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Watch Dogs: Legion (29 October 2020) - Information Thread, update: Digital Foundry PS5 vs Xbox Series X|S Comparison


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Playing as anyone in Watch Dogs: Legion makes missions feel like movie heists (PC Gamer)

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Watch Dogs: Legion is bringing new meaning to the "ragtag group of misfits" cliche. With no traditional protagonist in Legion, I'm playing as a collection of random London citizens that I can swap back and forth between whenever I want. My team includes a construction worker who wears a reflective vest and carries around a giant wrench, a hacker who remote controls a cute little spider-like robot, and an ambulance driver whose most interesting ability, as far as I can tell, is that he can play the guitar.

 

It feels more like I've put together a book club or a weekly board game group than a team of dangerous, shadowy operatives who are going to take back London from the oppressive forces of evil. And I love that. It's a fresh approach to hero building (and hopefully storytelling) in a game that otherwise felt pretty familiar during the three hours I played last week.

 

 

 

Watch Dogs Legion’s dystopian London is eerily familiar yet full of laughs (PCGamesN)

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Watch Dogs Legion is far from immune to the little frustrations of Ubi’s open worlds. The cover system feels too ‘sticky’, it was often unclear which rules I broke to get detected and how, and though the uniform access system is cool it also reintroduces insta-fail stealth sections. Then there are nuisances all-new to Legion, like not being able to do everything I want from atop a drone, or said drones flying too slowly. (Ok, so many of my complaints are drone-based.) But so far its setting, its unique promise of recruiting a resistance of ordinary people, and most of all its apparent willingness to engage with its highly relevant premise, are looking every bit as powerful as they sound.

 

 

Preview: a year on, Watch Dogs Legion's "play as anyone" is so crazy it might just work (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

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And, as I said, it does feel like a London worth liberating. For all that we joked about how it was going to be well cockerney, Legion has made a London that feels London-y. Not only were there a good mix of London-specific accents, there were also accents from all over the country and all over the world. I was surprised at how close it feels to being the big messy melting pot that London is. At no point did I feel like the game was trying to aggressively prove how London-English it was.

 

Apart from the swearing. The swearing could do with some work. Yeah, we like a good swear in this country, and I’d venture to say that we’re some of the best in the world at it. But presently, Watch Dogs Legion feels like the ruderies were assembled from a fridge magnet pack called UK INSULTS. I heard someone say “Check out this knobhead minger,” which I can almost guarantee is a combination of words nobody has ever said in their entire lives. 100% not getting recruited into my gang if I catch you saying that. You fuckwit twat fanny.

 

 

Three hours with Watch Dogs: Legion, Jane Bond, and a construction worker (Polygon)

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The moment-to-moment gameplay in an open-world city is so familiar that it’s hardly worth discussing. I can do all of the things I expect — wander around, hijack cars, bump into people, fast travel, accidentally punch people when I hit the wrong button, find missions and liberate neighborhoods. Exploring greater London lifts the fog of war that’s covering most of my map, so incentive abounds to check my map for hotspots, missions, and landmarks.

 

If that was all there was, I’d be bored. But Watch Dogs’ twist has always been a layer of futurism — a not-too-distant, more or less credible version of our future world where high technology allows you to do more than just run around a city. That continues in Watch Dogs: Legion with ambition — everyone you meet in its vast open world of near-future London is potentially a playable character.

 

 

Watch Dogs Legion preview – this endless anecdote generator is as innovative as the Nemesis System (VG 24/7)

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On the news, reporters talk about how well the economy is doing as people die in the streets. Crime levels are down, so what are a few extra bodies? Oh, and watch out for fake news. Those riots that I mentioned earlier don’t exist, by the way – the news man said so. Playing it, I could barely believe this is a game created by Ubisoft – the publisher notorious for remaining “apolitical”. It certainly isn’t shying away from holding up a mirror to our own fractured reality: the never-ending shit sandwich that is 2020.

