Watch Dogs Legion looks like the game the series has strived to be since its inception It’s a game with some of the biggest and boldest ideas Ubisoft has come up with in years It’s also a game that clearly had to make some concessions in order to execute these ideas
In the wake of a coordinated and devastating terrorist attack, London is a changed city These attacks shattered its resolution of steel By the time the hacktivist collective DedSec was implicated in the attacks, London turned on them Already one of the most guarded cities in the world, it has now completely ceded to the fascist regime.But not just any fascist, a special type that only the latest late stage capitalism can produce – private military contractors called Albion Security Engaged to work with the British government, MI5 and New Scotland Yard, Albion has become law in itself, sinking its tendrils into every part of the city There are travel and assembly restrictions Natural born citizens are being beaten in the street Illegal immigrants live in abject fear of discovery Albion has covered London’s iconic skyline in propaganda The Terror Threat Alert Level r never drops below a screaming IMMINENT
Ripped apart and driven even deeper underground than they already were, DedSec is the shadow of itself. From a hiding place in a disused part of the metro, carefully hidden under a pub a few steps from the Chambers of the Parliament and Big Ben, DedSec begins to rebuild His focus has shifted from the anti-business hacktivism of Watch Dogs 2 Now he leads a shadow digital guerrilla Cut off from the outside world and unable to bring in international hackers to help, DedSec rather must recruit in London itself
Watch Dogs Legion’s most touted new mechanic is the ability to recruit literally any Londoner into DedSec The game inhabits London with a wide range of people with different backgrounds, aesthetic styles and skills. people around you allows you to identify those who could be useful to the organization Some are much more valuable than others For example, I was able to recruit someone high-level in the police department Among his three skills very helpful, there was a high chance of immediately releasing arrested DedSec members This made the smash-and-grab approach more appealing. If caught, my jailed rookie was back on the streets within minutes
Another person I met only had one trait, Flatulence, which gave him a debuff on stealth because he farted uncontrollably when stressed.I also recruited him because you can’t let someone with that kind of talent get away
Watch Dogs Legion seems to generate individuals by taking advantage of a pool of appearance and trait modifiers The illusion of a living city full of different people is great at first, but by my sixteenth hour I was seeing people who looked alike everywhere I went I had two rookies on my roster with the same face, same hair, same dress style Aside from skills, the only difference between them was that one was black and the other was white As the illusion cracks you start to understand how Legion’s biggest trick is performed Passing the system over to proc-gen people is certainly not a bad solution for what Ubisoft Quebec tries to accomplish, but you start to follow their sleight of hand pretty quickly That said, it’s still a really cool idea and when it does work it’s kinda magic
The advantage of the Legion system is that, if you can find the right person for a given mission, chances are you can just come in, take what you need and leave. As soon as that clicked for me, it became my sole focus to recruit a member of Albion The problem with recruiting staff from Albion is that like many in London they have a poor view of DedSec’s business Grace to a thorough analysis of their needs and desires, it is possible to change their mind and create a recruitment opportunity
What I hadn’t anticipated was how powerful a recruit from Albion could be if collected early in the game Once on board, my new man inside easily became the most overpowered recruit on my roster I now have access to most of the city’s secure areas by default The vast majority of stealth missions have become about avoiding eye contact, using my phone to create minor distractions , to move quickly to my goal and find a silent back door to exit Much of the problem-solving involved in completing each mission just evaporated But it’s my reward for doing the job of bringing someone from Albion into the fold I started to leave him at home, however He just made it too easy
One of the unintended consequences of a game without a clear main character is that it’s difficult to create a story Rather than a longer main campaign on a character, Watch Dogs Legion instead runs a series of smaller campaigns. , shorter and interconnected from each London borough As you destabilize each borough and push its inhabitants into an uprising, this will unlock another campaign sequence that you can complete. Some of these missions are quite short, others will take an hour or two to overthrow Some, like the story of a wealthy tech mogul, his mother and the afterlife, are quite memorable Others , like the questline about Nigel Cass, The Man Who Controls Albion, are more of the standard action movie fare that Ubi tends to prefer.
The common thread running through all of these stories is a clear and present political message. The rise of fascism, the prevalence of police violence and the ungoverned hyper-capitalist desires of Silicon Valley are intertwined with The State Hydra of all that they create together must be fought, and this violent revolution may be necessary to defeat it This contrasts sharply with many other Ubisoft games Ubi has gained notoriety online for actively disavowing the political tendencies depicted in its Far games. Cry 5 sadly has nothing to say about gun violence in the United States Games in Tom Clancy’s lineage are comfortable with gamers becoming heavily militarized police forces themselves They are steeped in conservative values , in line with the politics of the man on which they are based
But I’m not sure how Ubisoft is going to remove this one by hand Watch Dogs Legion turns you into Antifa, and I really like that for us
Watch Dogs Legion is a much smaller game than most players might expect from any of Ubisoft’s open-world titles.The world map is compact, its 24-slot skill tree seems constrained by compared to its contemporaries and the number of cars you can drive is quite limited Even the installation size, at 35 GB on the Xbox One X, is frankly tiny for an AAA tentpole version
The following opinion may make me a little upset we’ll have to see when the reviews go live, but it’s something I really like about the game The Legion Knows What It’s Doing L adopting a smaller scale minimizes sprawl It makes the daily Londoners fights you all recruit a little more personal The Legion knows their best idea is to become anyone and they focus all production around this system. So when other areas of the game feel like they’ve been pruned, everything still seems justified in that scale.
Ubisoft’s London itself is a marvel It gets by with a smaller map overall being incredibly dense It’s full of winding streets and alleys that add to your total commute time so it looks a lot bigger than it is.It’s the kind of city that makes me dream about Assassin’s Creed Unity’s vision of Paris – beautifully constructed and done with an eye for detail artist
Watch Dogs Legion is honestly the best the series has ever been.Rather than trying to match its stable partners in terms of scale or reach, it chooses to fully explore one really great idea. For those expecting something bigger and more brutal, this may not seem like enough. It takes confidence to make a game like this at AAA level It’s a risk, and I’m glad that Ubisoft was willing to take it It took a while for Watch Dogs to figure it out The series was forced to live or die on its willingness to experiment, and Legion is its zenith Like all the Londoners you can recruit in the street, Watch Dogs Legion has its own identity
Strengths: large central vanity; London is beautiful; Fuck capitalism, go homeLowlights: May seem too small or constrained for players accustomed to sprawling open worldsDeveloper: Ubisoft QuebecPublisher: UbisoftPlatforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X | S, Windows PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
David Smith is the Games and Tech Editor at The AU Review He previously wrote for PC World Australia You can find him on Twitter at @RhunWords
Watch Dogs Legion is resisting the usual open-world sprawl in favor of something much more experimental – and memorable Our take:
https: // wwwtheaureviewcom / games / watch-dogs-legion-review /
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