Aiden Pearce

**Aiden Pearce (**also known as **The Vigilant/Vigilante** and **The Fox** by the media**)** is the protagonist of *Watch Dogs*. He is a highly skilled and deadly black hat hacker who has access to the ctOS of Chicago using a highly specialized device greatly upgraded for him by Clara Lille, the Profiler. Because his actions led to a family tragedy, Aiden has taken to a personal crusade against the powers that be. His obsession with security, surveillance, and control borders on the paranoid and dangerous, extending to monitoring his own family (unbeknownst to them).

## History of Aiden Pearce

### Background

Aiden Pearce was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 2, 1974. It is implied in an audio log that his mother took both him and his sister, Nicole Pearce, to the United States in order to escape their father. Aiden grew up in a rough neighborhood, and frequently had to fend for himself, his sister grew up idolizing him and was noted for his cars, hockey and his friends were described as 'gross'.

Eventually he became part of a criminal gang. He personally paid to learn about combat and how to wield weapons, which contributed to his career as a thief. During his criminal years, Aiden became acquainted with a fellow hacker, Damien Brenks, where the two taught each other specific hacking skills and the two proved to be a strong team.

## Appearance

Aiden is an adult male with green eyes, brown mid-length hair, and light facial hair. While having his mugshot taken, it is shown that he is around 6 ft 2 in and appears to be of mesomorphic build. In the trailers Aiden wears a long-sleeve, zip-neck usually un-tucked, though his clothes can be changed to several other jackets of similar style.  On top of the sweater, Aiden wears a two tone brown modern, knee-length trench coat with a leather strip that runs horizontally across the chest. Aiden wears dark blue jeans with zippers over the back pockets and black boots with light grey highlights based off real life Polo Conquest 2 boots. He also has a deep, gravelly voice.

Aiden also keeps a neckwarmer scarf tucked into the neck of his sweater, which he may pull up so that it covers his face up to the bridge of his nose. Aiden also wears a two tone black/olive cap with a logo that can be debated to be either a stylized 'Nexus' logo or a fox.

## Abilities and skills

Pearce is extremely skilled, vastly experienced, highly trained and very deadly in hand-to-hand combat, lethal and non-lethal battle and stealth tactics, offensive and defensive driving, gunplay, advanced hacking, and parkour/freerunning. He can chain together actions in rapid succession such as vaulting over a fence while hacking an electrical relay box to neutralize a criminal.

His hand-to-hand combat skills are shown to be a variety of both dangerously efficient martial arts and deadly street fighting techniques, probably learned through his career as a thief and former Fixer. He is also skilled in countersurveillance, often shown when he is escaping various thugs, Fixers, and police officers with ease. Consequentially, he is often required to escape from pursuers due to him being a wanted man.

Pearce also has 'focus mode' which slows down time and allows the player (Aiden) to get a better shot or see what to hack. This has been confirmed to be representitive of his quick reflexes and strong senses.

## Relationships

### Nicole Pearce

Main article: Nicole Pearce
Aiden and Nicole share a flawed, distant yet loving brother-sister relationship. Although they were caring about eachother, Aiden secretly monitored Nicole and her son plus keeping his "Vigilante" persona covered from her. Even after Nicole being kidnapped and later rescued by Aiden which lead to discovery of Aiden's vigilantism they hold their bond together. However after Nicole's escape from Chicago with her son, it seems Aiden avoided to meet with them, due to her safety.

### Jackson Pearce

Main article: Jackson Pearce
Aiden cares deeply for his nephew, Jackson.

### Jordi Chin

Main article: Jordi Chin
Aiden and Jordi have a love-hate relationship. Jordi helped Aiden throughout the game. Near the end, Jordi betrays the hacker. But they still ended as, well, allies. Don't ask me how that went if you don't know. Just play the overly underrated game because it's one of the best games I have ever played.

Main article: Clara Lille
### Clara Lille

After discovering who Bad Boy 17 really was, the two become a team, but over time Aiden discovered that he had been betrayed by the same person. Later in the game, Clara visits the cemetery to leave flowers on Lena's grave to show her guilt, but is shot by Aiden's enemies. But it is claimed that she is still alive.