 

If laughter really is the best medicine, Watch Dogs Legion might be just the ticket for when we actually do crash out of the EU and can’t get an appointment with a real doctor. It offers some catharsis by giving us agency in a world where everyone can come together, to fight for our freedoms, no matter your background or odorous bodily functions. I can’t wait to don a pig mask and bring The Man down as the real world burns around me when Watch Dogs Legion releases.

 

 

Watch Dogs: Legion’s ability to play as anyone puts you in control more than ever (GamesRadar+)

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It looks like there’s a lot more potential here than both the previous watch Dogs or Assassin's Creed games. Both from your hacking powers and the abilities of those you recruit, and that’s the most interesting thing about Legion. During my three hours hand-on I focused on completing the missions as they were laid out for me but it often felt like there were plenty of alternate options to explore - ideas and combinations to experiment with in an ‘am I actually meant to be able to do this?’ sort of way. Like previous games there are security barriers to turn off, distance doors to reach, and window cleaning lifts to take to the roof. But now there are new questions like ‘what sort of chaos could I cause if I recruited that bus driver and used the bus?’ Or 'what happens if I use a protester’s Megaphone perk that ‘rallies people to fight’ in a mission area before I start?'   

 

It’s that sort of freedom that looks like it’s giving Legion’s open-world an edge on its previous instalments. As fun as they could be, they were also basically a third-person cover shooter with the added ability to trigger vending machines from a distance. From what I’ve seen with my hands on there’s a sense of far more things to combine and play with in unpredictable ways. Simply being able to experiment in what almost feels like game-breaking ways while tracking down recruits with interesting abilities feels like a game in its own right, which bodes well for the actual story side of things. 

 

 

 

 

Watch Dogs: Legion Drops E3 2019 Character Classes For Something More Free-Form (USgamer)

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Instead, characters will now pull from a wider set of weapons, traits, skills, and occupations. The latter is very important now because of a new system called Uniform Access that allows characters with certain occupations to access certain parts of the environment, similar to Agent 47's many disguises in the Hitman series. If your character is a police officer, they can openly walk into a police station. Another character doing the same thing would raise alarms. A character in the medical field can not only walk into hospitals, but they have an ability called Triage that speeds up the healing of any member recovering in the hospital. (It can't save the folks that died in action.)

 

Watch Dogs: Legion: Nancy Choi Is a Much Better Hero Than Aiden Pearce (USgamer)

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I felt closer to Nancy than a number of other bespoke characters whose stories I've followed this year. Legion finds a weird gap between a written character and a freeform create-a-character in an RPG; I didn't make Nancy, and I probably never would've if given the option. Instead, I was able to guide her in a new direction though, and I'm sad that the next time I play Watch Dogs: Legion, she probably won't be there.

 

Watch Dogs: Legion is still Watch Dogs, but the ability to recruit anyone honestly does change the game. Classic hacking tricks still work—I backed a truck up to a fence to hope right over it instead of going through the front or back doors—but the distribution of abilities means that you're also thinking of your whole tool box. The premise reminds me of an old comic called Global Frequency, where a super-secret organization could call on anyone to deal with issues around the world. And like that comic's premise, I can already see myself building a rolodex of specialized agents to save London.

 

 

Watch Dogs: Legion Hands-On — A World Worth Exploring (IGN)

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There were some rough edges in the build I played. When characters are defeated the animation looks a bit goofy, and there are some questionable drivers. But some of these may be cleared up by launch. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Watch Dogs: Legion and grew attached to the different characters, their arsenals, and their sparkling personalities. The lack of a primary main character doesn’t detract from the story. Instead, it incentivizes exploring and immersing myself in a world I otherwise may have ignored in favor of mainlining the story.

 

Watch Dogs: Legion’s gameplay follows the established formula of hacking devices to accomplish your task at hand with the option to go in guns blazing - though it’s the less enticing route when you have plenty of gadgets at hand and drones overhead.

