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Watch Dogs 2

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Watch_Dogs 2
Watch_Dogs 2 cover
Developers
Ubisoft Montreal
Ubisoft Paris
Ubisoft Toronto
Ubisoft Bucharest
Ubisoft Reflections
Publishers
Ubisoft
Engines
Disrupt
Release dates
Windows November 29, 2016[1]
Reception
Metacritic 75
OpenCritic 82
IGDB 81
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, DLC
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, Adventure, Open world
Vehicles Track racing
Art styles Realistic
Themes Contemporary, North America, Sci-fi
Series Watch Dogs
Watch Dogs 2 on HowLongToBeat
Watch Dogs 2 on IGDB
Watch Dogs 2 guide on StrategyWiki
Watch Dogs 2 on MobyGames
Watch Dogs 2 on Wikipedia
Watch Dogs
Watch Dogs 2014
Watch Dogs 2 2016
Watch Dogs: Legion 2020

General information

PC Report
Official forum
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
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Windows
Amazon.com
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Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available. Only activates in the United States.
Windows
Amazon.co.uk
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Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available. Only available in the United Kingdom.
Windows
Epic Games Store
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available.
Windows
GamersGate
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available.
Windows
Gamesplanet logo.svg
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available.
Windows
Green Man Gaming
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available.
Windows
Humble Store
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available.
Windows
Microsoft Store
Microsoft Store
Icon overlay.png
Included exclusively with Xbox Game Pass for PC.
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available.
Windows
Ubisoft Store
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition also available.
Gold Edition included with Ubisoft+.
Windows
Origin (unavailable)
Origin
Icon overlay.png
Deluxe Edition and Gold Edition are also available.
Windows
All versions require Ubisoft Connect and Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM.[2]
Easy Anti-Cheat DRM is enabled by default but can be skipped by -eac_launcher command.

Version Differences

The Deluxe Edition contains the Deluxe Pack, containing cosmetic items not sold separately.
The Gold Edition contains both the Deluxe Pack and Season Pass.

Monetization

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Season Pass
Windows
Ultra Texture Pack Free
Windows
Human Conditions Included in the Season Pass
Windows
No Compromise Included in the Season Pass
Windows
Mega Pack A bundle that includes: Retro Modernist Pack, Glow_Pro Pack, Ride Britannia Pack, Kick It Pack, Velvet Cowboy and Bay Area Thrash Pack
Windows
Supreme Pack A bundle that includes: Black Hat Pack, EliteSec Pack, Guru Pack, Dumpster Diver Pack and Home Town Pack
Windows
Ultimate Pack A bundle that includes: Psychedelic Pack, Pixel Art Pack, Ded Labs Pack, Glam Pack, Ubisoft Pack, Punk Rock Pack, Urban Artist Pack, Private Eye Pack and Guts, Grit and Liberty Pack
Windows
Bay Area Thrash Pack
Windows
Black Hat Pack
Windows
Ded Labs Pack
Windows
Dumpster Diver Pack
Windows
EliteSec Pack
Windows
Fully Decked Out Bundle A bundle that includes: The Pixel Art customisation pack, The Guts, Grit and Liberty customisation pack, The Twitch hoodie for Marcus, 5,000 DedSec followers
Windows
Glam Pack
Windows
Glow_Pro Pack
Windows
Guru Pack
Windows
Guts, Grit and Liberty Pack
Windows
Home Town Pack
Windows
Kick It Pack
Windows
Pixel Art Pack
Windows
Private Eye Pack Free
Windows
Psychedelic Pack Included in the Season Pass
Windows
Punk Rock Pack
Windows
Retro Modernist Pack
Windows
Ride Britannia Pack
Windows
Root Access Pack Included in the Season Pass
Windows
T-Bone Pack Included in the Season Pass
Windows
Ubisoft Pack
Windows
Urban Artist Pack
Windows
Velvet Cowboy
Windows
Zodiac Killer Mission Pre-order bonus, also included in Root Access Pack. Can't be purchased individually.
Windows
(Un)Lawful (Dis)Order and Bitflip Suit DLC are PS4 exclusive.[3]

Essential improvements

Skip launcher

Use the -nosplash command line argument[citation needed]
Does not skip the Uplay launcher, only the game's launcher.

Skip intro videos

No intro mod
  1. Download and install no intro mod.

