Watch Dogs: Legion Review

Watch Dogs: Legion is the third instalment to the wonderful Watch Dogs franchise. Published and Developed by Ubisoft, this third person shooter is set in London, England in the year 2030, but it’s a little more futuristic than we’re likely to achieve by then! Ubisoft Toronto have recreated London amazingly, including all its iconic landmarks, and it feels exciting and vibrant.

When I watched the first gameplay trailer, I was so excited. The first character they showed was called Ian AND it was set in London – excitement already at its peak! But as it moved along showing that you can actually play as multiple characters, up to 9 million, it began to get way more interesting. The wide variety makes this unique as there wasn’t one set person that was going to be the main character and it means there’s the opportunity for everyone’s playthrough to be different. Talk about unique.

The game focuses on a hacker group called DeadSec who fight against authority and groups that are out there to do wrong. Their main enemies include Albion, a private military company that takes over as the de-facto police across London. Not to mention other groups that uses the dark web, conducting human trafficking and abductions amongst other crimes.
DedSec is now led by Sabine Brandt and a very witty AI called Bagley. When you first start you have an amazing opening prologue that gets you stuck into the story. My god it was so good, but I don’t want to spoil it by elaborating. After this you pick who you want your first character to be.

My first character was a young, black, E-sport professional rude boy who talks like a wannabe gangsta. As you progress though the story you unlock more characters, each with unique abilities. For example, you can recruit a hitman who can take down characters quickly, or a getaway driver that has access to a really fast car. I have found myself constantly changing who I am playing with to mix things up, but so far the hitman and street artist have been my favourites (he can shoot people with a paintball gun)

Depending on your character, in combat you can just knock people out with a takedown or kill them instead. For me, it’s fun to try non-lethal ways and have a slightly clearer conscience. There is also a Permadeath feature, which does what it says – if your character dies they are out of the game for good and you will need to play as someone else. This feature can be turned on at the beginning of the game, though you can turn it off once you’ve started should you wish, so you don’t have to have this on if you don’t want people dying permanently.

I found that the voices didn’t fit the characters at times. They are randomly generated with voice modifiers and effects, which can lead to some odd combinations: for example, you’ll have a young white girl with the voice of an Asian lady. With there being over 9 million characters to pick from I understand the need to have a lot of variety but it takes away some realism. Like another example, is why is a geeky guy in a suit talking like a Gangsta?

The main equipment you will have in Watch Dogs: Legion are the variety of gadgets. They are really useful. For example, you have access to a Spider Bot that can go into buildings through vents and access computers easily, or a cloak that allows you to move past NPC’s easily without being seen.

Like in previous instalments, you can also access all the cameras in the city and move about a building just looking through cameras.  All characters will have access to the Spider Bot but other characters can bring in new unique abilities. At the beginning the Spider Bot is your main method for navigating around but soon you start unlocking more abilities which means you can start entering a situation in a variety of different ways.

The city of London is fully open world for you to explore. You’re able to freely pursue a mission or activity, or explore the city whenever you want, as missions aren’t forced.  You can roam London either on foot, in vehicles or fast-travelling via the Underground stations. There are a lot of different cars to choose from. I found it strange that there were a lot of cars driving around without any people in them, supposedly futuristic self-driving cars that are indicated by a symbol on the windscreen. However, why are they driving round without any passengers? Maybe you would get a few taxis moving between fares, but wouldn’t they otherwise just be parked up? This is a small complaint, as they were easy to hijack and you feel less guilty when you don’t have to yank someone from the driving seat.

Whilst in the car you will have music played out to you in the form of a radio station though you can turn it off if you wish. So you can burst out some tunes whilst you are cruising across London. The cars handle well so you shouldn’t have issues. You can crash into things and still be able to drive afterwards without much punishment. It’s only if you’re clearly seen by the police they will chase after you, but whilst driving you can still hack the cars around you to move them out of the way or raise bollards to stop them in their tracks.

Watch Dogs: Legion is composed of both missions that progress the main story and liberation missions aimed at freeing the city’s boroughs. These involve a couple of tasks to complete, like hacking into an area and taking a photo or destroying a drone. Freeing the borough gives you a chance to unlock and find more unique characters with useful abilities. To unlock new playable characters you need to complete recruitment missions. These also involve completing a variety of tasks, such as stealing something for them or accessing a certain file in a secure area.

Watch Dogs: Legion seems very focused on an element I love – stealth. You frequently have to get in and out of an area without being seen and caught. This is something I enjoy rather than going in all guns blazing (which you can still do, but it’s not as fun) and if you have turned on the strict permadeath feature you find yourself wanting to protect the characters you grow fond of. If you do find yourself in combat you will have three main moves: punch, dodge and break stance. This makes it way more fun when you do get into hand to hand combat. Alternatively you can just quickly take them out with a stun gun for a non-lethal takedown, or kill them.

Graphically this is a joy to behold. Even on the Xbox One X it’s looking brilliant and I can’t wait to dive into the Series X version on the 10th of November. It’s definitely going to be the first thing I boot up. The loading times are very slow on the XB1 so the quick load times of the Series X|S are going to be great improvement as I have found when you are fast travelling or going into a new area it can take a while.

The Online mode isn’t out yet but they have announced some features, like the invasion mode which they had in the original game where you join someone in a single player lobby and try to hack them by hiding in plain sight. Another mode that piqued my interest is Spider-Bot Arena which is a free for all Deathmatch up to 8 players where you have to destroy each other with variety of different ways like missiles and hacking. They haven’t brought out much information so far on this game mode, but it definitely looks like fun and I’m already thinking about future content.

Conclusion

All in all, Watch Dogs: Legion is a brilliant third instalment to the franchise. I am loving the fact you can play as pretty much anyone, but I have yet to find my favourite character that I 100% want to always play. But with so many to choose from I think I will be constantly changing. The story is interesting and the hacking is smooth and rewarding. For me, this is a must-play.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.