Watch Dogs 2 hands-on: The hacktivist crusade against the smart city of San Francisco

VentureBeat’s office isn’t there, but you’ll find plenty of familiar sights in the San Francisco depicted in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs 2. The City by the Bay is the setting for the fictional game about vigilante cyber hackers clashing with big corporations.

I visited Ubisoft in the real San Francisco, where I was able to play hands-on with a sizable chunk of the single-player game. I was able to capture a lot of video as well, and it’s once again a very interesting intersection of reality and fiction, with familiar real places like Coit Tower, Lombard Street, and the Golden Gate Bridge. In contrast to previous previews, I was able to roam around the city at will and perform a couple of missions in the game that debuts on November 15 on the PC and consoles.