In Watch Dogs 2, players will attempt to take down the ctOS 2.0 surveillance system and its creator, Blume, as expert hacker Marcus Holloway. They’ll also contend with another Bay Area threat, the infamous Zodiac Killer — or what appears to be a copycat killer utilizing his methods — in a bonus mission shown in a new trailer today.
Watch Dogs 2’s Zodiac Killer mission will see players chasing down an "unwanted ghost of San Francisco’s past," Ubisoft said in a release. "A killer is staging the bodies of his victims all over Oakland like the infamous Zodiac Killer of the Sixties, and he’s taunting the police and news outlets with coded messages."
San Francisco’s Zodiac Killer claimed to have murdered 37 people, though only five deaths attributed to the serial killer are confirmed. The killer’s identity remains unknown. Experts from the FBI assisted law enforcement agencies in Northern California, providing forensic analysis of handwriting and fingerprints from the letters that the killer sent. David Fincher directed a 2007 feature film, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey, Jr., based on the hunt for the Zodiac Killer.
Cryptography, which is one of the topics addressed by the Watch Dogs games, was also a major element of the Zodiac Killer case. Riddles, a manhunt and an exclusive Zodiac-themed outfit await players who try to solve Ubisoft’s take on the mysterious killer.
Ubisoft will release Watch Dogs 2 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Nov. 15, and on Windows PC Nov. 29. "Zodiac Killer" is a pre-order-exclusive mission.