Watch Dogs: Real Chicago vs. In-Game Chicago Visual Comparison

We compared the real Chicago to the Chicago of Watch Dogs and the results were pretty impressive.

[PoshRaven]

The real chicago has MUCH better graphics omg!

[cocainecowboy]

Playing Watch Dogs when it came out, I was immediately in love with the city...traveling there this summer was the best vacation ever...I felt like I actually knew the city.

[JunpeiIori]

The city itself has some inaccuracies, but what's really weird is the mountains you can always see in the distance. There are NO mountains anywhere near Chicago, or in Illinois for that matter. It's a very flat state. Even the most rural areas (which aren't that close to Chicago) are corn fields and soy fields. So yeah, Pawnee looked like it belonged in a different part of the country. It was kind of funny, but also killed the immersion for me a bit. I was hoping it would be super accurate since I'm from Chicago. 

[KyleeAsakura]

I had no idea how similar it is to the real Chicago! That's really cool that they took that extra step :)

[altnap]

1:36 in Chicago rn and my hotel room looks directly out at this sign it’s pretty cool to see the hotel I’m staying at in a video game lmfao.

[seandevlin]

Being from chicago I flipped out when I found out the setting of this game

[MonkeysxMoo]

Those are actually pretty good comparision and this is from someone from Chicago

[MrTARIQSs]

0:40 E3 2012 build
0:43 final game
LoooL

[szib]

Why isnt that refelctive thingy reflective in the game?

[orangeapples]

That was fun seeing the real life Chicago landmarks and thinking, "wait, I know that."

[michaels]

2:31 Thats a badass building. Looks a lot better then the watch dogs version

[Linksonic]

Did they have copyright issues when recreating the Cloudgate? It's a flat-shaded torus in Watch Dogs instead of a bean shape.
Also, you can tell that Clara is not Chicago-native, or else she would have called it "The Sears Tower" instead of "The Willis Tower". No one in Chicago except tourists calls it the Willis Tower.

[MrMikeTheDude]

Thanks for titles and words on the screen IGN i could not compare the differences.

[ghettoboybro]

It’s kind of trippy living in Chicago and passing these places in real life and owning the game and passing them in the game

[friedchicken]

They should have Watch Cats in Naperville

[squidparty]

they missed so many important neighborhoods like pilsen, museum campus, bronzeville, Bridgeport, chinatown, Ukrainian village, goose island, lakeview, Bucktown, o'hare. I don't want people to play watchdogs and automatically think that chicago is just industrial and urban decay. I know people in new York or los angeles probably feel the same way about gta. although they did good on downtown but Pawnee shouldn't even be there. Pawnee us way down by Springfield.

[denisherlock]

You should compare the steam pipe explosion in real life too...

[Dragonlacross]

Come on ubisoft you have to put reflections on Cloud Gate!!! I mean if you are going to even have it in there you need reflections on the bloody thing! Just looks like an ugly pile of gray shit. 

[wearecity]

7/10, some buildings are missing, that could easily have been modelled. But a lot of items at least resemble the real life structures. Good video, something I'm sure many of us would have been wondering.

[NBWDOUGHBOY]

If Watch Dogs got a Remaster with Raytracing. They would be able to real make that hotdog mirror.