It’s just so complex – seamless multiplayer, connectivity with mobile and tablets, so many things – it was maybe a bit too much for a first iteration.” We think we launched a good quality game for a first step in a new brand with a new technology. “When they come out, especially the first iterations, they are not perfect on everything.

“It’s a real challenge to create those types of games,” said Guillemot. The dev team also introduced “second screen” functionality so players could interact with the game via smartphones and tablets. Watch Dogs follows hacker vigilante Aiden Pearce as he gains control of the city’s mainframe computer system it features a large open-city environment, the ability to hack into the phones of every passerby to open side-missions, and a multiplayer feature that lets players raid each other’s games. Speaking to the Guardian at this year’s E3, Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot, conceded that the company had been caught out by the complexity of the project. The problems come when the game is released months or even years later, and the reality fails to match the early promise, with the most ambitious and demanding effects often scaled down or missing. These pre-release presentations tend to be built on powerful PC hardware and are designed to give an impression of the performance levels that development teams are targeting. For many gamers, the disparity symbolised a growing problem with games industry marketing: a reliance on “vertical slice” demos to build early hype. There was just one slight problem – when the game was released on PC and the next-gen consoles, the visuals did not quite match that early promise.

Watch Dogs, a cyberpunk thriller set in an astonishingly detailed recreation of Chicago, looked amazing, with its complex lighting effects, lifelike character animation and detailed weather simulation.

I n 2012, a fallow year for the E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, Ubisoft revealed its latest open-world action adventure – and promptly stole the show.

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