It's rarely about the mediocrity of a story, it's about the adventure inbetween otherwise every story on earth that has to do with love or vengence would be shit.

30 fps, imagine what you'd get with all those environmental stuff going around. It's a bad game because of promises such as? That one e3 conference was probably using the in-game engine however using 4 nvidia geforce titans to run it. I know Ubisoft is shit at times trust me, Uplay and other stuff of theirs is just bad but I'm really starting to think you just rushed through it. The story is really epic, reguardless if it's mediocre, there's a lot more to this game than you realize. You're letting what you viewed at e3 modify your actual opinion. In no way am I saying the thing they pulled at e3 is bullshit, but as you can see the game is very different opposed to e3 even the mission they demo in e3 is different in the retail game. The characters look different and obviously the graphics are different.

Ubisoft is now notorious for messing up their releases (most recent being The Crew) and not once did I say I could run it at 60FPS, I said I could run it at Max being no v-sync AA x8 getting around medium 30's (33-36). Watch dogs is not a good game because it broke promises to the consumers, story wise it was mediocre, nothing groundbreaker was in it except the hacking concept which was way overhyped and nothing really new. Perhaps if you didn't read the news leading up to the game and bought it (like I did was Dark Souls 2) it wouldn't be such a bad game. Sorry that my opinions differ to yours but I and over half the fanbase where expecting a much different game.

If you need an example of a downgrade that was actually COMPLETELY unecessary look at Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. Look at BETA footage and retail footage for those linear games, the overall concept of that game was slightly different from the beginning.

I agree with it being overhyped but this is MY view on the game not anyone elses. I truly think if you pay attention and think about what is going on there are some definitely relateable scenes to everyday life along with some very deep lessons. Sure some things happened that shouldn't have happened and/or were pointless but I don't see those as filler especially in Watch_Dogs, you're in the view of a troubled man, him and the people around him are going to make mistakes or have some stupid views that don't make sense to you just like real people.

All that mod does is change the brightness, contrast, and saturation and remove even more graphical elements. I'd know because I actually installed it half way through the game.

You can run it at a steady 60 fps on max? Funny because one of the latest video cards (below the latest Nvidia 980) can barely stay on 60 on max in this game. Which can And tell me exactly when a moment like that (Lack of emotion) happens? Excluding the side missions, which mission does this?
That list is all graphics/animations that are still somewhat present in the game (Instead of civilians pulling people out of cars, you can), how does that make a game bad and what effect does it truly have on gameplay? You know plenty of games have had downgrades usually for the better. Wasn't Watch_Dogs originally supposed to be linear in 2012? In a linear game you can provide much more graphical elements because there is scripted stuff going on, in an open world dynamic game with tons and tons of non scripted violence/physics/graphics/coding it's obviously more demanding.

Here's the list:

The extraordinary looking gas station explosion and debris/fire being scattered all over the place.
Explosions pushing cars and making windows shatter.
Pedestrians helping car crash victims.
You being able to help car crash victims. (seems to only work during gun fights)
Overall AI of driving citizens is awful, as soon as traffic lights get hacked they all just go full throttle even if other cars are still driving through the intersection.
Glass pieces scattered on the street after breaking through a car window.
Blood on the windshield after driver gets shot.
Smooth gun pick up from the ground.
That cool bokeh effect when entering slow-motion.
The amazing looking dusty/foggy environment.
Compared to the E3 demo the car damage models are actually about equal in quality as the ones in Vice City or Sand Andreas. (not dynamic in any way)

Overall the game is OK but was way to overhyped for what was actually delivered...

That's exactly my point, a typical conversation between charater was simply "Aiden, save me."
"Okay, I will save you."
There was a serious lack of emotion. Your point about nobody running it on max? I know plenty of people including myself who can run it max (no V-sync). The worse mod, granted, does provide us with the level of detail graphical wise of that which was shown in the E3 demo, but it is a mod...
Here's a list of just some of these missing features (and missing graphical features)

(To be in next comment due to character length.)

What missing features? The downgrade wasn't because Ubisoft is dumb or something, clearly anyone can barely run it as is on max settings. So what makes you think you'll run E3 graphics? This game was never intended for MP to begin with sort of how Call of Duty started out, and it's really not bad. The characters were extremely diverse I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Jordi, Aiden, Damien, and Clara are extremely diverse and show it, they're hackers and assassins they're not trying to be friends yet emotions do get the best of them. One scene in particular where Aiden is mad at Clara shows tons of emotion.