IGN had a conversation with Ubisoft North American president Laurent Detoc, Detoc revealed that the delayed yet promising looking Watch Dogs uses an engine that was originally intended to be just a driving game.

Detoc says that "Watch Dogs wasn't started as Watch Dogs", but was instead a driving game that could have developed into a new release of Driver, as they had the Driver rights at the time. The decision was eventually made that the game they would be making would require the player to be able to leave the car and do a lot of other things in the world, so parts of the driving engine were kept and reworked. Detoc elaborates and says that "What happens is that a game gets cancelled, and then you take pieces of that game to make a new one".

This is pretty standard practice for any large software company; where's the sense in remaking something you already have? What is interesting is that there seems to have been a cancellation or a denial of the creation of a new Driver game. It is hard to make complete sense of what Detoc says because he seems slightly confused himself. In essence he says, 'Watch Dogs wasn't always Watch Dogs, it could have been Driver, but the original engine was neither. And not good enough for a driving game'.

Watchdogs is currently scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2014. That's if it doesn't get cancelled and made into Assassins Creed V, of course.