2014’s Watch Dogs was heavily criticized for its graphical downgrade, with many lambasting Ubisoft for what they considered deceptive advertising. The game, which was initially revealed in 2012, didn’t quite look the same as in its initial reveal but Ubisoft says that at the time, it didn’t have enough information on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s hardware to accurately predict what the final product would look like on consoles. In an interview with Evening Standard, producer Dominic Guay said that Watch Dogs 2‘s world will be more realistic and detailed.

One thing to remember is that the first showing of Watch Dogs came in summer 2012, before anyone knew what the Next Gen of consoles and hardware would be. We did our best at the time to predict what that would be and always were forward that this first showing was running on a very powerful PC.
Guay then explained that Watch Dogs 2 has been developed on its target platforms since the very beginning.

For Watch Dogs 2, we are in a much more predictable context. We have been developing the game on our target platforms from the beginning.
Watch Dogs 2 uses an evolved version of the first opus technology. With many years passing doing R&D on this hardware generation, we were able to expend the game?s graphics significantly. The San Francisco Bay area is a great place to have long view distances with high detail and atmospheric effects. The lighting and effects are more realistic and the w...