REVIEW : WATCH DOGS: LEGION (PC)
Whether you’re profiling a politician with a gambling problem, camera hopping through Rossi-Fremont, or hacking into a server at Nudle, Watch Dogs games have always explored many different topics; technology, privacy, freedom and equality, corporate power, privatization, social and economic justice these are big themes. When the original Watch Dogs was released in 2014, the noir treatment delivered many of these themes as a cautionary tale. Today, things are worse. Data-mining and machine-learning are being used to amplify our disagreements. Our social networks are being used to compromise our democracies. Public institutions are collapsing, the wealth gap is growing, and authoritarians are seizing power. Watch Dogs: Legion is not a cautionary tale; the things it warns of are already here. Watch Dogs: Legion is an invitation to hope. The London of Watch Dogs: Legion is filled with millions of simulated people; each with their personality and backstory, their own life and relationships, and their problems and challenges. And any of them can become your next playable hero. Profile them, help them with their problem, recruit them into your team, and give them the chance to be part of the solution. How you play, and who you play, is up to you. A spy with an invisible car might be the perfect choice for thwarting a secret plot to seize control of the country’s surveillance apparatus but so might a hard-drinking football hooligan with a six-pack and some friends. A programmer with viral hacks could uncover the ethically bankrupt research of a billionaire working with Blume – but a bare-knuckle champion who leads with her fists can help too. A heavily armed turncoat, recruited from within Clan Kelley or Albion might give you easier access to a secure location but a reporter with a custom drone and a spider bot might not need to enter the location at all. The story of Watch Dogs: Legion speaks to all the same big themes as its predecessors, but its message is unique. Reclaiming our future will require collective action, and if we hope to stand together, we will first need to see the ‘NPCs’ around us as real people and to walk a mile in their shoes.
Like previous games, Watch Dogs: Legion hooks on the similar loop of open-world gameplay, which involves exploration, battle, stealth, and in-game sequential events. While Legion uses a more streamlined hacking system, it leans much further into the systemic effects of hacking and manipulating social threads to fulfil your goals. Depending on how you utilize the city’s infrastructure which consists of cameras, phones, computers, AI drones, and other machines you can hack you can accomplish many of your goals with your enemies being none the wiser, giving you the sense that you’re always on a heist.
In Watch Dogs: Legion, your mission is to build a resistance and fight back against the emergence of an authoritarian regime in near-future London. Play As Anyone is a breakthrough innovation and a natural evolution for the Watch Dogs trademark. In a world where stakes are higher, DedSec must grow to become a revolution created by people from all walks of life. You have the freedom to recruit anyone you see in the open world and get to choose who will be the heroes of your game and the stars of your story. You can choose characters based on how they look, how they dress, how they act, or because of their gameplay abilities, skills and/or gadgets, which will help you take on the game’s biggest challenges.
Every character comes with their own set of skills, status effects, weapons, or vehicles, which can either help or hamper your efforts to free London from its postmodern oppression by different factions capitalising on the societal breakdown. Your newly engaged mechanical beekeeper might be able to order a robot hive on-demand, for instance, but his tendency to get hiccups when nervous means you can say bye to that stealth run. The amount of variables at play in Ubisoft’s populace generating algorithm isn’t really infinite, but they are impressively huge, affecting everything from movement pace to lifespan.
Watch Dogs: Legion reaches its highs when channelling elements of immersive sims, where many of your choices can cascade into a satisfying chain of reactions that yield the desired result. Hacking is your nucleus connection to the world, and it unlocks up many clever possibilities when it comes to figuring out how to achieve your present goals. Legion’s true stars are London’s citizens, all of whom are randomly created based on various professions, ethnic backgrounds, and other personalized details. The previous games allowed you to learn cursory information about citizens around you, but in Legion, you can use this information to scout prospects. Depending on if they favour DedSec, they’ll ask you to complete minor objectives to seal the bond. In a clever mechanic, the citizens of London will remember and react to the decisions you make.
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