A building employee, a personal navy contractor, and a graffiti artist stroll right into a bar. They drink a pint. They play darts. They take a look at their telephones. And one after the other, when no person’s paying consideration, they dip by means of the door marked “Staff.”
If there’s a punchline, it’s that each one three are secretly resistance fighters. Turns out everybody within the UK has a latent expertise for snapping necks and capturing pistols. All they want is a push in the best path. A push I’m blissful to offer, as a result of on the charge I’m burning by means of operatives, DedSec goes to wish a lengthy listing of recruits.
Holding out for a hero
Two demos in, it’s clear Watch Dogs Legion will stay or die by its character system—and for good motive. It’s new and glossy and filled with potential. But earlier than I dig into my newest ideas on the entire play-as-any-character-in-the-game system (which actually wants a catchy title we are able to all make enjoyable of like “Drivatar”) I wish to take a minute and speak story.
Put merely: It’s formidable. We solely obtained the barest glimpse of it in the course of the demo, but it surely’s undoubtedly put to mattress any questions on whether or not Watch Dogs Legion is “political” or not. It uh…it most assuredly is. I already knew Legion occurred in a near-future London dominated by a militaristic police pressure, and that already felt like fairly a political assertion. The recreation doesn’t kick off with that established order although.
Instead you play by means of the inflection level. The first mission includes DedSec discovering a Guy Fawkes-ian conspiracy. Someone’s rigged a number of London landmarks to blow up. You handle to avert this disaster, deactivating the bombs on the final minute in true motion hero trend.
Or so it appears. In actuality, whoever arrange the assault performed you, and performed DedSec. The conspiracy is definitely a false flag operation, a setup. The bombs go off and the assault is in fact pinned on DedSec. Terrified, the folks of London flip to the personal safety agency Albion to ensure their security. The UK falls headlong into fascism.
The false flag conceit is par for the course for Watch Dogs, which has all the time dabbled in conspiracies that appear manner too well-coordinated and handy for the true world. But the remaining? Legion’s militarized London is paying homage to the United States put up September 11 or France after the Bataclan. In-game commercials contact on anti-immigrant sentiment within the UK, and mirror the British exceptionalism that led to Brexit. And the police violence on show on each road nook couldn’t presumably really feel extra well timed had Ubisoft tried.
I can’t say whether or not Legion will do proper by these subjects. As I mentioned, it appears formidable. There’s a motive Ubisoft (and most builders) often take the straightforward manner out and declare video games “aren’t political,” as a result of attempting and failing typically attracts extra damaging consideration than pretending you merely don’t care.
That mentioned, I’m manner extra fascinated about Legion’s story after this second demo. It looks like no person performed it, however Watch Dogs 2 had a shocking quantity to say about Silicon Valley, tech corporations, client privateness legal guidelines, and the like. Obviously it was nonetheless the product of a large company and nonetheless designed to promote thousands and thousands of copies, however Watch Dogs 2 was additionally one in every of Ubisoft’s most subversive video games to-date. If Legion has the identical alternative to touch upon present politics by means of the lens of this pretend near-future London? I’d relatively that than a sterile playground model of London.
IDG / Hayden DingmanMy solely qualm is {that a} grim storyline about terrorism and police violence appears counter to the inherent goofiness of enjoying as any character in Legion’s London. It appears at odds to craft this weighty story filled with real-world points after which heart advertising and marketing efforts on the antics you may rise up to in Legion as an 80-year-old murderer with a pistol in her purse, however that’s…form of what’s occurred to this point.
And I assume that brings us again to the play-as-anyone-in-the-world system. As I mentioned, I do wish to discuss it, as a result of it’s clear Watch Dogs Legion’s success hinges on this single mechanic.
In our previous hands-on demo, I performed as a number of 80-year-old girls and wreaked havoc on London. Much as I loved it, doing that twice wouldn’t make for a really fascinating article. Thus this time round I frolicked with a extra numerous group of characters. There was Chris Wright, a building employee. Nhu Tran was a graffiti mural artist. And late within the demo I recruited Willis Green, a member of Albion itself.
IDG / Hayden DingmanI mentioned Legion will stay or die by this mechanic, however actually it can stay or die based mostly on how effectively Ubisoft hides the strings. And after my demo I’m…solely considerably satisfied.
When you’re truly enjoying as a personality, it’s nearly seamless. The conversations you may have throughout fundamental story missions really feel pretty pure (although I used to be stunned how little my DedSec recruits truly knew about expertise). And I really like the character-specific touches. Each character has applicable weaponry, as an example, so my building employee knocked folks out with a wrench whereas the artist shot folks with a paintball gun.
There’s additionally a component of social stealth. Borrowing from early Assassin’s Creed—or maybe the uniformed antics of Hitman’s Agent 47—there’s an artwork to not drawing consideration. My Albion insider, as an example, might stroll by means of safety checkpoints and into restricted areas with out sounding the alarm, as long as he didn’t come too near anybody. Given that Watch Dogs 2 was at its worst when the motion devolved right into a firefight, I’m hoping that occurs far much less in Legion.
IDG / Hayden DingmanCheck out the ray tracing help in Watch Dogs Legion, by the way in which. Gorgeous.
Some features of this method really feel very stilted although. The worst is recruitment. This usually begins with you approaching somebody on the road and loudly proclaiming “Hey, I’m with DedSec” or one thing equally asinine. You know, declaring your self to be part of a terrorist group in a surveillance state with cameras on each nook. A daring technique, to make sure.
And except for the unnatural manner these conversations begin, all of them too typically play out the identical manner. Sure, this stranger is keen to hitch DedSec (once more, a reputed terrorist group) as long as you do some menial process for them.
It’s in these moments you understand Legion is an extremely complicated stage manufacturing, and that the set is produced from plywood and plastic. And sure, that’s each online game. Absolutely. The trick is minimizing the bits the place the phantasm breaks although, and sadly Legion introduces a lot of potential breaking factors.
Bottom line
I don’t understand how Watch Dogs Legion will end up, truthfully. As I mentioned final time: There’s definitely nothing else prefer it. It’s audacious, the kind of undertaking that would solely be performed with a serious writer’s backing—and the kind of undertaking that’s so dangerous you wouldn’t count on a writer to undertake it.
That’s thrilling, to me not less than. I really like when video games skirt the road between triumph and trainwreck. (See: Ancestors, Alpha Protocol.) I’m positive it’s terrifying for the builders, however these are the video games that actually push the medium ahead. And most of the time, they’re those folks nonetheless discuss a decade later. Let’s simply hope Legion developments in direction of triumph, yeah?