Watch Dogs 2 Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Graphics

For the original German article, see here.

Since the release of the successful predecessor in 2014, Ubisoft has substantially improved upon the technical framework of the open-world series. Watch Dogs 2 not only features sharper textures, but also better lighting, which makes the outside environment in particular much more believable. The more colorful ambiance (Watch Dogs 1 was slightly more subdued and serious) is a matter of personal taste.

Kudos to the creators for the vast amounts of details. No matter if one ventures into the city or through the more rural districts: the game contains a plethora of smaller and larger objects ranging from decorative elements to grass and bushes. Thanks to the comprehensive interior design and the lavish vegetation, Watch Dogs 2 features plenty of atmosphere. The interplay of dusk and dawn, the many passerby and the lively traffic simulations ensures a great ambiance. The reflections, water and the visibility range are also state-of-the-art. In short, it's easy to see the expenditure and effort which went into creating this title.

The number of available options is also quite extensive. The video menu - which features a pleasant "old school" design - clearly shows that Ubisoft put in lots of effort and didn't neglect the PC platform. This begins with the display menu, which allows changing the mode, the resolution, the display frequency, the vertical synchronization, the field of view, and the head-up display (HUD). The setting "pixel density" allows up and downscaling, if so desired.

Most of the options are in the quality menu which - as the name indicates - deals with the general graphics quality. In addition to the post-processing anti-aliasing methods SMAA and FXAA, which only have a moderate effect and "soften" the look somewhat, Watch Dogs 2 features also the more hardware-intensive MSAA and TXAA (TAA is also available, but we wouldn't recommend it).

For the visually most pleasing experience, the user not only needs to download the "High Res Texture Pack" - which takes up 6 GB and is available free of charge via Uplay - but also has to tweak the existing presets. The reason: even the ultra preset doesn't move all sliders to their respective maximum - extra details, anti-aliasing, shadows, and ambient occlusion are all affected.   

Note: some of the features are exclusive to Nvidia. At full details, AMD GPUs do well in the graphics department though - about as well as Nvidia systems - and Watch Dogs 2 clearly measures up to other open-world games like GTA V and The Witcher 3. The title even compares well to other Ubisoft Triple-A games from 2015 and 2016 (Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Far Cry Primal & The Division).

The Disrupt engine has matured and works surprisingly well (the same engine still had some teething problems in the predecessor of the game). During our review, we didn't encounter any crashes, graphics mishaps or other bugs. "Popping", which is typical for open-world titles and can get quite annoying, is also almost absent at higher settings.

The video menu doesn't abandon complete newbies and inexperienced users, either - despite the plethora of options. Since the settings feature a text box with explanations and changes are executed immediately (save for the texture quality, which requires reverting back to the main menu), Watch Dogs 2 is easy to operate. General navigation is very intuitive and doesn't require a long adjustment period.

We only find two areas to criticize. Analogous to our experience with the title's predecessor, the driveability of the different vehicles is just simply strange at times. ATVs and motorcycles are hypersensitive and the steering isn't very precise. The other drawback is that Watch Dogs 2 requires lots and lots of video RAM: Full-HD and the "ultra" setting require about 5 GB of VRAM. Less RAM will likely cause stutters during gameplay.   

From a technical viewpoint, the hacker-saga is significantly ahead of games like Mafia 3 or Dishonored 2, which can be hardly optimized or not optimized at all. Yes, Watch Dogs 2 has rather stringent hardware requirements - but the game is visually very pleasing and doesn't suffer from needless strange performance issues.

Before we take a look at the results, we want to talk briefly about the presets. While there's not much of a difference between the ultra, very high and high settings except for the shadows (which get increasingly worse), the graphics deteriorate quite noticeable at medium details (weaker textures, jagged edges,...). At the lowest settings, the quality deteriorates further in all areas, but we would never call the result "ugly".

Note: a warning pops up should the GPU driver be too old. We weren't successful when we tried to install the brand-new Nvidia driver version 376.09 on our Pascal notebooks Asus G752VS and MSI GT62VR ("no compatible hardware found"), so we had to use ForceWare 375.95 - released a few days earlier - instead. The install went without a hitch though and we didn't experience any problems.