinking she was that stupid. The joke was on her though, because Wrench was using a device to hack from a rooftop using line of sight.
The bunker was fun. There were some easy guards to dispose of outside, then a network bypass puzzle inside, except there was a time limit attached to bombs. Lenni wanted to blow me up instead of letting me hack her stuff, but I managed to beat the timer and stop the countdown. At this point, we owned Lenni and we took over the bunker. Her whining was icing on the cake.
Sneaking into the FBI Building
While at a diner celebrating out victory, photos of people surveilling us were sent to us. I had a fun time sneaking up on the people following us to hack their truck in order to find out who they were. It was the FBI, so everyone freaked out and it led to a nice game of Watch Dogs 2 cat and mouse.
They tried to find me while I transferred the data and I had to distract them. It was one of those proximity type missions, so it was a bit stressful watching the progress bar reach the end while they searched. They actually found me right after it hit 100%, so I was lucky enough to have a boat near by for a nice water escape.
After a little meeting with Wrench, the next mission was to meet with Miranda on the down low. We wanted to find out what she knows through her government contacts. This required me to find a ride and basically pose as her Uber driver.
It was a simple drive from point A to B thing, but I love how Watch Dogs 2 dresses up these simple mechanics into a part of the story. During our ride, she let me know that basically the FBI doesn’t like the hacking competition and that’s why we were targets. In order to get access to the FBI building, we had to use a pay phone old school spy style to get the code (similar to phone phreaking).
The building was near by, but I was not looking forward to the amount of sneaking I was likely to have to do. What’s funny is I heard gun shots right as I was about to enter the building and saw a trucker shooting at a pedestrian. I still don’t know what that was about, but it did help distract people in the building for me.
On the FBI floor, I didn’t have to do too much sneaking to get up to the antenna they wanted me to hack. Not a huge fan of the stress of sneaking, but it is nice that you don’t fail when found out. You just have to deal with all hell breaking loose. It was my luck this time that the hardest part was hacking the antenna puzzle.
That’s where the good news would end since I had to sneak my way into the server room with guards constantly patrolling. I did end up getting caught about half way through knocking out and trapping guards, but the system shutdown hack I had came in handy. It’s much easier to escape from guards with the light going out.
Past that little snag, I did get the server info and the developers were nice enough to put a trap there for me to activate to prevent anyone walking in on me, much appreciated. It was going to be waiting game for the download to complete.
The FBI didn’t like me hacking their stuff, so they came looking for me in force and again I used system shutdown to avoid them. With light’s out, it was easy to run out of the building. My motorcycle made escaping easy and the play was to work with wrench to triangulate the FBI hideout using other antennas.
Wrench Unmasked
With the FBI antenna hacked, Wrench was working on a 2nd and I was working on a 3rd. Wrench was taken by the FBI right before I was to take care of my antenna. Another rescue attempt was going to be needed, but it was at least easy to hack that antenna.
The crew did track down the feed to Wrench’s interogation. It gave me a look at the FBI’s questioning of Wrench and I noticed they removed his mask. He had a birthmark (or burn mark) over his eye which gave me insight into why he wears that crazy mask.
Mr Man bun came into the room and offered Wrench a deal to work together with him. He made it obvious to the FBI guys that he was in control and released Wrench. He wanted him to offer the deal to the rest of us. He did not let him go with the mask though. I knew after rejecting that deal, we would be stealing that mask back.
The FBI hideout was packed with agents and a few snipers. It took me a bit to find the path I wanted to take, but once I did, it was fairly quick. The quad copter drone is always great for scouting the area. I then set some explosions to distract guards, steal key data and allow my jumper drone inside.
The Watch Dogs 2 jumper offers lower risk for cases of where you need to grab something or interact with a server. It easily snuck by guards to snag the mask and attach the USB device to download the FBI data. It was great to be able to automatically call back the jumper without having to manually navigate all the way back. The best part, though, is that it lets me keep enough distance to make an easy getaway before guards can even start pursuing.
In the end, I made an easy getaway and just needed to give the mask back to Wrench. He put that thing on right away to hide that birthmark. It makes more sense why his character is the way it is.
