Review: Watchdogs Legion
As a cross-generational release, a lot of eyes are on Watch Dogs: Legion to showcase what these new gaming consoles are capable of. Oddly enough, the very first Watch Dogs was in a similar situation back in 2014. Unlike that release, though, Watch Dogs: Legion looks to be up to the task. If you’re wanting to temporarily zone out and forget about how miserable 2020 has been for all of us, Watch Dogs: Legion invites you to jolly ole’ London to run amok.
The first Watch Dogs had its flaws, sure, but the consensus within the gaming community was that the series had potential. In what has become the norm for Ubisoft, they backed up that mediocre first release by crushing it with the sequel. Watch Dogs 2 offered the same hacking mechanics and gameplay but overhauled the look and tone, and it worked wonders. It was by far one of my favorite releases for the last generation of systems, and I’ve been foaming at the mouth for a follow up for years. That wait is finally over. Watch Dogs: Legion is here, and it’s a bit of a different game than I was expecting. It’s a game that takes a lot of risks—maybe too many—so let me hit on a few of the things that stood out to me, both good and bad.
London
While London isn’t the most exciting of places in the world, it is nice to have a modern-day open-world game that isn’t set in New York City, Chicago, or Southern California. There’s more to London’s setting than driving on the opposite side of the road and running over red telephone booths. There’s a general atmosphere about the city of London and I think that Ubisoft nailed it here. In 2020, London is a multicultural hub that is an eclectic mix of traditionalism and modernism. You get a good sense of that from Watch Dogs: Legion. I love the attention to detail that was taken. The number of dialects, the political podcasts that are available, and the lack of guns showcase a difference in our two cultures. The only thing that’s missing is the utter shit food.
The first time that I visited London I had just gotten off of an overnight flight from Chicago, I had been squished in the middle seat of an airplane for 9 hours, and for some reason, I had chosen to watch Anita: Battle Angel along the way. Just an absolutely horrible combination. So, when we land in London and I get out to stretch my legs, I was unprepared for the massive crowds on London’s morning commute. What a great time to have my first panic attack, I thought, and so I did. My wife grabbed me by the hand and, together, she ushered me from King’s Cross Station down to a little café a few blocks away. I mention this because of the detail in Watch Dogs: Legion allowed me to retrace those steps. Not that it’s something that I look back at fondly, but it’s still an incredible thing to be able to relive thanks to Ubisoft’s attention to detail.
The true allure of downtown London is displayed when the sun buggers off. When it rains, London has this bleak look-and-feel that comes off as comforting rather than ominous. The skyline and city lights bounce off the rain puddles and can be so distracting that you will find yourself testing the longevity of the share button. At night, London goes full Skyfall. Beautiful building-sized holograms and flamboyant LED screens take center stage. Downton Abbey during the day, Bladerunner 2049 at night. Oh, and when it rains at night…
Recruiting
When Ubisoft said that you can play as anyone in Watch Dogs: Legion, they meant it. It sounded like a gimmick, but, nope, any NPC that you come across on the streets of London can be recruited to DedSec. Some of them might be harder to recruit than others, but it’s doable. A question that some might be asking is: “Why would you want that,” and that’s a fair question. If you’re looking at the back of your character’s head while playing, who cares what they look like? Well, like the real world, the citizens of London all have traits. There are things that they’re exceptional at but there are also tradeoffs. For example, if you choose to play as an old woman—as the game’s marketing loves to showcase—you may get a senior discount at the local shop and be less suspicious to guards while hanging around restricted areas, but she might also be a liability in that she won’t be able to run or crouch behind cover. If you go the other route and, say, choose a young yoga instructor, while they’ll be faster and able to withstand more damage, their veggie-heavy diet might lead to random acts of flatulence, which will make being stealthy a bit more challenging.
There’s a ctOS box on the roof of a nearby tech company. As a member of DedSec, you need to reach the roof so that you can hack the ctOS box and stop the establishment’s propaganda. You can choose to spend time recruiting an employee of the tech company so that you can casually walk up to the roof, you can choose a hacker and use a spider bot to sneak through the tech company’s air ducts, you can just say fuck it and recruit a construction worker that can summon a cargo drone to pick you up and drop you off at the top of the building, or you can recruit John Wick to go in there guns blazing. It’s completely up to you.
Permadeath
If your mission goes tits up and you find yourself on the wrong end of a gunfight with gangs or the popo, unless you’re able to make a miraculous escape, your character may be killed. Once they die, they dead. With the permadeath feature, Watch Dogs: Legion requires you to put a little bit more thought into who you select for your missions. Uncertain of what awaits you behind that locked door? Go with Brian. Nobody liked Brian anyway. You can afford to lose Brian. It’s a feature that can be annoying but, you know, kind of awesome in the same regard. It creates a true consequence for not thinking things out thoroughly. If you don’t time something correctly or take the correct path, you will find yourself back on the streets looking for a new Brian.
