Six years ago, I traveled to Italy for the first time. Among the places I visited were major cities such as Venice, Rome, and Florence. Considering it was my first trip to Europe, where many tourists flock, I should have been a little concerned. However, that couldn’t have been further from the truth, because I was full of confidence the moment I embarked on my journey.

In fact, I knew the layout of the major cities like the back of my hand, thanks to the preliminary lessons I got from Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood. Since the Assassin’s Creed series served me well as a perfect VR-esque tour guide for Florence, Venice, and Rome, I was able to breeze through most of the ruins and obelisks in Rome in under a day, using just a basic map.

That’s probably when I started developing a mild obsession with open world games that are based on real locations. After my trip to Italy, I bought and played every open world game that reflects real cities. Aside from the usual aspects that games have, the crucial point of interest for these games was how well the games simulated real cities.

As such, Watch Dogs 2, set in The Golden City, was a game I couldn’t wait to get my hands on, because the US Inven office is located in San Francisco. Of course, there have been numerous movies and games set in San Francisco and Silicon Valley that came before Watch Dogs 2, such as GTA: San Andreas and The Rock. While Rockstar went with a fictional name of San Fierro in San Andreas, I was able to enjoy Watch Dogs 2 like a true tour because Ubisoft didn’t shy away from using real names for cities in the vicinity.

By the time my playing hours for Watch Dogs 2 hit thirty, I felt it was about time I go out in the real world. The game’s representation of San Francisco, where Marcus left his mark in various ways, was so accurate that it made me wonder if the game was a secret tour promotion program created by the city government. One sunny California day, we packed our cameras and drove to see for ourselves what we had only seen in the game.