Revenge for Horatio
Our boy Horatio was taken by a gang which I’m sure was paid for by Mr. Man Bun. We caught a security came feed of him getting jumped and thrown into a van. Time for a rescue, except he was too far gone when we found him. We hacked a device that showed how they brutally beat him to death.
Revenge was in order, so we needed to get some info on the gangs operations. This required me to hack a server in their hideout full of gang bangers and dogs. Lucky for me, I had the hack to call cops on people, so I got to watch cops go to war with the gang members.
The dogs did get my scent, so I had to use my stun gun on a few before I finally was able to hack the server. The last step was to burn up their pot plants, but they were too busy with the cops to notice. The chaos made it so much easier to get in and out with the data.
The Watch Dogs 2 revenge tour was just getting started with our sights set on destroying the gangs cocaine shipment. That was located on a container ship I was able to easily scout with the quadcopter drone. I made sure to use my cop hack to send a squad there to take out the snipers while I snuck on the boat.
There was a car I hacked to drive from a container into 1 of the pallets of cocaine, the cops took out another in the crossfire and I used my Ctrl Alt Delete rocket launcher to take out the last 2. They sent a bunch of reinforcements, but I easily swam away from them since they were so dumb.
The stunt with the cocaine brought out the gang members responsible for Horatio’s death like cockroaches. They were all to meet in an apartment complex filled with possible traps. It all started with me calling cops to the scene. I blew up one of the gang members, the cops took out another and the last I had to introduce to my grenade launcher. I did attempt to hack a car to hit one of them, but I missed.
Our last gang member to take out was attending dog fights, so I knew I would have no issue taking out pretty much anyone in that building. They deserved it. It was fairly easy to get into the building by calling the cops on gang members outside.
Once inside the dog fighting arena, I took every opportunity I could to release dogs to attack gang members. They would fight back, so I hacked them to incapacitate the gang bangers. This gave the dogs a better chance to maul them. All that commotion brought out Pablo the Skinner, so he could meet my grenade launcher. It took two shots, but I blew him up. Revenge for Horatio was complete and the crew had a drink in his honor.
Hacking the Watch Dogs 2 World
It was time to have some fun again after the more serious revenge mission. I met with T-bone to watch a rocket launch. He wanted me to hack a satellite before the next launch, so we could get into Blume’s network. First, he made me drop him off at hacker space before I would make my way to the Galilei building (basically Watch Dogs 2’s version of Space X).
It was easy to hack my way inside once I reached the building. I had to use the cop hack to help clear my path to the room where the satellite was. There the jumper was very useful for unlocking doors I needed. I had unlocked the double jump and sprint abilities for the jumper to make it even easier to use.
There was even a crane holding a container above the huge room that allowed me to physically rise above everyone. I was able to make my way to where I would hack the motherboard. It helped me skip so much of the frustrating sneaking. It also made it easy to take the hacked motherboard to the satellite which was on the top floor.
With the hacked motherboard installed, escaping was simply with most guards already arrested by my police hack. Moving onto the next mission required waiting for the next launch. Lucky for me, there was a hacking invasion (real life player invading my game), so I spent some time chasing them down and it was just enough time for the rocket launch mission to be available.
The whole crew cheered on the rocket launch, knowing our hacked motherboard was on there. It then allowed a hack to show a camera from the satellite from space. This allowed us to hack the other satellites.
I found Dublin’s Blume Office was open for us to hack and it takes you to security cam feeds of the office. Hacking the key there opened up the ability to hack Dubai. The server farm hack in Dubai opened up a Seoul power plant for us. That Seoul power plant required hacking workstations in a puzzle fashion to shutdown the power grid in order to bring down the firewall. That opened up the main prize, Delaware.
The main server farm there was so huge, it required hacking maintenance drones there to travel around the rows and rows of servers. After semi-elaborate network bypass puzzle, it ended with our group getting Blume’s data and Marcus leaving the lights on the servers on in the shape of DedSec skulls. It was a very unique and fun Watch Dogs 2 mission with us literally hacking around the world.
Robot Wars
T-Bone got an idea to use Wrench’s stolen Haum 2.0 Robot as an EMP bomb to get into Tidis HQ’s prototype section. Wrench’s unhealthy attachment to electronics is a central them, so it took a lot of convincing for him to go along with it. The robot is even called Wrench Jr..
