ctOS 2.0

Lore & Background

ctOS 2.0 was forged by Blume as the successor to the original Central Operating System, a unified network that laces every device into a single, pulsing grid. San Francisco became its testbed in 2016, three years after Chicago's chaos. The system seamlessly integrates traffic, surveillance, communications, power, policing, and financial networks into one sprawling digital organism. In practice, ctOS 2.0 drinks from every connected phone, license-plate reader, credit-card swipe, and security camera, funneling the torrent into a processing layer Blume can tap and manipulate at will. DedSec uncovers that this new ctOS can quietly harm innocent citizens across the city—falsifying records, framing targets, even silencing dissent. To fight back, the group launches a gritty social-media campaign to expose the corruption and crimes the system enables, aiming to recruit allies before bringing Blume crashing down. The system's architecture concentrates power in the hands of its operators and their corporate puppeteers, making it the living, breathing embodiment of the surveillance state DedSec was born to oppose.

In Their Own Story

In 2016, three years after Chicago's ctOS meltdown, San Francisco becomes the first city to roll out Blume's next-generation ctOS—a pervasive network that stitches every device into a single, watchful system. Marcus Holloway, a gifted hacker wrongly flagged and punished by ctOS 2.0's algorithms for a crime he didn't commit, joins the rogue collective DedSec (comprising Sitara Dhawan, Josh Sauchak, Horatio Carlin, and the ever-masked Reginald 'Wrench' Blechman). His initiation: hack a Blume server farm to scrub his profile from the system's cold memory. As DedSec digs deeper, they discover ctOS 2.0 can covertly harm innocent citizens across the city—rigging evidence, silencing activists, and twisting lives. They launch a social-media blitz to expose these crimes, hoping to recruit followers and tear down Blume. But after several victories, Josh spots strange irregularities in their follower counts. Marcus investigates and finds a chilling truth: DedSec has been played. Blume's CTO, Dušan Nemec, orchestrated their hacks to stoke public fear, then sold ctOS 2.0 as the ultimate shield against the very chaos he engineered. Forced to flee the city, DedSec regroups, vowing to expose the lie.

Reader's Guide

ctOS 2.0 is not a character you fight in a corridor; it is the environment itself. In Watch Dogs 2 it is the infrastructure the player hacks, and the antagonist the story is built around. The system governs San Francisco, and Marcus Holloway's DedSec chapter works to expose and ultimately bring down Blume. Mechanically, ctOS 2.0 is the hackable layer of the world. Players access its subsystems—traffic, surveillance, power, communications, finance—through the in-game smartphone. Marcus can hack into various electronic devices connected to the ctOS system: he can modify the personal information of NPCs to have them arrested or attacked by gangs, hack and manipulate every mobile phone featured in the game, disrupt traffic by hacking cars and traffic lights, hack into monitoring cameras, and carry out "mass hacking" which hacks the electrical equipment of a large group of people. The player can also gain multiple options while hacking the same object—for instance, if the player attempts to hack a car, they can gain direct control over them, or have the car lose control and crash in a random direction. Marcus has an arsenal of advanced equipment, including a quadcopter and remote-controlled car, both of which can be used for remote hacking and scouting. Treat ctOS 2.0 as the faction-antagonist: the system DedSec opposes, with Blume as its corporate face.

Did You Know?

• ctOS 2.0 is the next generation of the Central Operating System, first installed in San Francisco in 2016, three years after the events of Chicago.
• Marcus Holloway was punished for a crime he did not commit through ctOS 2.0, which led him to join DedSec.
• Blume's CTO Dušan Nemec used DedSec's own hacks as a fear campaign to sell ctOS 2.0 to cities terrified of being hacked.
• The data-manipulation program called 'Bellwether', designed by Raymond 'T-Bone' Kenney, was the key to Dušan's plan to rig world finances and politics from behind the curtain.