Guest author Dylan Burns He’s investigating Ubisoft’s newest open world monster, and while some magic can be found in this disotope future London, finding it takes some effort.
Would you be willing to die to save your city?
This is a question Watch Dogs: Legion When they try to join DedSec, characters who rightly express their concerns about their personal safety first hesitate, then immediately ask, then blur, then prefer to set fire if they have to.
It raises your eyebrows to think that general citizens will almost be willing to stick their necks out in case of certain harm, but the whole premise and gameplay cycle of Legion is based on the assumption that every Londoner is just a boiling pot of hate waiting to be enlisted.
Legion is a game about resistance, with Ubisoft’s ideas about what resistance means. You won’t participate in street protests against authoritarian atrocities, share whistled information, or join social media waves, or, I don’t know, whatever else is realistically resilient – y. No, instead, you will stick sickly wall posters and replace corporate propaganda with erm, DedSec propaganda…
Then there’s one big thing Watch Dogs: Legion does differently – the ability to recruit and play as any NPC. Probably inspired by the multiple heroes of GTA V, Legion takes this ball and runs with it, filling its futuristic virtual London with various civic classes, all ready to be persuaded to join DedSec for a randomly generated favors price.
Without exception, every citizen you hire is extremely enthusiastic, full of ocker slang, and seemingly trained in the war and hacking protocols required to become a full member of DedSec. Heck, if there are so many well-trained agents waiting around, it raises the question of why none of them have formed their own vengeful group or – indeed – how Albion managed to take over the city in the first place. However, credit needs to be given for the variety and breadth of characters you can play as men and women of all ages, nationalities, and career types. They may not be particularly deep, personality wise, but efforts have been made to make them look like representatives of a diverse and thriving future metropolis.
If you can overcome this mismatch, screening potential recruits, adding them to the squad, and searching for better agents becomes quite fun if handled by inconsistencies.
On several occasions, I have come across scans that contradict each other, like an “extremely fragile” citizen capable of further damage. Even if you choose not to hire what is suggested to you, like a paramedic to reduce hospital times for all operators, then the main missions are structured to attract a few new members to show the player how each class of citizen can shine. in the right conditions.
For example, an officer in uniform can only enter the forbidden areas and will remain in disguise – Hitman style – if you walk slowly and don’t let the guards get too close to you. Similarly, construction workers can enter work areas without suspicion, while a drunk can take more damage, or a hacker gains a download speed bonus and can easily master drones. The specific skills you get for each random citizen are different, but not to the point where any skill set becomes dominant enough to be your favorite.
Some classes may get the job done, while some are better suited to specific tasks than others.
This brings us to a big problem with the Legion: it’s not that hard to cheat the system.
Entirely. First, the world is usually permanent. This means that everything you have accomplished with a character is left – like picking things up in restricted areas or successfully hacking a system just nanoseconds before death. After you are reborn – which in this game requires their bodies to jump to another novice – you are very likely to retain the spoils of what your previous self did.
This encourages you to enter sheltered areas, do what you need to do, and go outside if possible. This approach works almost every time because the enemy AI is incredibly, ridiculously, noddingly bad. If you get spotted, you can fight them often and no one else in the area will be smarter.
Even if you scramble a wasp nest, as long as you keep moving, disturbing enemies and bringing them out, you’ll almost always run rings around them and leave them navigating small patrol routes calling the same three lines among themselves. network – to be honest, you’ll hear six people say the same thing over and over again. Yes, you could die, but it never bothered you if you didn’t open Permadeath.
Legion’s themes are matured by nature. This is not something to play with when kids are around. There is so much cursing that my wife started to hate me and asked me to put on my headphones. The dialogue is full of strangely written slang that I’ve never heard before… Which brings me to the voices themselves.
Given the random nature of your new members, it seems that the phrases they say come from the bank of registered phrases that use voice modulation to diversify delivery. This makes some characters look like early prototypes for a cell phone provider’s hotline.
The writing sucks, although I begin to wonder if it is intentional. One mission saw me recruiting an Albion guard who apparently was an award-winning fighter and hit him because he decided not to lose the fight – that’s just one of those ridiculous (I’m sure someone from Ubisoft chuckled. They thought) situations that made you think: Really?
In other random oddity, I had an hour of open world gaming experience where all police cars light up and ring their sirens when I approached them, but wouldn’t actually call me – I had no heat levels at all. Other times I would finish everything in a red zone without being spotted, landing anywhere, or any other evidence, only that as soon as I left the area every enemy suddenly started looking for me, shouting with my voice when I stand outside. anonymity.
Still, there are some things I like. I like the driving route guide rising like an AR rollercoaster in bends. I love that you get hacked strongly through cameras and spider bots, sometimes completing missions without stepping into restricted areas. You can call a cargo plane, jump and fly yourself in the city, albeit slowly. I like that there is always a way to circumvent the target complex by searching for a rear entrance or climbing somewhere or sending a drone to unlock a door for you. All of these make Watch Dogs: Legion fun to play.
The world created is a miniature version of London with a very impressive, forward-looking lens. There are self-driving cars and everything has a stylish futuristic element. Each building is equipped with devices, scanners, cameras and network terminals. It looks great even if it’s clearly designed with the next generation consoles in mind. Every surface is so detailed and textured that I could feel the effort on my Xbox One S. Interesting then, is that some of the tasks include loading screens with no effort to hide them.
Need to go to the basement for a mission? You will simply swing on the elevator, press a button and be greeted with a load screen. The same goes for getting into DedSec HQ, which happens a lot when you get back there for mission briefings – although the world is perfectly set for these to happen via the network. This kind of old-school design really takes the series forward, from focusing on presentation rather than form, imagining the future but not being in it, explaining resistance, spreading places and upgrades, and freedom missions without understanding what it might look like or what it could lead to.
Themes deal with technology itself and how it can be misused by those in power. Single bow
Follows the horrible story of a scientist trying to lower the brain of his dying mother
to the AI system of your house. Similar to Black Mirror and quite interesting to follow the episode
result.
As soon as your character faces the villain in every episode, one
written character who will step in to really face the antagonist and keep something meaningful
talk. I waited for them to say “so do you”. This is because Legion has traded.
character depth for breadth has been reduced to “Fuck the system” lines, turning each recruitable character into a shallow pool of motivation.
While my overall review may be negative, Watch Dogs: Legion is still a well-crafted open world game. Marks all Ubi spots. There’s the familiar work-like progression feeling that many players find enjoyable. Sometimes you may wonder why you are doing what you do, but then you will have a cool hacking puzzle or find a fun Assassin’s Creed Easter Egg or take over a turret and set fire to a group of Albion guards. I’ll be right for another five hours.
The map is full of skill points to hunt and the recruiting action is probably endless.
Watch Dogs: Legion is a casual game. Generous camera dodging, takedown, spider bot exploration and circuit puzzles. There’s nothing left behind Watch Dogs 2 here, and the series pervades in many ways, exploring dark corners of technological misuse without pushing the series forward.
Recruiting NPCs is not the future, at least not yet. The lack of motivation and depth of character create so many intersections that the mismatches everything feels like an experiment forced to maintain momentum.
Still, I can’t deny the excitement of summoning a drone and wreaking havoc, or the satisfaction of taking the key to a locked door from an unannounced guard. There’s magic to unlock, it just takes an effort to find and turn the key.
Thanks to the publisher for providing Dylan with a review code.
Dylan Burns (@d_p_burns) is a playwright with many years of experience. Former editor of both Hyper Magazine and Pixel Hunt, he is also a teacher, artist, father, and trainee accountant. He doesn’t understand most of the Simpsons memes.
