Watch Dogs: Legion

[Moonface]

During today's Ubisoft E3 2019 Briefing, the third instalment in the Watch Dogs franchise—Watch Dogs: Legion—was announced and will be releasing on March 6, 2020.

Watch Dogs: Legion takes place in London, and doesn't feature a main playable character. Instead, you will recruit and play as anyone you see in the iconic city. Every single character in the open world is playable, and everyone has a backstory, personality, and skill set that will help you personalize your own unique team. Gangsters, hipsters, former spies, and even old ladies are waiting to join the Resistance, and you can even bring your characters online and join forces with friends to take back London in four-player co-op missions, end-game challenges, and daily events.

Welcome to the Resistance.

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Absolutely day one buy for me without a shred of doubt. London looks fucking phenomenally on point and getting to play as anyone you want is going to make this game so entertaining. That old lady who just taps the guy on the back and then shoots him through the head is a trailer highlight for me that's up there with Keanu Reeves appearing in Cyberpunk. I wasn't expecting to see guns in the game as heavily as they featured here, but the setting looks to explain it well enough to not feel out of place. I also like that none of the characters are overly serious like Aiden, but not so goofy as Marcus that their violence feels out of character. I might even consider getting a collector's edition of this game depending on what's in it.

[Daltonio]

Still not sure exactly how to feel about this one. Finding out some info about this was probably the thing I was looking forward to most about E3 since Sony was a no-show this year, but I'm just feeling kinda conflicted. I enjoyed both of the games for what they were, but I'm definitely one of the people who was hoping for more of a shift back to the direction of the first game with its' more dark and gritty atmosphere, rather than the tone of the second. Seems it's a bit of a mix which I can sort of get behind I suppose.

The whole 'no main character' thing though... Ehhh. I'm skeptical that it will seem like more of a gimmick than anything else. How many different voices and personalities can they possibly have in the game for you to be able to play as any NPC? I'm worried we'll be running into a lot of reused civilians and all that. Plus, the story of the Watch_Dogs games was always one of the best things about it to me and I just don't see how you do a very well made story (at least as well made as the first two) with generic NPC characters that can change on a whim.

I'll definitely still have my eye on it but we shall see.

[Moonface]

Civilians are procedurally generated, and the voice overs are being changed up with a program to make them sound different each time. GiantBomb experienced a scene where the same voice was used for both characters but it wasn't detectable because of the modifications being done by the game to those voices on the fly. There are also twelve different scripts so that while the story is always the same, the way cutscenes will play out will have differences depending on who is in them.

[Moonface]

I got this game for Christmas and started it a few days ago, and so far the story feels very basic. I get the feeling it will go somewhere good, but the initial stuff doesn't do much to make me care about anything. I will say though that the multiple characters thing is very good, especially if you put on permadeath. Bumping into another of your team in the world makes the NPC's feel less random fodder, especially when you'll scan someone and discover they have some connection to a member of your team. Last night I was on my way to a mission, saw what I thought was just another random encounter of civilian being detained, only to notice it was the wife of the person I was currently using. I would've liked that when I saved her she acted like she knew me, but it was still cool to see a reason to care for this person who I'd otherwise have just left alone.

Another thing I wish the game did was a better fast travel. The system is fine, but I would like the loading screen to be my character riding on the London Underground similar to how you ride the subway in Spider-Man, instead of just a generic loading screen. Every fast travel has you walking out of the station, so just a simple scene of riding the train would add a little extra and feels notably lacking when another game has already done that before this one.

[ShiraNoMai]

The game is buggy as fuck. I'm surprised it hasn't been talked about but I suppose it got overshadowed by Cyberpunk's release.

Like, I understand when so many systems get implemented, things can easily get broken and choppy (see: Fallout New Vegas, 4, actually any relatively modern Bethesda game for that matter..) because they overlap each other and it's hard to get them all to work in harmony. Jank is expected. But when shit actively breaks to the point you have to constantly reset the game just to fix it. That, to me, is unforgiveable. I can't believe a lot of that shit still goes unchecked in terms of bug fixes. There have been quite a few patches with this game's launch so far (just about 2 months) and honestly I don't even know what shit they fixed because this shit still hella fucked up.

[Moonface]

Overshadowed by Cyberpunk plus it's Ubisoft. Releasing sub-par games is their thing to the point I think people stopped giving a shit years ago except for that one break it caused with Assassin's Creed.

But yeah, this game has constant audio stuttering on PS4 and one mission broke multiple times for me. I would say Legion is a definite downgrade as an overall package compared to Watch Dogs 2. It has some great ideas but so much other stuff brings it down or just feels downright bad to play.