Grand Theft Smartphone

With its newest trailer, and its narrative ... familiarity, Ubisoft's real intent for Watch Dogs suddenly becomes obvious. This isn't an attempt to bring Assassin's Creed into the modern day; this is an attempt to unseat Rockstar. Their proposal is to make a modern day, activity-dense open world with constant interactivity -- by way of a pervasive in-game communication network, such that even virtually-distant things are always at the ready. The fact that this smartphone-infested techscape mirrors real life is almost a coincidence.

Really, given the publisher's glut of open-world experience, it seems attainable. All they have to do (and here "all" is a somewhat facetious understatement) is nail some fun driving physics, and write real, believable and entertaining characters. Those two bits, along with a varied and engaging sandbox, are the keys to the GTA kingdom. And Ubisoft already has that last one down.