Watch Dogs: Legion is Ubisoft‘s upcoming third instalment in the Watch Dogs series. While this is a sequel to Watch Dogs 2, it focuses on a British cell of the hacker group DedSec.
Set in a near-future London, a dystopian surveillance state looms. DedSec has been framed for a string of terrorist attacks. Driven even further underground, your aim is to liberate the city but first, you must recruit the denizens of London to build your hacker army and uncover the conspiracy.
Series Direction
Ubisoft have created an interesting RPG alternative with the ability to control multiple characters that can be recruited throughout your playthrough. You can pretty much recruit any NPC. But with the game’s in-depth recruitment system and a relatively small pool of suggested characters, being selective might be a better choice.
During our playtest we played some of the opening missions but quickly got sidetracked. This is something that Ubisoft open-worlders are known for but the distractions are a little different this time.
How many characters can you recruit in Watch Dogs: Legion?
One of the major highlights of Watch Dogs: Legion is the huge amount of characters you can recruit. Procedurally generated, Ubisoft says that the number of potential recruits is in the millions. They supposedly all have different attributes, skills and stories.
During the preview, we didn’t have a chance to check every character’s bio. Although they’ll probably have similarities between most, with a few gems in the mix.
With 20 available positions for characters, most players will search out the unique characters and pad their roster out with explosives expert grannies.Out of the 9 million or so possible recruits, how many of those are dangerous grannies has yet to be revealed.
Recruitment Process
To recruit a character, you first need to gather intel on your target, his is done by scanning them. You can then act on any info gathered that reveals opportunities available to convince potential acolytes.
Players essentially go in blind, slowly building an assessment of whether the target would add something to their crew. Should you deem them worthy, there is considerable intrigue in making contact and beginning their questline on the path to DedSec membership.
I was impressed by the pool of options and the system itself. In particular, how it invites the player to cast a wide net to find the right person for the job. It also manages to maintain this organic feel as a recruitment effort progresses.
I tried to recruit a barrister to acquire some legal help for all the characters that wound up in jail from my mishaps. But decided to meet her at the courthouse. Let’s just say I wasn’t welcome at the courthouse and she won’t be representing the crew due to conflicting interests, I might have shot her while trying to flee the area.
TaZer Blazing
Missions play out much like you’d expect them to. Reach a location, infiltrate using your skills, or go in guns blazing. It’s up to you, but the game definitely promotes using your utility. In my short time playing, I decided to go in guns blazing, or Tazer blazing as it was. And ended up dying to the never ending hordes of angry guards. It is odd though, how a guard, standing on the other side of a building can hear a taser shot as easily as any gun. That’s some stellar hearing! Hopefully some of the AI behaviour can be tweaked before release.
The game’s open-world sandbox is fun to explore. I spent way too much time in a boat, living out my personal pirate fantasy. And then ended up in a bar playing darts, drunk too much and took a very comfortable, extremely loud taxi to the hospital. There’s hours of fun to be had just hijacking cars and messing with the inhabitants of London. The things you and DedSec do to poor Londoners will leave you wondering “Are we the baddies?”.
A Lot of Character in London
Like Watch Dogs 2, Watch Dogs: Legion doesn’t take itself too seriously. The dissonance between what DedSec stands for and how they achieve it isn’t as apparent when most of the characters you come across are comical with over the top voice acting, clothing and animations.
Having only a few hours to play, it’s hard to say how the single player game loop will play out. But if they manage to ramp up the complexity of missions to include more of your crew per mission, I can see it being an interesting progression. And with four player co-op on the plate for release, it could be fun with friends.
If you could play as anyone in a video game, who would it be? Will Ubi recruited to DedSec based off of previews so far?
Watch Dogs: Legion is due to be released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, as well as Stadia on 29 October 2020, on the Xbox Series X/S as a launch title on 10 November 2020, and will become available for the next generation console PlayStation 5 after its launch date.
