Watch Dogs Legion’s Bloodline DLC is the Game We Wanted Originally
Some might say that Watchdogs Legion having the same release window as new consoles and a juggernaut like Cyberpunk 2077 did it no favors. To be fair, a lot of the decisions that Watchdogs Legion made didn’t do it any favors. Five years ago, Watchdogs 2 managed to become the surprise hit of the holiday season. With its predecessor coated in controversy over its downgraded graphics, average gameplay, and overly dreary aesthetic, Watchdogs 2 was on the other side of the spectrum. The vibrant setting along with a story that didn’t take itself too seriously, it was a game that got people excited about the Watchdogs series. Every time that Ubisoft would have a press conference, hopes of seeing a new Watchdogs was always high on the list of things that people wanted to see announced.
When the sequel, Watchdogs Legion, launched in late-2020, well, it kind of came and went without as much of a whimper. Prior to release, the idea of having an open-world game set in London was incredibly appealing, but the game’s main selling point — allowing you to play as any NPC in the world — had a lot of people doubting. I was one of them. Not only were those concerns realized once the game was released, but Ubisoft also couldn’t help themselves and went back to that overly serious and dramatic story. It wasn’t as fun, and the lack of a designed narrative lead left you with these weird-looking NPC characters to play as that looked like someone had hit the random button at the appearance menu, and their voices didn’t match their look. The NPC recruitment mechanic is clever, and it does work well, but I think that it would have been received a bit more favorably had there been an Aiden Pierce or Marcus Holloway to play as.
Watchdogs Legion’s latest DLC, Bloodlines, addresses this by allowing you to play as Pierce from the first Watchdogs and Wrench from Watchdogs 2, and it improves the experience substantially. It’s not even that those two characters are even that well developed. But the fact that they don’t look generic AF and have a bit of a personality makes them more fun to roam around London than any NPC that I came across in the base game. And while the story is still your generic stop-big-brother mumbo jumbo that we’re used to, the fact that you’re playing as these characters eases the tension more than just a little bit. Aiden Piece’s ability to hack everything within a certain radius sends cars, drones, and pedestrians into a frenzy that is never not enjoyable to sit back and watch as the game turns into a mess of physics and mechanics just going absolutely crazy.
The Bloodline DLC for Watchdogs Legion fixes a lot of the issues that plagued the main game, but the world is still as boring as British food. But thanks to the inclusion of established characters, traversing around that world is a bit more enjoyable.
