Watch Dogs is going to be an open world (like Saboteur, Saints Row or Sleeping Dogs) game about magical hacker cellphones, shootouts and cars. But mostly about magical hacking cellphones.

Anyways, in this gameplay video we're presented with 14 minutes of mucking about - non-mission gameplay. The first thing the voice over guy does is cover the studio's ass by saying that the poor district you see in the video is in their version of Chicago. Meaning, nobody is insulting your district.

But there's a reason to be among these peasants - ctOS, the Bloom Corporation's city wide control system has a node here and you want to hack it to be able to access stuff in this hood. It's done by stealing access codes through magic camera hacking (still not sure how that works) and killing a few guards while abusing more hackable environments. They say that you'll also be able to do it your way - be it stealthy or violent. Anyways, it shows a lot of enviromental interactivity and the fact that all Bloom guards have shady backgrounds makes it OK for you to kill them. Even if that shady background is fishing with dynamite.

This is especially poignant since the next thing that the protagosnist does is use the newly acquired network access to interrupt a crime (lady choking) in progress. I like the implications of computers being able to just pull your possible victimhood rating out of thin air. Anyway, the criminals will act unpredictably, but this one runs... and gets into a car. We stop him by raising bollards and totaling the car. Somehow he survives that and we get more reputation points for a non-lethal scenario.

Meanwhile the Bloom guards, who guarded the ctOS (which is mentioned to have increased productivity and lessened crime) node, lie dead, unmourned and forgotten.

Next thing on Aiden's list is to visit a gunstore in an upscale district. We get to see that game designers still haven't wrapped their head around the fact the AK-47 is not the only, nor the most popular AK out there. Unfortunately, a news report jogs the clerks memory and we get cops called. Aiden evades them... then procedes to hack a free wi-fi station and steal money from a single mother. Classy (no reputation loss since nobody saw you do that).

About that time another player tries to hack Aiden, but is tracked down. A brief chase ensues, the mysterious hacker disappears and they get to show off the retaliation mechanic. Which means hacking some rube in his own game (by the way, each player sees themselves as Aiden and the oponents as random civvies)... which ends in a chase, an ambush in an alley (so as not to hurt civvies) and the enemy player dead.

All in all, seems to be a fun and good looking game, even if the morality system is a bit off. Augmented Reality looks nice, the cars feel solid enough, there's a wealth of interesting details in the world. Unless somebody messes up big time, this is going to be one of the new great games. Can't wait.