Without Watch Dogs protagonist Aiden Pierce in the lead role, Watch Dogs: Bad Blood is less of an epilogue to the full game's story and more of an epilogue to the city of Chicago as a Watch Dogs setting. Aiden has long since vanished, shifting the focus to part-time collaborator T-Bone, who himself is working hard at his own disappearing act. He's more skilled than Aiden in the computer security infiltration arts, and he's almost as talented in combat as Aiden. Yet Bad Blood is the furthest thing from a collection of repurposed missions with a character reskin. It introduces a slew of new gameplay features that wouldn't feel out of place had these mechanics been introduced in the original game. That includes taking Watch Dogs' theme of surveillance to its natural next step: mounting guns on cameras.

I appreciate that Bad Blood's premise is one involving the tying up of loose ends as opposed to the worn out one-last-job narrative at this story might have been. This DLC's three acts--strung together by 10 missions--effectively delve into one of T-Bone's many backstories. It's a history with significant baggage, tied to another familiar face: the affected Tobias Frewer. Tobias is crucial to Bad Blood, and his interactions with T-Bone reveal the depth of their shared past. Their sentimental conversations make for convincing exposition; the same can't be said of T-Bone's contrived thinking-out-loud narration when he's by himself. He sounds especially unnatural when he comments on radio reports that detail the aftermath of the events of the main game.

Remember how Mission Impossible 2 wasn't so much a John Woo movie as it was a remixed greatest hits edition of John Woo's directorial trademarks? This came to mind as I considered Watch Dogs' mechanics as a collection of influences from other Ubisoft games. Whenever you make subtle pushing motions to negotiate past a crowd, think did when we finally saw hostile humans being attacked by the infected.

After playing as the morally confused and inconsistent Aiden Pierce, it was easy to jump at the opportunity to play as any other member of Watch Dogs' ensemble cast, and I would not be opposed to another installment from the dark comedic perspective of fixer Jordi Chin. Bad Blood introduces new mechanics that fit snugly within an already fully-featured world. It's these qualities that make Bad Blood an essential purchase for Watch Dogs fans.