Watch Dogs Legion: How the Delay Improved the Game (IGN)

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Speaking to IGN, Hocking explained that the delay was due to "reasons external to the project", and described the mixture of emotions upon being told the release would be pushed back: "Obviously the day the word came down was devastating because you put yourself in the mental mindset of ‘We're going to close this and get it out the door.’ And that takes a little bit of time to undo but after a few days of stewing in it, it's like, 'Oh yeah, actually, this is great. This is great.'"

 

 

Watch Dogs Legion Hands-On: Play-As-Anyone Opens A World Of Wild Possibilities (Gamespot)

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Structurally, Legion appears to lean into open world traditions such as clearing out territories; here, the context is liberating London's boroughs from Albion control. Completing specific side objectives builds up the "Defiance" meter, and once full, you'll unlock a final mission to reclaim that district. It was a challenging, interesting mission that mixed infiltration, combat, and remote controlling drones--the things that make Legion so fun. So, while it uses common open world tropes, Legion has at least shown that it's trying to package it in a way that's fitting and enjoyable, with the reward of seemingly decreasing enemy presence in that borough.

 

Many systems at play in Legion feed into your freedom to approach objectives the way you want, and the different options flow smoothly into one another, mixing stealth, combat, puzzle elements, and working with operatives' specific perks. And the set pieces built into the open world bring out those qualities. London is a vibrant city with civilians that constantly chat shit, but it's also a tech dystopia under authoritarian control and organized crime. You'll have a lot to do in London, and from what we've seen so far, it's exciting work.

 

Watch Dogs: Legion Is Unmistakably Political, And It Needs To Follow Through (Gamespot)

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But if a game wants to use real-world revolutionary messaging while portraying a real-world location, it has to do right by it. I want to see how its many themes are examined and explored, and also tactfully contextualized through its story. To use these themes as simple set-dressing would be a disservice, but I do believe Watch Dogs: Legion can offer more than that.

 

I'm skeptical, as anyone should be, particularly as Ubisoft has—on numerous occasions—said its games don’t make political statements, even when obviously using politically charged situations as the backdrop for its games. With Watch Dogs: Legion, the company is more directly drawing from the current sociopolitical state of the world and, as such, should expect to be met with skepticism and much greater scrutiny.

 

But that skepticism shouldn't undermine a game before it's even out. Rather it should be the mechanism that sharpens our eyes to give credit where it's due and be critical when necessary once we get to experience the game in its entirety on October 29 this year.

 

Watch Dogs: Legion Director Clint Hocking On Embracing Its Political Themes (Gamespot)

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It's been 12 years since Clint Hocking last had his name on a game that shipped: Far Cry 2 in 2008. He's bounced around several studios--LucasArts, Amazon, Valve--but has come back around to Ubisoft to take the lead on the upcoming Watch Dogs: Legion, which is set to launch on October 29 this year. In addition to a four-hour hands-on demo with the game, I had a chance to speak briefly with Hocking about how the development team have approached building its unmistakably political world.

 

Watch Dogs: Legion pulls a lot of inspiration from the struggles we've seen in the real world; in the game, you'll see protests signs and banners, messages of grassroots resistance to fight police brutality, and London quickly turning into a tech dystopia run by an authoritarian regime. Hocking has made the political connection very clear in how he's spoken about the game. During our preview presentation before Ubisoft Forward, he stated that "social inequalities are growing, partisan politics are stoking the flames of division, nationalism is on the rise, unemployment is up" to describe the backdrop to the narrative. And he provided more insight in our conversation below.

 

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1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

I didn’t like the first game, so I never tried the sequel, but I might give this a chance when theres a dry spell. 
 

hopefully November is filled with Miles Morales and Cyberpunk. Perhaps ill try this after xmas.

 

This - 100%

I wanted to like the first game, but the controls were SOOOO bad. Never played the 2nd because of this, but the concepts of this new one have me interested....though probably not at full price.

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Four Hours With Watch Dogs: Legion, A Game That Might Be Too Timely For Its Own Good (Kotaku)

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That pretty much sums up my time with Watch Dogs: Legion: It is a vast, ponderous machine that all at once dazzles with its ability to conjure up amusing scenes and regularly trips over its own two feet. I came away from my demo session with questions: How deep does the character system go? How much of the game’s jankiness will be fixed before release? How will this game engage with the real-world atrocities it’s replicating in its fictional setting? How will a studio that’s reportedly struggled with pervasive sexism and toxicity due to deeply flawed leadership tell this kind of story? Can it? Should it?

