“It’s impossible to say for certain what he’s really like. He masks his personality and he’s very good at it … This is a very smart man who is looking to gain the upper hand in every situation.”
~ Dr. Yolanda Mendez

Fictional characters are quite odd. Though they exist solely in our minds and through creative media, they represent so much more - our aspirations, desires, resentments, and pains. Embedded in their diegeses, their experiences often derive from our own, contributing to the construction of a novel universe, one that (hopefully) is immersive, compelling, and above all else, resonant. For me, that universe was the fictionalised Chicago found in the first Watch Dogs game. I was fascinated by every inch of it: the neo-noir cinematic elements, the verisimilitude of a hustling-bustling digital microcosm, the flawed protagonist too broody for his own good. Of my decade of experience with video games, not one has had me as hooked as this one, and I quickly found myself returning to this title again and again, noticing finer details and departing with new thoughts on the narrative with every iteration.
Around two years after I first played the game, I enrolled in an introductory psychology class at my university in partial fulfilment of my program of study, and coincidentally, I again got the nostalgic itch to boot up the game once more. As the class progressed and I learned more about the theories rationalising the workings of the human mind, I began to see connections between the game and the class material. Very quickly, I started to realise how strongly the theme of psychology saturated the fictional world of Watch Dogs, especially with respect to the protagonist, Aiden Pearce. What once was this “cool” (and I mean that in every imaginable definition of the word) super-hero-like figure hellbent on seeking revenge became this complex and nuanced character whose multidimensional psyche had something more to offer, though admittedly still hellbent on revenge. Hence, this video essay seeks to present some of my newly informed thoughts on Pearce’s character, using established psychological concepts and academic literature to profile and rationalise the markedly atypical behaviours of a tormented mind.
Special thanks to my psychology professors and the Watch Dogs community for making this project possible.

Errata:
At 50:53, I said "adaptive pathway to cognitive dissonance," when I meant to say "cognitive consonance."
At 57:56, Lance Brenner is not grievously injured by Pearce, but by his accomplice, Jordi Chin. Brenner is optionally killed by the player following a cutscene. Thanks to Julia Rose for pointing this out.

Table of Contents:

00:00 Introduction
2:14 Chapter 1: The judge, jury, and executioner
9:25 Chapter 2: A dish best served cold
23:08 Chapter 3: Ctrl + Alt + Del
35:21 Chapter 4: Blissful ignorance
53:01 Chapter 5: I am as I am
1:13:22 Concluding remarks

An exhaustive list of sources for this video can be found here: https://bit.ly/3nGGIzH

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