Wrench went with me to the Tidis repair depot to get EMP parts. It was the standard mission that required the usual distract, jumper drone and escape routine. Yes it is routine at this point in the game, but still managed to be fun. The only non-routine part was waiting for Wrench place the robot in the pickup area and then Marcus installed the EMP.
The next parts were probably my favorite missions of the game. It required me to go to Tidis HQ in order to remotely control the Wrench Jr. robot that is now inside the repair section of the building. The robot started up with funny noises and the fun sound effects continued through out the mission.
I had to navigate through a conveyor belt puzzle of switches, lifts and gates with the robot. It kept up the funny one liners at each section and it was almost sad when the EMP blast had to be initiated in the Tidis server room to destroy all the electronics.
With the EMP bomb set off, the security system in Tidis reset itself. That allowed me to get inside to use my routine of distraction and jumper drone to get to the server room to download the project files. Those hacked project files uncovered a private lift to the prototypes level, but I had to physically sneak my way over for that.
Once I took the secret CEO office elevator downstairs to the prototype bunker, a quick hacking puzzle allowed me to view 3 different prototype projects. There were robot spider legs crushing a car, guns attached to a standard robot and ballistic armor on another robot. It was basically Skynet stuff. I liked the bunker atmosphere, but the best was yet to come.
After hacking my way through the huge blast doors, a giant robot spider was standing watch over the room. I was a bit scared I would have to fight that thing, but instead I got to take control of it!
It had everything from the other prototype demonstrations. The legs could crush cars, it had 2 guns mounted, there was armor plating, it could walk up walls, there was an EMP pulse cannon AND it could jump. These things all came in handy while dispatching guards and taking out the fire suppression system.
Taking out the fire suppression system opened up more blast doors for me to get in and destroy the prototypes from earlier. The last step of the process was to take out the power supplies to completely destroy all research related to the prototypes. The spider destruction was the best mission.
Shanghaied
The hacked Blume data revealed a Chinese container with mysterious cargo that Marcus was tasked with investigating. This part did require hacking a shipping container crane to move one out of the way of the container we were to investigate. Nice little hacks like this add to the fun.
This container was carrying a human, but not like the usual trafficking. The container interior was nicer than most people’s apartments and the crew found out the guy in the container has double Master’s degrees. He was being smuggled for his math skills to take advantage of the NYSE data Blume had available.
Our investigation took Marcus to Chinatown. A gang building held a safe with documents that could give us more info on what the gang was up to. It was another routine of distractions, jumper and calling the cops. The documents in the safe gave us a lead to a floating server farm in international waters.
To hack into that server farm, I was sent to a lighthouse where the view was great and the developers were obviously showing off the art. Marcus linked into the hacked satellite and hacked down to the floating server farm where there was a jumper drone available for use.
The drone allowed me to find a place to hack the admin password and then get the username. There was even a body cam available on 1 of the employees that could be used to get a view of the terminals. With the 2 pieces hacked, we spoofed the fuel gauges to trick the people onboard into thinking there was a leak. This is how we brought them in close.
A DedSec operative had a speedboat waiting for me to travel out to the floating platform. It took some sneaking around the platform and distracting guards to get the server loaded onto the cargo lift. Setting up traps and hiding behind corners allowed me to avoid most of the guards long enough to get the fun airlift from Josh’s giant drone by standing on top of the server.
The problem we ran into is that exposing the Chinese plan to manipulate the markets using Blume’s system was part of Mr Man Bun’s plan to make people want their protection.
Power to the Sheeple
Turned out that Invite and Blume were working together to sway the election for Congressman Thruss. Our first act to fight this was to push out a video exposing this collusion and then prepare to deface one of his billboards.
That billboard had a convenient crane around for me to get up to it and spray paint a nice set of DedSec graffiti. The cranes were still fun. Going up/down, forward/backward and left/right. I got too cocky on my way down and Marcus ended up falling off the crane to his death, but it still saved the mission complete.
Sitara let me know that Thruss was pissed about what we did and he wanted to ban groups like ours. That would help him and Invite, so we decided to return to their building to find out more.