 

It feels distinctly strange to consider all these questions while, days later, continuing to experience the distinctly gamerly compulsion to play more. Earlier, I said that Legion in some ways struck me as eerily current. There are few feelings more current than endless internal conflict over the media you consume. I have a feeling that Legion is going to make a lot of people feel very conflicted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch Dogs: Legion has millions of playable characters, but most feel the same (The Verge)

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Unfortunately, for all the hype, after playing three hours of Legion, it doesn’t do enough to differentiate its myriad characters from each other. One of my recruits, an elderly spy, handles exactly the same as a spry young hitman for hire or a football hooligan. The main differences are the two or three perks that each character comes with and their default gadget.

 

 

'Watch Dogs: Legion' lets you be anyone, if you put in the work (Engadget)

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It’s hard to say whether the “play as anyone” mechanic will make the game feel truly open as the story progresses — it can feel forced when you know you need a certain person to unlock a storyline — but early impressions are encouraging. The choice is massive, and who knows if you’ll need a broker who has skills with crypto skimming. London is a city defined by its diversity and I’m pleased to say that was captured in my limited time with the game — especially in regards to swearing. It’s crammed full of it.

 

If you’re a fan of pubs, how Brits say “wanker” and love the idea of football (soccer) hooliganism, Watch Dogs: Legion has totally got you covered, fam.

 

 

Watch Dogs: Legion hands-on: Play as anyone, care about no one (Ars Technica)

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That's my biggest beef with the game at this point in its prerelease state. You can control any character you want, but that means they're each full of generic, copy-and-pasteable dialogue, since the gameplay makes clear that they're all replaceable, swappable, and disposable. (I even saw specific long chunks of dialogue repeat a couple of times during my session, spoken by different voice actors.) Most of what they talk about is either a generic, philosophical rebuke of the connected future, condemning the sci-fi trope of unfeeling corporations, or a punk-rock eff-you to the system, man, with almost as many pithy, sarcastic comments as there are swear words.

 

Could a thrilling, character-driven story emerge in the game's final retail version? WD:L includes hints to some kind of plot akin to a '90s cyber-espionage thriller, though I only saw that stuff in the form of talking heads connecting a mystery's dots as I drove from location to location. But mostly, the game's talking heads boss you around, and the characters you control are mostly made up of cookie-cutter dialogue.

 

I sure hope there's more to the package, because what I experienced rings hollow in light of a renewed modern-day dialogue about militarized police. Basically, if you're wondering what an apolitical video game looks like, this is it: toothless, cheesy, and so reliant on old tropes that it makes no point of its own.

 

 

 

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That Ars take is the one that worries me most. I really don't know how you're supposed to care about anyone if you're filtering through characters all the time. I really have a hard time seeing how this game won't be unbearably repetitive, and I really hate the idea that you could fail at the end of a string of missions and not only have to do them again, but have to recruit someone else in order to do those missions. I feel like the lack of a quick save feature is a real deal breaker for me. If I fail a mission as a recruit I really like, I want to just start it over again, not have to find someone else or wait until my favorite character is available again in 10 minutes.

 

 

I feel like this is one of those games that, if it's ever any good, will be so only after they make some major tweaks post-release.

 

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5 hours ago, TwinIon said:

I really don't know how you're supposed to care about anyone if you're filtering through characters all the time.

I think that this game is going to be less about story and characters, and more about gameplay and experimenting/messing around in a sandbox environment for the pure fun of it. The story will probably be there just enough to give a reason for the missions, but a lot of the fun will come from trying different things and seeing what the outcomes are. I could be wrong, but that's what it kind of seems like to me based on what I've seen of it so far.

 

I didn't really care for the first two Watch Dogs games, but this one looks better/different and has the potential to stand out as something unique for the genre. I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope that it delivers.