### T-Bone

Main article: T-Bone Grady
Aiden and T-Bone are allies. Later in the game they part ways. T-Bone, also known as Raymond Kenney later appears in Watch Dogs 2 as one of the side characters, becoming part of DedSec.

## Murders committed

* Angelo Tucci: Ambushed while on the way to the prison.
* Robert Racine: Killed during a car chase.
* Nicholas Crispin: Shot in order to steal identity.
* Delford "Iraq" Wade: Killed in firefight.
* JB "Defalt" Marcowics: Killed during a car chase. (optional)
* Dermot "Lucky" Quinn: Hacked pacemaker, causing Quinn to have a heart attack.
* Damien Brenks: Shot in the head.
* Maurice Vega: Shot to eliminate loose ends (optional).
* Various Fixers.

## Behind the scenes

Aiden Pearce's character first appeared in the E3 gameplay demo in 2012, where he was shown carrying out the murder of media mogul Joseph Demarco. Actor Noam Jenkins provided the voice for Aiden Pearce in the game, while Sébastien Rouleau provided the motion capture for Aiden's movement.

Aiden Pearce has been compared to Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned methamphetamine kingpin, from the hit-show *Breaking Bad* by *Watch Dogs'* creative director Jonathan Morin, and he even cited White as one of the main influences for Aiden's character. "When I think about it for a second, he’s the most self-centered motherfucker on the planet, right?" he said, speaking of Heisenberg (Walter White) in terms that could, it seems, easily be applied to Pearce as well. "And then I go back and I say, 'Oh my god, he’s awesome, he needs to win.' And what’s great about that is it’s true for all the characters in the series, right? It’s the same in our game."

## Trivia

* Although Aiden is right-handed, he can use both his Profiler and a one-handed weapon simultaneously.
* Aiden, as part of his hacking skills and need to monitor his family, is proficient in social engineering.
* The broken "Z" on his mask is based off the logo of the game's original developer studio title, Nexus. Further more Nexus is the license plate (spelled N3X US) of Aiden's personal car, which he eventually gives to his sister to leave Chicago.
* Aiden means "Fire Walker" in old Irish.
* Aiden shares similarities to Ezio Auditore from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series. Both have lost family that were murdered and plan revenge. They also try and protect what family they have left.
* Aiden has no legal job in the campaign, and no ctOS record of a legal job. It is assumed he lives off money he and his partner stole as hackers before his niece died.
* Aiden is a very reserved man and never talks about his feelings, many thought that Aiden and Clara could be a nice couple, but Clara identified herself as homosexual, in fact we can see in some scenes of the game that the woman seems annoyed by the figure masculine. Although Aiden has aged over the years, he does not deny that he may be interested in women, in fact there are rumors that the man could pair up with an Italian woman known to all only as Mary.
* All of Aiden's outfits are virtually the same as his cover outfit, although varying shoes and boots, and different sizes and patterns on his clothes.
* When trying to find Defalt in dotconnexion, Aiden's profile comes up as saying 'got his niece killed'. This is one of the few times this happens in the game in which you see this happen. Other times include when he is masquerading as Crispin and when he is in jail. At most other times Aiden's face does not register on the ctOS network which could be due to him hacking it to wipe himself off.
* At the end of the game, once the credits are rolling, the player can see a video of WKZ News, interviewing Doctor Mendez, the therapist of Jackson. She comments a book will be written about Aiden, with the end of exploring his mind and personality.
	+ However, Doctor Mendez only met Aiden a few times in-game. It is possible that she had more encounters with him between Lena's death and the beginning of the game's main story.
* Aiden is sometimes referred to by the citizens of Chicago as "The Fox" because of the stylized fox head on his hat, and the colors of his trench coat and sweater, which resemble that of a gray fox's coat.

## References

1. ↑ Your Questions for the Developers. Nikolas Schmidt in a Q/A with Watch Dogs Forum.net. Retrieved on April 18, 2014.
2. ↑ Watch\_Dogs - MoCap Session. *Youtube*. Retrieved on April 18, 2014.
3. ↑ IFC (June 11, 2012). E3 2012: “WATCH DOGS” COULD BE THE “BREAKING BAD” OF VIDEO GAMES. *IFC*. Retrieved on June 1, 2014.