Watch Dogs is an open world action-adventure third-person shooter video game that was released by Ubisoft back in 2014. The game failed to garner positive reactions from fans and critics. Even Lionel Raynaud, the Vice President of Ubisoft Montreal creative recently dubbed the game as flawed.
That being said, he also stated that the sequel to the game will be quite different from its predecessor. Several rumors regarding the next iteration of Watch Dogs, that is Watch Dogs 2 have been building up on the internet for quite some time. The game was officially confirmed in February.
Watch Dogs 2 is currently in its developmental stages and at an AMD press conference at GDC, Ubisoft came forward with certain news regarding it. One of the most significant revelations that Ubisoft made about the game was that it would come with the support for DirectX 12.
That being said, the company abstained from divulging specific details as to what the DirectX 12 support would mean for the game. However, AMD stated that their GPUs will be great for running the PC version of the game.
Its predecessor, Watch Dogs was created using NVIDIA Game Suite and thus was more suited for GPUs from NVIDIA. The game was not particularly well-suited for AMD GPUs because it was created using an NVIDIA Suite. It is for this reason AMD’s Robert Hallock stated that the NVIDIA software that has been used to develop the game led to its undesired performance when it was run on any AMD hardware.
He stated- “Participation in the GameWorks program often precludes the developer from accepting AMD suggestions that would improve performance directly in the game code — the most desirable form of optimization.”
He blamed NVIDIA for the whole matter and even pointed out that the Direct3D code samples were removed from the official website of NVIDIA. Apparently, the company put up a “contact us for licensing” message after removing the code samples.
However, NVIDIA is not the one to take the blame lying down. CemCebenoyan of the company reported by stating that the allegations made against them are not true. The developers did not deliberately put elements in the Game Suite used to develop Watch Dogs which would lead to its undesired functionality on AMD hardware.
He also added that contrary to what Hallock stated, NVIDIA is ready to work in collaboration with AMD. They are also open to suggestions that AMD might come forward with.
The DirectX support is indeed a big thing for the upcoming game. A number of games currently in the market like Just Cause 3, Ashes of the Singularity, Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Elder Scrolls Online makes use of this modern technology.
In general, DirectX 12 is quite advanced compared to its predecessors. It reportedly strikes a proper balance of the total workload among the various cores that are present. This ensures that the load is divided in an efficient manner among all the cores and a single core does not have to take up the entire burden, which ultimately results in better performance for the game.
While talking about the first iteration of Watch Dogs, Raynaud compared it to Assassins Creed 1 which too contained some flaws. At the same time the game managed to establish a brand that has grown into a massive one with time.
Raynaud feels that Watch Dogs did the same thing and the next iteration is going to be way better than the first game. He added that the developers are hard at work with Watch Dogs 2 trying to iron out the flaws of its predecessor.