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Opinion: Watch Dogs Legion's 'Play as Anyone' Theme Isn't Working For Me (IGN)

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The idea of playing as anyone does sound awesome, especially given the sheer amount of folks populating the streets of virtual London, but the NPCs I recruited don’t fill the void left by a single carefully crafted protagonist. That’s because they aren’t anyone. They aren’t real characters. They’re essentially skins with slightly different dialogue and different voice actors -- and sometimes not even that. Recruiting a world character was really cool the first time, but after seeing previews and videos from other folks throughout the internet, I found that my recruitment process wasn’t nearly as unique as I once thought. Looking through various videos online, I stumbled upon several instances that featured repeated recruitment missions and multiple characters voiced by the same actors.

 

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Watch Dogs: Legion (29 October 2020) - Information Thread, update: new trailers/gameplay demo walkthrough

Anyone else feel like it's not that impressive looking? I think the ray tracing stuff is pretty nifty, and I appreciate it on a technical level, but the overall look of the game just isn't that great. It feels very much like a few next gen things were tacked onto a rather mediocre looking game. If I were to pick at anything in particular I'd point at the character models and the animations.

 

Still, it's a hard thing to quantify. I'm only now playing through Last of Us 2 and while I can understand the many ways in which it "cheats," it just looks phenomenal, even on a base PS4. I wish I could turn the resolution up, but other than that it's still a marvel.

 

Legion isn't a bad looking game, but throwing some poorly optimized ray tracing doesn't impress nearly enough.

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5 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Anyone else feel like it's not that impressive looking? I think the ray tracing stuff is pretty nifty, and I appreciate it on a technical level, but the overall look of the game just isn't that great. It feels very much like a few next gen things were tacked onto a rather mediocre looking game. If I were to pick at anything in particular I'd point at the character models and the animations.

 

Still, it's a hard thing to quantify. I'm only now playing through Last of Us 2 and while I can understand the many ways in which it "cheats," it just looks phenomenal, even on a base PS4. I wish I could turn the resolution up, but other than that it's still a marvel.

 

Legion isn't a bad looking game, but throwing some poorly optimized ray tracing doesn't impress nearly enough.

It's an ugly game there's no doubt about it.

 

I hate the art style its like its having an identity crisis. It's a jumbled amalgam of noire, cyberpunk, realistic and cartoonish that looks incredibly generic and boring. 

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3 hours ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

3090 owners got hoodwinked

Nah, it's just an open-world UBIsoft game and is several levels below what other developers mean by "optimized". Happens every time! The sky is blue, all people die, the rich abuse the poor, and UBIsoft open world games run like ass until they are old enough for no one to care about them anymore. These are the immutable truths of Earth. 

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IGN Gives Watchdogs Legion an 8

 

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After decades of running over pedestrians by the dozen in open-world action games without a second thought, it’s actually a little bit unsettling to think that each of them might have unique talents and even the potential to be a hero. Not so much that I drive more carefully or anything, but after playing Watch Dogs: Legion I think about it a little bit more. Legion’s clever twist makes this third game in the series play like a hacker version of State of Decay, where every NPC can be recruited as a playable character and each has their own weapons, abilities, and traits that can give them very different playstyles. That lends it a much more sandboxy feel than the previous games because any given character can make the same mission feel dramatically different. It can be rough and experimental in places, but I have to hand it to Ubisoft for being willing to take chances like this.

 

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Watch Dogs Legion takes Ubisoft’s open-world hacker series in an interesting new direction by letting you swap between the inhabitants of a near-future London almost at will. There’s enough variety in the way different characters play to make that a good tradeoff for not having one traditionally progressing character with a fleshed-out personality, and playing with permadeath enabled ratchets up the tension of infiltrating heavily guarded areas. On top of that, the map is detailed and loaded with environmental puzzles to solve with a little help from your drones. Legion is technically a little rough, but its sandbox-style approach is a good idea that sets Watch Dogs’ moment-to-moment gameplay even further apart from the GTA series

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