I used the same routine to make my way through the Invite building, despite the security level being raised due to the last break in. This time I tapped the CEO’s phone and broke into the basement server room to install a backdoor. The crew found that Invite was using social media to convince people to vote for Thruss. We hacked that code to push them the other way.
Changing the balance of power freaked Thruss out and the newly tapped phone caught him talking to the CEO of Invite about how their plan was failing. They were setting up an in person meeting at Thruss’s penthouse, so naturally would were planning to attend.
I took Wrench to the location and made my way up some climbing puzzles to a crane. Hacked an elevator and dealt with another crane. There’s enough variations with these climbing puzzles to keep them fun. The parkour helps too.
Thruss ended up meeting with the CEO of Invite and Mr Man Bun about plan B for fixing the election. The congressman was trying to back out, but they had blackmail on him with references to something being in his mouth. You can imagine what that refers to.
Once I could swing the crane over to the penthouse, I quickly zapped as many guards with traps as I could and snuck to initiate the download of the info about the election rigging. The guards were searching for me while the download progressed. They were too dumb to see I was hidden inside the election promo sportscar that was in the penthouse.
Wrench said he had devised an escape plan for me, but I jumped the gun. Thinking he must be referring to the car, I drove it right out of the penthouse and off of the building. It landed on the ground without blowing up, although it did start to flame up. I thought it was odd that I survived, but I was happy to take the win. Wrench ended up scolding me for not taking the zip line he setup, whoops.
The data downloaded from the penthouse let us know they were going to manipulate the voting machines to rig the election. Considering the current political climate, it was perfect timing for this mission. Before making my way into the building with the machines, there was an awkward meeting with Josh at a portable toilet.
From there, I hacked and jumped my way up to the roof to get a good vantage point. I hacked a car that crashed into the first set, then used the jumper to detonate electric traps on 2 more and the final one I snuck around the back to shoot my grenade launcher.
After the last big boom, the election would be delayed and a DedSec video went up to expose all the dirty deeds that were uncovered about the election fraud.
Watch Dogs 2 End Game
A cutscene showing Mr. Man Bun fielding calls while drinking away his sorrows let me know I was really close to finally getting my revenge on him. At this point, I had already downloaded Watch Dogs Legion to make sure it’s ready to go once I finished off this Watch Dogs 2.
The mission starts out with a big problem, Marcus has basically been flagged as a terrorist and our next play was to find Mr. Man Bun’s assistant. It was fitting that I was getting ready to play Legion next, because this mission seemed to experiment with playing as multiple people.
First I controlled Sitara on a roof top to gain access to the assistants apartment. From there I was able to hack a laptop through the surveillance feed to get info on where to hit next.
Next stop was to control Wrench with his grenade launcher. His objective was to destroy the backup servers, so the primary servers would be all that’s left. I had to hack the vault door open first, so I lobbed rockets to clear the way and hid while the process completed. This drew security and the cops in, so I hid until I could run to the vault.
Some explosives were used to break through some bricks to reveal the vault downstairs and it was just an easy lob of grenades to blow up the backup servers. It finished with Wrench blowing up the whole facility.
Marcus was last up and his job was to break into Blume HQ. It took the tried and true techniques used in previous missions to access nodes and cripple Blume’s communications. My jumper made pretty quick work of those and the network box controlling the downstairs door lock.
With all those squared away, I went downstairs to the air gap computer and set the servers up to allow our download of the data. It was surprising there were no guards down there, so it was easy to finish this part. Guards came down as I was tryin to leave, but my grenade launcher made easy work of them.
Back upstairs, there were more guards, so I lit an explosive to pull them to one side of the room and snuck around the other side. It was then an easy stroll outside. Then it was time for end cutscene.
Marcus and Ray met at Mr. Man Bun’s apartment to be there for when he gets the call letting him know he’s screwed. They got there to rub the win in his face as the phone started ringing. The look of concern on his face was worth all the pain in sneaking around. Even better were the cops showing up, as Marcus and Ray left the apartment.
The team ended things celebrating and creating a video of all the dirt they had on Blume. The final moments gave a news rundown of how they exposed Dusan’s (aka Mr. Man Bun’s) misdeeds and the credits rolled.
Watch Dogs 2 was a great game and I might go back for some of the hacking invasion fun at some point, but for now it’s on to Watch Dogs Legion.