PC Report: Watch Dogs 2

[grant78918 1]

PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. For an up to date account of Watch Dogs 2 fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article.

 

Developed and Published by Ubisoft. The game was released on November 29, 2016.

System Requirements

Minimum

• CPU: Intel Core i5 2400s @ 2.5 GHz or AMD FX 6120 @ 3.5 GHz

• RAM: 6 GB

• HDD: 50 GB

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 with 2 GB VRAM or AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2 GB of VRAM)

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-Bit)

Recommended

• CPU: Intel Core i5 3470 @ 3.2 GHz or AMD FX 8120 @ 3.9 GHz

• RAM: 8 GB

• HDD: 50 GB

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon R9 290 (3 GB of VRAM)

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-Bit)

Editor's System

• CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K (Haswell)

• RAM: 16 GB DDR3-2400 (G.Skill Ares)

• SSD: 500 GB (Samsung 850 EVO)

• GPU: Sapphire R9 390 8 GB

• OS: Windows 10 (64-Bit)

 

Watch Dogs 2's system requirements are not abnormal by today's standards, a 2 GB graphics card with a decent CPU. The game performed well with a smooth frame rate. On my system the low preset gets around 70-80 fps inside and 60-70 outside while the ultra preset (with ultra textures) gets around 45-55 fps inside and 35-45 outside.

 

 

Graphics settings

Display settings are pretty good, window modes include: Windowed, Borderless Window, Fullscreen Borderless, Multimonitor Borderless, Fullscreen. One downside is the lack of Resolution Scaling beyond 125%.

Graphics settings give the user a good deal of customization when trying to adjust to their computers need.

Color settings are brightness, or gamma, and sharpness, which if too high can make the image look very strange.

 

Field of View

Despite being a 3rd person game Watch Dogs 2 gives the option to change the FoV from the minimum value of 70, also the default, to the maximum of 110.

 

Resolution Scale

This setting controls how many times the resolution the game is rendered at. Watch Dogs 2 gives the option of 25% to 125% of normal resolution. This means that using resolution scaling instead of antialiasing on higher end machines will not be as possible as that typically requires around 150% to 200% resolution scaling.

 

Motion Blur

Motion Blur only has 2 options, on and off. It also doesn't have much of an effect on framerate, but your gameplay may look better at high framerates if you turn it off.

Texture Resolution

Texture Resolution seems to be nearly the same between Low and Ultra, despite the Ultra textures that were several gigabytes in size. The only difference I could notice is guns are largely affected by texture resolution.

 

 

 

Texture Filtering

Texture Filtering increases the visual quality of textures at steep angles to the camera.

 

 

Shadows

Shadows are not bad in Watch Dogs 2 at the lowest setting and ultra shadows are very crisp. Watch Dogs 2 also provides PCSS which allows for progressive shadow resolution.

 

 

 

Water

Water has modes, low and high, the only visible difference is the reflections it has.

 

 

 

Headlight Shadow

Headlight Shadows are very demanding and has a cap of being enabled on 4 cars at one time.

 

 

 

Reflections

Reflections affect reflective surfaces and their reflection of the sky box and other objects. Low only reflects the sky box and High reflects environmental features.

 

 

Anti-Aliasing

Anti-Alasing is one of the only setting in the game to have a massive hit on the games performance. It can affect the framerate by up to 10fps. The avaiable AA options are TXAA (only available on Nvidia graphic cards), MSAAx2, MSAAx4, MSAAx6, FXAA, and SMAA. FXAA and SMAA cause the game to lose sharpness and just overall blur the screen.

 

 

Performance analysis

 

The game preformed very well with out many frame drops, there are some issues though. Pop in is a major issue with objects appearing with in a very visible distance while driving. The game has an unlocked framerate so high refresh rate monitors do not have to worry. Load times are very low on my SSD with wait times being at max 10 seconds and typical under 5.

 

Controls

The game offers a large amount of control customization from changing many items such as sprint and aiming from Hold to Toggle. The game also enables changing mouse and controller sensitivity as well as X and Y axis inverting. The whole game works with mouse controls and no menu can not be navigated smoothly with it unlike the original watch dogs.

 

 

Audio

Audio settings are lacking, there is only one volume slider for the master volume. Music can be toggled on and off and subtitles can be enabled. The in game audio is very nicely mixed though with no sound overpowering the rest.

 

Conclusion

Watch Dogs 2 is a massive step up in a port from the original game, it offers large number of customization. The PC Port doesn't suffer from meany of the issues other PC ports do such as bad Keyboard and mouse control and bad optimization like its predecessor. The only issue I have had with Watch Dogs 2 is how demanding the game can be, I typically can get in 60 fps in games with high or ultra setting but Watch Dogs 2 pushes my computer past that and it is well deserved as it has beautiful graphics on PC.

 

PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. This report was written by PCGamingWiki contributor grant0417. For an up to date account of Watch Dogs 2 fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article.

 

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed our article and want to us create more articles, more often, please consider donating to PCGamingWiki's Patreon campaign:

 

 

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[Blackbird 56]

The avaiable AA options are MSAAx2, MSAAx4, MSAAx6, TXAA, and SMAA. TXAA and SMAA cause the game to lose sharpness and just overall blur the screen.

So FXAA was gutted? Might want to edit the PCGW page. I only added it initially since Ubi source said it'd be there.

[Mars icecream 57]

Some unnecessary capitalization (game settings in text).

[Primey 3]

Would have been nice to see a difference between all the settings. You ignored quite a lot.

 

This report seemed rushed.

 

So FXAA was gutted? Might want to edit the PCGW page. I only added it initially since Ubi source said it'd be there.

 

Nope FXAA is in the game. He just forgot to mention (and compare) it for some reason

[Guest]

Would have been nice to see a difference between all the settings. You ignored quite a lot.

 

This report seemed rushed.

 

 

Nope FXAA is in the game. He just forgot to mention (and compare) it for some reason

 

I would've made the report myself but I had a terrible month, I had no sleep at all and I need like 40 - 60 hours to do a proper report, I still need to publish the Call of Duty Infinite Warfare report, it was completed but there's a bunch of missing stuff. I had such horrible sleep though...

[Pridit 39]

Everyone please bear in mind that these reports are done by volunteers, just like you, in their spare time. It's not going to be perfect, but for a first written piece Grant has made a fantastic report and good headway to improve if he works on further reports. I am pleased with the result and thankful that he produced this for us and for our readers. Keep up the excellent work!

[grant78918 1]

Would have been nice to see a difference between all the settings. You ignored quite a lot.

 

This report seemed rushed.

 

 

Nope FXAA is in the game. He just forgot to mention (and compare) it for some reason

Yeah I made a mistake, I originally said there was TXAA but I was referring to FXAA the while time. Sorry about that, it is fixed in the article now.

[Shadow xg 0]

It's odd that you would lie about this. I have a gtx 1070 and a better cpu, yet I can't maintain a solid 60 fps even on low settings. Everyone else I know is also saying this.

[Blackbird 56]

It's odd that you would lie about this. I have a gtx 1070 and a better cpu, yet I can't maintain a solid 60 fps even on low settings. Everyone else I know is also saying this.

Your anecdote isn't a fact.

[Mirh 103]

It's odd that instead of calling people wrong (which might as well not be), you go on even alleging they are scammers.