Game data

Configuration file location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Watch_Dogs 2\
Microsoft Store
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/447040/pfx/[Note 1]

Save location of photos taken with the in-game camera

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Watch_Dogs 2\LocalStorage0\
Microsoft Store
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/447040/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <Ubisoft-Connect-folder>\savegames\<user-id>\2688\
Steam <Ubisoft-Connect-folder>\savegames\<user-id>\3619\
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/447040/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Epic Games Launcher
Origin
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud
Ubisoft Connect
Xbox Cloud

Video

Display settings.
Display settings.
Quality settings.
Quality settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
[1]
Ultra-widescreen
In-engine cutscenes are 16:9 with black bars.
4K Ultra HD
[1]
Field of view (FOV)
70-110°.
Windowed
[1]
Borderless fullscreen windowed
[1]
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Up to 16x.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
FXAA, SMAA (1x and T2X), MSAA, TXAA,[1] and SSAA via Pixel Density setting (up to 1.5, aka 2.25x SSAA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
[2]
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
[1]
[1]
High dynamic range display (HDR)
[4]

Input

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Dolby Atmos[citation needed]
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio
Uses licensed music for radio music and during certain cutscenes.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Arabic
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Czech
Dutch
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Latin American Spanish
Uplay only. Other versions can be converted.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
LAN play
Online play

Disable Easy Anti-Cheat and online play

Besides using the multiplayer options found in the game configuration menu, you can also prevent online play by disabling the Easy Anti-Cheat protection.
Can be useful if you plan to mod the game, as Easy Anti-Cheat does not allow modified game files without in-game warning messages, and possible risk of an account ban.
Launch the game with the -eac_launcher command line argument[5]

VR support

3D modes State Notes
Native 3D
Nvidia 3D Vision Discover
Nvidia 3D Vision
See Helix Mod: WATCH_DOGS2.
Devices
Tobii Eye Tracking
Supports: Aim at Gaze, Bungee Zoom, Cover at Gaze, Extended View - Eye & Head Tracking, Hack at Gaze.

Issues unresolved

Nvidia RTX 3000 and 4000 series flickering issues

With the series 3000 and 4000, the game has an ongoing long-standing issue with flickering of in-game world elements.[6][7] Changing the graphics settings, limiting the game's FPS or reverting to an older driver version doesn't fix or alleviate the problem at all.[8] Nvidia recognized the issue as a known driver bug and will thus likely fix this issue through a future driver update.[9]
Workaround for RTX 30x0 and 40x0 GPUs[10]
  1. Download dxvk-2.3.tar.gz from https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/tag/v2.3
  2. Extract the DLLs using e.g. 7zip
  3. Copy the DLLs (d3d10.dll, d3d10core.dll, d3d11.dll, dxgi.dll) to the bin\ directory of Watch Dogs 2
  4. Add -eac_launcher to Game launch arguments in Ubisoft Connect to disable Easy Anti-Cheat, which would otherwise prevent the game from starting with non-standard DirectX DLLs.

Note that this workaround has the following undesirable side-effects in my testing:

  • Will disable multiplayer/online functionality
  • Will stutter more (Shader compilation was improved on 2.3)
  • Will reduce frame rate (2.3 improves this with a framerate 20% penalty versus a 50% penalty for 1.3.3)
  • The game will crash when ALT-TAB'ed (Does not appear to occur anymore with 2.3)
  • Use ALT+F2 to access Ubisoft Connect overlay in order to close any graphics driver warnings
Prevent GPU usage over 90% for RTX 3000 users[11]

Once the GPU usage is lower than 90%, the flicker disappears on RTX 3000 GPUs. However simply limiting FPS won't work since GPU frequency automatially turns down as the game needs less GPU resource.

  1. Set Power Management Mode in NVIDIA Control Panel for WD2 to "prefer maximum performance". This can ensure the GPU frequency never turns down.
  2. Tweak your CPU perfoamance to ensure the game has a bottleneck on CPU instead of GPU. Here are some different ways to limit CPU:
  • Use Task Manager or Process Lasso to set affinity of WatchDogs2.exe. This game is highly multithread optimized so just try set less core affinity. You can try from only one core and keep adding cores until the framerate is acceptable while bottleneck still on CPU.
  • Disable turbo by ThrottleStop or in BIOS. This can significantly cut down CPU frequency to make a CPU bottleneck.
  • Windows power plan can also limit CPU power. Try set maximum processor state to a lower value.
  • For those are good at hardware replacement but poor at tweaking, simply install a weaker CPU. A low-end i3 or even Pentium with high-end GPU can always result CPU bottleneck.

