Watch Dogs: Legion - Now With Heaps More Kiwi, Bro
Wednesday October 28, 2020
My first Ubisoft game, Watch Dogs: Legion, is finally out. It gives me immense pride to see this released to the world, and I hope it lives up to the overwhelmingly positive reception it got when we announced it at E3 in 2019.
Though I worked on many gameplay systems - the AR Cloak, player inventory, character customisation, some of the gadgets and hacking abilities - there is one particular aspect of the game that will forever hold my legacy and it is this one thing that I am most proud of.
This map.
This map is shown in the game start sequence as DedSec London comes online. Observe a screenshot of this map during development, around the end of September 2019.
Yes, even my own project had committed the ultimate New Zealand faux pas - they left us off the map. I was outraged. I wrote an impassioned email to the entire project team and spoke about the wonderful things New Zealand has given the world, like Lord of the Rings, Flight of the Conchords, Lorde and Taika Waititi (this resonated well with many people who thoroughly enjoyed What We Do in the Shadows, not to mention he won People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival that year). I mentioned that subreddit and that IKEA map. I got a bug report filed for the issue, which became the most upvoted issue on the project at 85 votes.
By the end of the day, the artist in charge had responded to say that she had updated the map, and the next day, the bug report was marked as fixed and verified. I pulled a build for myself to see, and sure enough, Aotearoa was there, all nine glorious hexagons. I had literally put New Zealand on the map. I had saved Watch Dogs: Legion from being another casualty on /r/mapswithoutnewzealand, and that is my greatest achievement on this project.
#GetNZOnTheMap. Chur!
Posted by Jeremy at 5:36pm on Wednesday October 28, 2020 :: 0 comments :: 
Three Year Anniversary
Thursday July 30, 2020
Over four months have passed since we went into lockdown and started working from home. Toronto will move into Stage 3 of its economic opening plan, which allows for restrictive dine-in at restaurants and the opening of gyms and other recreational facilities. Masks continue to be mandatory in all indoor locations, and by and large, Canadians have responded well to the recommendations by health officials - and it shows in our decreasing numbers. Despite my love of food, it's unlikely I'll be dining in any time soon, just to make sure we stomp out that remainder of cases and don't get a second wave.
I was afraid we would have a bad summer but we've been able to enjoy the outdoors over the past few months. We've been on hikes in and outside of the city, visiting places like Mono Cliffs, Albion Falls and Limehouse Conservation Area. This weekend is Civic Holiday, and we'll be spending it near Sudbury, exploring Manitoulin Island and Killarney Provincial Park. The weather has been pretty scorching on most days, and while most of the weekends have been gloriously sunny, we've also had some fantastic summer thunderstorms which I've enjoyed watching from my balcony.
We've announced our release date for Watch Dogs: Legion, which will be October 29th 2020. It's been a hard slog but there's light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm looking forward to shipping my very first AAA game. Working from home has its challenges but on the whole, many of us have embraced this lifestyle and productivity has been very good. I still miss the social environment at the office, going out for lunches or grabbing a coffee or an ice cream, and Pokemon raids at the Water Tower or at Botman, but it's unlikely that I'll go back into the office until everything is back to normal.
It's been almost three years to the day since I landed in Toronto, and after last year's immigration hiccups when returning from Atlanta, I'm glad to say I'm finally a permanent resident of Canada. More than that, I've also bought an apartment within the same building I'm currently renting in, so yeah, looks like I'll be staying around for a while. Kind of a weird feeling to be adulting like this, but happy that I won't be paying someone else's mortgage anymore. It seemed like a good time to get into the market considering the effect that COVID19 has had on property and interest rates. There's still a few more things to sort out, and I need to start tidying up the place and getting ready to move, but it's good to know that I finally have a place to call my own.
Posted by Jeremy at 3:04am on Thursday July 30, 2020 :: 0 comments ::