It was somewhat of an urban myth, but now, it has been confirmed: Ubisoft has indeed planned to stay within the Driver universe after Driver: San Francisco, only to switch to plan B a little later.

Jeremy Pool’s feature on VG247 recaps nicely how Driver’s reboot seemed to be a big plan within Ubisoft, and since the IP did not get a new episode in a decade (and it likely never will, no matter how disappointing it is to admit), we can now look back to see how Watch Dogs, which is currently at three titles, came to life from all this.

The next Driver game was in development at Ubisoft Montreal, while Ubisoft Reflections (who brought Driver to life in the past) were putting the finishing touches on Driver: San Francisco. The team in Quebec faced something new, as they never worked on the Driver IP before, and they set out to do something highly ambitious. „It was always modern-day. It had on-foot, parkour, combat as well as driving, all set in a large open-world city, and the main hook was always modern technology and hacking. After a while trying to make this concept fit into the Driver franchise, the decision was made to turn it into its own, new IP,” a Ubisoft source told Peel.

This early Driver concept was so early in the production that the cars had no textures. However, the main problem lied within how the technology and the hacking elements have driven the gameplay away from the Driver IP. It wasn’t the driving and the city that were the issue. Keep in mind that Assassin’s Creed also started as something different: this IP began its life as a reboot for Prince of Persia no less.

We didn’t know when Driver was turned into Watch Dogs, but Driver: San Francisco’s failure in terms of sales might have been the final nail in the project’s coffin. According to the unnamed Ubisoft source, „[Ubisoft Montreal] just did their own thing and convinced Yves [Guillemot, CEO] he could have ‘his own Grand Theft Auto’ instead of the low selling Driver.”

We can’t even imagine what things could have been if Ubisoft never creates Watch Dogs.

Source: PCGamer