Issues fixed

Stuttering during gameplay

Install the game on SSD[12][13]
Turn off multiplayer features in game options or disable Easy Anti-Cheat and online play[14]
Disable "Control Flow Guard" for WD2[15]
Don't turn off CFG globally as that puts the system at a major security risk.

Game doesn't launch

Turn off or unplug the monitor[citation needed]
The game cannot handle a second monitor connected via an integrated graphics card.[citation needed]
After the game has launched, the monitor can be reconnected.

Black bars during cutscenes or squished image

Game incorrectly renders at 4096x2160 (17:9) resolution, resulting in display oddities.
Remove all references to the 4096x2160 resolution[16][17]
  1. Download and start CRU.
  2. Make sure the display you want to modify is selected in the top box. If it's connected and in use, it will be marked as (active).
  3. In the Extension blocks box, select the CEA-861 entry and press Edit.
  4. Select the TV resolutions entry and press Edit.
  5. One by one, select all the 4096x2160 entries and press Delete. Press OK when done.
  6. Select the HDMI support entry and press Edit.
  7. Select any 4096x2160 entries and press Delete.
  8. Press OK on all the windows to return to the main application window. Press OK to close.
  9. Run restart64.exe/restart.exe to re-initialize the display driver.
Edit configuration file[citation needed]
  1. Go to the configuration file(s) location.
  2. Open WD2_GamerProfile.xml.
  3. Change the value of ForceAspectRatio (in RenderProfile) from 0 to 1.777777777777778 (16:9).
You may need to set the file to read only.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 11
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Physics Havok
Audio Wwise
Cutscenes Bink Video
Multiplayer Easy Anti-Cheat [18] See Disable Easy Anti-Cheat and online play.

System requirements

Windows[1]
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 7 SP1
Processor (CPU) Intel Core i5-2400S 2.5 GHz
AMD FX-6120 3.5 GHz
System memory (RAM) 6 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 50 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce GTX 660
AMD Radeon HD 7870
2 GB of VRAM
A 64-bit operating system is required.


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/447040/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (447040) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

  1. 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 Watch Dogs 2 PC Specs and System Requirements Revealed - UbiBlog - Ubisoft - last accessed on 2016-10-18
  2. 2.0 2.1 Watch Dogs 2 PC FAQ | Watch Dogs 2 official website | Ubisoft
  3. PLAYSTATION EXCLUSIVE CONTENT FOR WATCH DOGS 2
  4. Verified by User:Aaronth07 on 2020-07-14
    Tested by enabling Windows HDR. No toggle in-game either way.
  5. Cheat Happens - Watch Dogs 2 Message Board - How to Disable Easy Anti-Cheat in WD2 - last accessed on May 2023
  6. Watch Dogs 2 (PC) flickering issue on RTX cards - ad44 - YouTube - last accessed on 2023-03-12
  7. Watch Dogs 2 - Flickering Bug - gameswecan - YouTube - last accessed on 2023-03-12
  8. Verified by User:Mrtnptrs on 2023-03-12
    Limiting FPS to 60 at lowest settings on a RTX 4090 did not help; did that as a lot of users suggested this issue only happened when the GPU was at 99% usage. My testing thus concluded that this wasn't the case and lots of people also said that didn't work for them.
  9. Release 530 Driver for Windows, Version 531.18 - Windows 11 / 10 - Release Notes - Nvidia - last accessed on 2023-03-12
    "[GeForce RTX 4090] Watch Dogs 2 may display flickering when staring at the sky[3858016]"
  10. PSA: Watch Dogs 2 Sky Flicker Workaround By Ubisoft, last accessed July 2023
  11. Verified by User:Qinlili on 2024-02-16
    For my laptop with 11800H and 3060, disable turbo and set affinity to only 5 cores provides 55-65fps with no flicker.
  12. W2D SSD vs HDD test - last accessed on May 2023
  13. Similar issue fixed - last accessed on May 2023
  14. fix for 970/6600K
  15. Reddit - last accessed on May 2023
  16. Steam Community :: Guide :: Fix black bars in cutscenes and aspect ratio issues with 4K/UHD TVs on PC - last accessed on 2024-01-07
  17. Verified by User:Keith on 2024-01-07
  18. Easy Anti-Cheat - last accessed on May 2023