Lack of Main Protagonist
As fun as it is to go around recruiting Londoners, I will say that not having a centralized character with clear motives, a backstory, and personality is a downer. While I don’t think that Aiden Peirce or Marcus Holloway are iconic characters, they were both a joy to play in their own way. During this pandemic, before walking into a Kroger, I still think back to those two as I pull my black gator up over my mouth. Those two characters couldn’t have been more different from one another, but they fit perfectly into the worlds that were created for them. I get that the elevator pitch for this game is that you can play as anyone—it’s even right there in the title—but I would have preferred a balance. Instead, most of my time spent with Watch Dogs: Legion has been spent as a Mary J. Blige meets Ruby Rhod hybrid that is named Julie. For whatever reason, Julie sounds like she’s from Eastern Europe, she’s a bookkeeper, and she has this soulless look about her that seems like she would be a good fit for the crowd of a WWE video game. What are her motivations? None. She joined DedSec because she was told that it would be fun.
Not exactly the most memorable character.
(To be fair: In the DLC expansion “Bloodlines,” you can play Aiden Peirce from Watch Dogs and Wrench from Watch Dogs 2. You can also purchase Marcus Holloway’s jacket from the Ubisoft store and pretend that your Julie is as cool as Marcus.)
Insensitive Story Elements
Okay, I’m going to try to sandwich this blurb in here because it’s probably going to piss a few people off. For as much as I dig this game, there is one thing about it that irritates me.
While the general theme of the Watch Dogs games has always been about this battle between society and overpowered tech companies, Watch Dogs: Legion includes a lot of real-world issues in their side missions, and, for the most part, it comes off as rather tasteless. Fake news, rigged elections, racism toward migrants, corrupt pharmaceutical companies, police brutality, class warfare, and human trafficking are topics that you’re going to see while playing Watch Dogs: Legion. I get it, video games are an art form, I agree, and art should reflect on the world in which it was created, but, I mean, maybe read the room sometimes, you know? It would be different if these topics were approached with the seriousness that they deserve, but that’s not the case. Usually, it’s nothing more than an unnecessary excuse to make a spider bot minigame seem a little more important.
To me, if you want to use your game as a platform to get political, and you want to touch on injustice, go for it. Otherwise, if you half-ass it, you risk it being detrimental to the game itself. For example, in my playthrough, I was strolling down the street between missions when I spotted a man on his knees being arrested on the street corner. I pinged the man being arrested and saw that he had a unique trait in that he was a drone expert. Someone with that skill would be beneficial to have on my team, so I went to go intervene on his behalf. I’m about 20 yards away from the confrontation and I can hear it escalating as the man proclaims his innocence. Then, out of nowhere, the officer shoots the man point-blank. I was a bit taken back by it. The officer just casually walks off, and no passing NPC seemed to give a shit. I get to the man’s body and ping it again. Maybe it was a bug. Maybe it was ammo that stunned the man? Nope. When I pinged the man, it said that he was dead. Did that generate an emotional response from me? Sure. Was it the one that Ubisoft was going for? Not at all. It’s dumb.
I feel like people are attracted to games like Watch Dogs because it’s an escape from the nightmares of the real world. I want to hack pop machines and fly drones while wearing a Daft Punk helmet, not be reminded of what’s awaiting me once I turn the game off. This is becoming a theme for Ubisoft games. Whether it’s The Division, Far Cry, or Watch Dogs, they seem to flirt with making these bold titles choices but always walk it back afterward and say that it wasn’t meant to be political.
I love this game. I’m falling behind on reviewing the new Assassin’s Creed, NBA 2K, and Call of Duty because I can’t stop playing this game. I shouldn’t be taking up so much space to vent about this ridiculousness.
Autodrive
Changing gears…
Remember back in GTA IV when you could hail a taxi to take you to your waypoint? While painfully slow, it provided a unique perspective of the world and offered up a deeper sense of realism. Games kind of got away from that until recently. It seems to have come back, though. Witcher 3 allowed you to hold a button to keep Roach on the trail, Assassins Creed Origins took that a step further and allowed you to ride an AI horse to your location, and Watch Dogs: Legion uses autonomous vehicles that let you just kick back and enjoy the trip. It feels weird to praise a game for a feature that requires you to not play the game, but, like GTA IV, it provides an authentic experience. Just hop into a car and set it and forget it. It gives you a few moments to take in the detailed cityscape or gives you a moment to pop onto Twitter.
You might need that break because…
Load Times
On the next-gen systems, load times are incredible. On the PlayStation 4 Pro, fast traveling through the tube or changing your character became a real chore after a while. You’re looking at a loading screen for nearly a minute—which feels like even longer. On the Xbox Series X, those same tasks take seconds. When you’re comparing cross-generation releases, most would expect the graphics to be the difference-maker, but the load times were the most significant difference for me.
Conclusion
For the most part, Watch Dogs: Legion is yet another home run for Ubisoft. While I found myself preferring Watch Dogs 2 when it came to the story and the cast of characters, I will say that I was very impressed by the NPC recruiting mechanic. The detailed recreation of London is bloody incredible and it’s easily one of the best open worlds that we have seen yet. If you’re on the fence about it, I would say that if you enjoyed the antics of Watch Dogs 2—the drone hacking, remote controlling vehicles to collide with one another, and causing chaos—then you know what to expect from Watch Dogs: Legion, and you’re going to love it.
