Watch Dogs: "It's always nice with a little more time"

We met with Watch Dogs' cinematic lead Lars Bonde to discuss privacy issues, the recent delay, performance capture and more.

When Ubisoft decided to delay Watch Dogs for "extra time to polish and fine tune every detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience" it left a gaping hole in the launch line-ups of both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It could also be seen as a missed opportunity as privacy and surveillance is on everybody's mind at the moment.

"It's very present day that we have all the security stuff with NSA listening on on phone calls with ministers in Europe," says cinematic lead Lars Bonde. "A little bit earlier this year NSA listening in on phone calls done in the US."

"We started about 4.5 years ago and this is kind of a dream come true for us that people are talking so much about that right now. Because we knew at the time that this was an issue of privacy, and that's something we wanted to highlight and it's very much what Watch Dogs is about."

Watch Dogs was planned as part of PS4 launch bundles and Ubisoft had set the target sales at a whopping 6.2 million copies. Delaying the game wasn't a decision taken lightly.

"It's always nice with a little more time," says Bonde. "You always have a little bit of a top ten list of things you want to do. But I think it was a very strong move. It was a gutsy move. I know a lot of people were a little bit unhappy with it and I understand that. But at the same time we wouldn't have worked on something more than 4 years to just push it out because there's a new generation consoles coming out just now. We want to make sure it's the game it deserves to be."

Bonde goes on to describe the performance capture process that saw the prinicipal scenes recorded with the actors in 6 weeks in a process close to that which actors are used to in film.

"One thing I'm really proud of among others is the casting that we've done," says Bonde. "We've been in Chicago. We've been to L.A. Cast actors that we feel are the right people to represent Chicago. Even just our living city that we have in the world is all people from Chicago. It's all voices from Chicago."

Watch Dogs is set for release in the spring of 2014.