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Creative director Jonathan Morin shares his pro tips for dominating the world of Watch Dogs 2

TRY REMOTE PLAY (NO, NOT THE PS4 KIND)_ “Some players are very good at thinking – they want to outsmart their enemies and plan ahead. For those players, it’s more rewarding and more satisfying to play Watch Dogs 2 remotely. Use the drones and try to activate stuff from a distance, then go in afterwards,” Morin suggests, referring to the quadcopter and jumper’s abilities to trigger remote explosions and hack phones. “The drones are very cool for that. They also generate a lot of laughs, that’s for sure.

“Hiding somewhere and using everything you’ve got to safely try and deal with enemies before they actually find you is a good idea.” BE AGGRESSIVE (BUT FALL BACK ON HACKING)_ “For the ‘aggressor’ style, we’ve wanted to position Watch Dogs 2 to be difficult, but we wanted to make sure that regardless of the way you play, you still feel like a hacker. So there are some skills, even for ‘aggressors’, where you can distract people and then shoot them afterwards,” Morin points out – we think of the remote-detonated sticky mines, or our RC jumper’s noisy taunts.

“It’s also very useful to stay undetected while everybody gets to fighting, and you can then mass-distract and disorganise everybody” – you can ‘mass-hack’ cars with your phone to cause pile-ups, for instance – “before hiding until it goes back to normal… These things are possible. We want to make sure that hacking’s all part of the fun.” ALWAYS TRY TO DISTRACT AI_ “Distracting AI is very useful,” Morin reminds us. AI police will also help other players hunt you in the online Bounty Hunter mode – you can send distracting alerts by hacking the cops’ phones with o. “It sounds simple, but being able to prevent someone from detecting you at the last second is important – if you’re using a drone and you don’t want that drone to be detected, for example.

“You can use that to disorganise them if you want to go back to safety – which can be very handy. It’s a very useful skill to unlock earlier on to help you out and let you play the way you want.” MAXIMISE YOUR BOTNETS_ “If you really want to compete online, it’s all about chaos. You need to have a lot of Botnets – that’s basically our mana system. If you really want to survive, you want to invest in those.” The more anarchy you cause in-game, the more ‘followers’ you gain for DedSec – and the more followers you have, the more ‘Botnet’ currency you get to spend on new hacking skills. This is key to survival, stresses Morin.

“Players are going to get really good at either using nitro boosts on their cars non-stop, or using them to hack every car around, so you need to be able to defend yourself in that way.”