Mark Buckingham: To anyone who saw the trailer for Watch Dogs at E3, it should be clear why it's on everyone's radar. It's got a big sprawling open city to explore, and it puts the power to manipulate everything electronic in the palm of the player's hand. It's made some bold promises. I'm interested to see if it can possibly deliver on them.

Dustin Chadwell: Watch Dogs was one of the few stand-out surprises from E3 2012, and it remains one my top titles to look forward to in 2013. Assuming that this game is a good glimpse at what we’d be seeing next-gen, it has a whole lot of promise behind it. There are not enough details on it to go too wild yet, but I’m certainly looking forward to finding out more.

Brian Dumlao: Watch Dogs has more than just a modern-day Assassin's Creed vibe going for it. With more emphasis on gadgetry and information gathering than parkour, it feels like a natural evolution for open-ended games. More interesting, however, is the possible multiplayer tease shown at the end of the E3 trailer. With so much still unknown about it, it'll be exciting to get any and all info on it, including whether this is a next-gen title.

Jason Grant: I'll say this up front — I'm not much for sandbox or action games that concentrate too much on stealth components. I like to kick butt, and I don't care who sees me doing it. However, Watch Dogs presents the concept of triumphing over your enemies via equal parts brainpower, all-seeing tech and espionage, with just a little bit of ol' justice thrown in to round out the package. Color me interested.

Tony "OUberLord" Mitera: Watch Dogs gives me a glimmer of hope that it will really be something new in the genre. With as many examples of information warfare as were shown in the demonstrations thus far, it seems to mix a lot of technology into your more traditional sandbox-style gameplay. Similar to how gadgets made Splinter Cell more than just a stealth game, here's hoping that Watch Dogs does the same for its genre.

Erik "NekoIncardine" Ottosen: The capstone of Ubisoft's E3 2012 display, the framing device of the tough-to-argue best press set of that show — and what a premise. Combining elements of Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell with modern-day weaponry and futuristic hacking, Watch Dogs takes the premise of a world that would inspire paranoia in any soul and turns the integration of data and the end of privacy into a weapon more powerful than any gun. When this game comes out, I expect it'll become the basis for a lot of copycats.

Thomas Wilde: Open-world games are not generally my thing, but I grew up in the 1990s and have a soft spot for the "hackers control the world" genre, as ridiculous as I know it is. Add in a little parkour and some 20-minutes-into-the-future science fiction, and you get a game that has my attention. I'm looking forward to causing elaborate traffic accidents by screwing up the city's stoplights.