You can leave Chicago, but Chicago never leaves you. In the DLC Bad Blood, you get more of Watch Dogs in every single way, but without Aiden Pearce as the protagonist. More of the same isn’t necessarily a bad thing – if you enjoy the gameplay and story, that is. So how does it fare, is it a worthwhile purchase and time investment? Well, let’s find out.
Leaving Chicago
Bad Blood switches up to lead, as now you play as T-bone (Raymond Kenny), the hacker and ex-Blume computer genius that helped to create the Chicago ctOS (Central Operating System). He has a pretty prominent role in the original campaign being the guy who created the system, and eventually got a crisis of consciousness and turned on Blume. When Aiden meets up with him, he has been living in hiding from Blume, and other agents of “destruction”. After some convincing that involved a lot of punching, he decided to help dear old Aiden. He is not a bad character and has an interesting background story, however, what surprised me with the story of Bad Blood, is that it’s a continuation of the events in the campaign and not a prequel.
I was one hundred percent certain it would be, considering how much of his background was talked about in the Aiden storyline, and the implications of it, especially the guilt that followed when innocents died when he caused a major blackout. It would have made an interesting experience, to see his fall from Blume – at least that was what I was expecting when I loaded up the DLC. However, as it turns out, the story takes place a year after the main storyline, with T-bone finally deciding to leave Chicago and leave it all behind. Things never go as planned though, as soon as he is ready to book it out of town, it turns out his friend and another returning character named Frewer is in trouble and needs help.
The story isn’t too bad, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t feel like it accomplished much. The whole story feels like a clean-up of sorts of the main campaign, and I guess that’s all fine and dandy, but it didn’t do much for me by itself. The big bad boss in this drama also felt a bit much like a supervillain origin story, very cartoony, especially since it’s a returning character that didn’t seem all that important in the Aiden story. However, the banter between T-bone and Frewer was fun, as they are both written well. All in all, their friendship felt very wholesome in a setting that is pretty damn dark at times. Another thing that might be of some interest is that T-bone’s return in Watch Dogs 2 makes a lot more sense. You do get to understand his motivations in Watch Dogs 2, but Aiden’s campaign in combination with Bad Blood tells much more of a complete story of his dislike of Blume.
There are also two side-quests that involve Aiden and DedSec, but unfortunately, both of these missions ended up without saying much, nor providing any new interesting lore. Once again, you are just cleaning up some random leftovers, and if you are lucky you might get a thanks – if you expect a good narrative reward, you are out of luck. You also get side-missions in the form of gang take-outs, and driving missions from a detective that needs help cleaning up the city. However, these missions gave even less back. These tasks felt mostly like filler with the rewards of unlocking a weapon or two that is not needed in the campaign since you will be swimming in weapons already.
Toy cars & other things
The gameplay remains the same, except for one change that takes a much more prominent role in Watch Dogs 2 – The RC car. It’s a fun addition, but only one (and a half) mission actually required me to use it. You control it as a car to get into areas T-bone can’t reach himself, to open a locked door, or to hack something. It’s a cool introduction, especially if you know what’s to come. Other than that, there isn’t much new. I think some of the mechanics in the side missions got some new stuff, like having to drive a certain distance without slowing down, or without trashing the car. Minor fluff, in other words.
When it comes to the visuals and sound, it’s of the same quality as the main game – to the surprise of nobody. It’s basically the same world, with a new protagonist as the only difference. So with that, Bad Blood looks good (the same). The sound is the same, with the addition of the expanded voice acting. Both T-bone and Fewer are great and add to the wholesome nature of their relationship. No faults are to be found here.
In conclusion
Bad Blood does not add much, except a few narrative bits and pieces here and there. It all depends on if you liked T-bone from the main game enough to warrant a purchase because you will not get much else than a side story involving him and his friend. It does link up pretty well with Watch Dogs 2, but beyond that, this DLC is lackluster. Because of that, it’s hard to recommend even if I enjoyed it to a degree. As usual, it mostly depends on how much you like the gameplay and the Watch Dogs franchise in general. If you can’t get enough of Watch Dogs, go for it. If not, well, there isn’t anything new here that switches up the gameplay enough for a try – it will only disappoint in that case. Happy hacking, hackers.
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 