Marcus Holloway is a fictional character from Ubisoft's Watch Dogs video game franchise, first appearing as the player character of the 2016 title, Watch Dogs 2. Marcus is introduced as a young hacker (known online by the alias "Retr0") based in the San Francisco Bay Area who is wrongfully flagged with a criminal profile by ctOS 2.0, the electronic mechanism employed to manage the region's infrastructure and surveillance network. Marcus succeeds in wiping his profile from the system, and joins the hacktivist collective DedSec to raise social awareness about the risks posed by ctOS 2.0 and expose the corruption of its creators, the Blume Corporation. An older Marcus makes a voice-only cameo appearance in Bloodline, a 2021 downloadable content (DLC) expansion for Watch Dogs: Legion, which stars his best friend and fellow DedSec member Reginald "Wrench" Blechman, and in which Marcus is voiced by Ruffin Prentiss. The character returns in the animated series Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, voiced by Mark Ebulue.
Marcus was first revealed along with Watch Dogs 2 in June 2016 by Ubisoft. He was intentionally designed to be very different in terms of personality and gameplay utility when compared to Aiden Pearce, the player character of the first Watch Dogs. The developers of Watch Dogs 2 encouraged collaboration with African American professionals within the entertainment industry to avoid turning characters like Marcus into caricatures. In keeping with the general shift in tone of Watch Dogs and expansion of its protagonist's abilities, the developers suggested that Marcus' intended playstyle mostly involve stunning enemies using nonlethal weaponry or using hacking skills to create distractions. Marcus has been the subject of generally positive reception following the release of Watch Dogs 2, with many critics recognizing the character's importance as an unusual representation of African Americans in popular media as well as black people in the video game medium as a whole.
Concept and design
Marcus Holloway was first revealed during the Watch Dogs 2 world premiere video uploaded on Ubisoft's official YouTube channel in June 2016. He is designed to be an athletic player character. His approach to navigate the game world of Watch Dogs 2 emphasizes fast-paced parkour maneuvers similar to other video games like Mirror's Edge. Marcus' gadgets, which help extend his ability to hack electronics, include a tiny remote control car which can conduct physical hacks and divert enemies with high-pitched insults, and a drone which scout from an elevated position and help plan his moves. Marcus could also using his hacking skills to create proximity triggers on electronics and place traps for his enemies.
Although Marcus is presented as an antihero hacker like the protagonist of the first Watch Dogs, Aiden Pearce, he is designed to be more expressive and charismatic by contrast. According to Watch Dogs 2 producer Dominic Guay, Marcus is "an optimistic man. He needs people. He sees good things in people, he's young, he's funny, he's charming". Marcus goes by the handle Retr0 due to his appreciation for the nostalgic aspects of popular culture, such as old-school hacker culture and "classic" songs from the R&B, hip hop, and electronic music genres. Marcus' background is conceptualized as an individual who is raised in Oakland, California. This became crucial to the story as the character is likely to have experienced social injustice early in his life as a member of a marginalized community, which informs the character's motivations throughout the story.