Okay, so when I picked up Watch Dogs 2 the other day I was a bit interested and cautious as to how well the city of San Francisco would be represented. Would it be entirely inaccurate, symbolizing the city in name alone? Would it have a few of the well known tourist areas and forego most of the others for the sake of keeping the budget down? Well the answers to these questions are no and no respectively.
I live in Northern California, about 90-120 minute drive from San Francisco. I’ve taken day trips down there and spent the odd weekend down there as well, so I have some experience being down in that lovely city. Is the game map entirely accurate? Well no, but its accurate enough that I’m able to navigate the city based on real life exploration down there. I was just going to this location in the game (An old military fort near the water) and realized I had been there in real life. My girlfriend walks by and says, “Hey that’s where we saw the random naked dude at the beach.” Walking down from Coit tower, I found the stairways that we took while walking up to it. Lombard Street is fairly well represented, though seems a bit less twisty in the game. The parking garage we usually park in by Pier 39 is also there in the game, though it seems a lot smaller.
One thing I am extremely grateful for is the lack of bay area traffic. Nowhere else I have ever visited has as bad of traffic as the Bay Area, especially San Francisco, and this is coming from a guy who arrived in Las Vegas, during rush hour, driving down the Strip, during construction… Yeah consider that for a moment.
Okay well that’s it for my little tale of how Ubisoft did a damn good job representing the city I love visiting.