Watch Dogs Legion - Post-Brexit London setting

I watched the Skill Up Preview/first impressions video for this, and while he's super enthusiastic about it, it's thrown up further questions for me.

The whole "recruit anyone" thing looks less impressive having seen more of it. It seems more like there being an array of "classes" that exist for NPCs in the city, rather than a more diverse range of organic NPCs with varied skills and attributes. The way you unlock them also makes me question some of the choices of recruit character types. It looks like you just spot people who are pre-flagged as potential recruits, do some missions for them to help them out with a problem, and then they're yours. But we also know that at least 2 of the recruitable character types are state agents, police officers and spies. Thematically, how do you, as a member of Dedsec, even come close to trusting these characters after running them a couple of errands? As you then get to play as them, there's also presumably no conflict of interest on their parts, as they're just fully utilisable agents of the cause instead, now. Unless we're going to wind up in some Heavy Rain, (Heavy Rain spoilers here I guess:)"you were playing as the bad guy, we just didn't tell you," territory. Also, while it's admirable that they appear to have recorded separate voices for all the story cutscenes for all the potential playable agents, it's pretty disappointing to realise that who you play as is likely to have next to no impact on the story at all. Maybe some dialogue changes here or there, but I can't see them managing to make any substantive alterations, especially as you'll always need the story to be able to switch back to another character at the next cutscene. A real shame when one of the strengths of 2 was how Marcus was written as a black guy in a white dominated tech world, and who he was absolutely shaped how all the other characters interacted with him and how his story played out.

I'm sure this game is not going to be strong in terms of story. From it's first reveal, I always had the feeling it would be more of a sandbox-styled game. Just allowing you to play out fantasies of being a random person making a difference in bringing down the status quo. It never needed a strong story, but one thing it does need is strong characters - even if just for those who can be recruited via the story. And speaking of those, does that video show off the complete mission set to recruit an officer or spy? It could always be they were questioning the side they were on but needed to know if DecSec could protect them should they defect. Just small situations like that, written well, could make for some great characters who you would connect with.

I'm really dissapointed with all 3 of Ubisofts 'big' franchises tbh. Far Cry 6, This and Valhalla all look bland to me.

DarkRula wrote:I'm sure this game is not going to be strong in terms of story. From it's first reveal, I always had the feeling it would be more of a sandbox-styled game. Just allowing you to play out fantasies of being a random person making a difference in bringing down the status quo. It never needed a strong story, but one thing it does need is strong characters - even if just for those who can be recruited via the story. And speaking of those, does that video show off the complete mission set to recruit an officer or spy? It could always be they were questioning the side they were on but needed to know if DecSec could protect them should they defect. Just small situations like that, written well, could make for some great characters who you would connect with.

The video doesn't show the recruitment mission content, I imagine a lot is under embargo anyway, and he only went through a preview build, but the story of a spy defecting to an enemy hacker organisation, and them being accepted, with both parties working to gain each others trust, would probably fill an entire game on its own. I don't have confidence that a handful of side quests used to unlock a character class are going to cover that, or address any potential lasting fallout, or cover the chance of one side double crossing the other. I mean, I wouldn't expect a recruitment mechanic to get that in depth in a game like this anyway, but it just feels like recruiting actual state actors like police, or spies, who would presumably be undergoing regular psychological assessment to guage their chances of defection, would require way more work and story profile, than recruiting from members of the general public.

I'm a little disappointed to learn that recruitment just comes down to a couple of binary succeed or fail mission requirements, honestly. It could have been something cool, like a relationship over time thing, where certain Dedsec actions cause people to like the group more or less, and leave or want to join based on your actions in the world, or your interactions with them while you play as other characters.

I'm hoping there is more depth to it than it seems, but I guess we'll have to wait until we have a clearer picture of it all.

Photek wrote:I'm really dissapointed with all 3 of Ubisofts 'big' franchises tbh. Far Cry 6, This and Valhalla all look bland to me.

Its the perfection of the Ubisoft game formula - a big open world action game with crafting, RPG elements and a map full of lots of instances of a handful of different things to do/tidy up. WD 2 was great almost despite itself thanks to the array of non-lethal stealth options which were more interesting than just "kill the dudes".

Knoyleo wrote:I'm a little disappointed to learn that recruitment just comes down to a couple of binary succeed or fail mission requirements, honestly. It could have been something cool, like a relationship over time thing, where certain Dedsec actions cause people to like the group more or less, and leave or want to join based on your actions in the world, or your interactions with them while you play as other characters.

I know they were talking about a similar thing back duirng E3 last year, though I think it was still missions based in some form. Obviously, there might have been a bit of downsizing of the scale of this recruitment mechanic, but random NPCs are still recruitable in some form.

Welcome to watchdogs legion. You can be ANYONE!!!

OMG OMG OMG

Welcome to the watchdogs legion tutorial, you can't be anyone.

I know it's something that they pushed on reveal, but what is the actual advantage to being able to recruit anyone? Why would we actually want that? It's just going to reduce the quality of the content, as they have to make it more generic to fit all possibilities.

Tomous wrote:I know it's something that they pushed on reveal, but what is the actual advantage to being able to recruit anyone? Why would we actually want that? It's just going to reduce the quality of the content, as they have to make it more generic to fit all possibilities.

There must be some great gameplay hook we'renot seeing, becuase otherwise it's just another big old list to tick off.

Recruited 28 of 879 citizens. 1 of 20 VIPs

And so on.

Victor Mildew wrote:
Tomous wrote:I know it's something that they pushed on reveal, but what is the actual advantage to being able to recruit anyone? Why would we actually want that? It's just going to reduce the quality of the content, as they have to make it more generic to fit all possibilities.

There must be some great gameplay hook we'renot seeing, becuase otherwise it's just another big old list to tick off.

Recruited 28 of 879 citizens. 1 of 20 VIPs

And so on.

I like the idea of having access to different areas as different characters, kind of like the costumes in Hitman, but this could easily have been tackled by having a fixed crew of characters you switch between, meaning each can have a more firm story written for them, rather than this situation where every NPC is a narrative blank slate, with a specific set of perks.

Without playing it I can't really know the possibilities, but switching between people on the fly would probably work like swapping between cameras during hacking I'd imagine.

I'm pretty sure there's permadeath if you want it, so there's the reason. Not that it needed to be there, because it's a feature that only a few are really going to use if it isn't a hardlocked setting. I guess they wanted to bring the mechanics from ZombiU into a more popular series.

Multipile characters with permadeath has already been done in State of Decay. You can switch between all characters of your crew on the fly.

Rogue likes and perma death games need to get in the sea

Photek wrote:Multipile characters with permadeath has already been done in the Oregon Trail.

FTFY

Watch Dogs Legion's character switching has always sounded a bit like Driver San Francisco to me.

ZombiU was great in its approach too

Tomous wrote:I know it's something that they pushed on reveal, but what is the actual advantage to being able to recruit anyone? Why would we actually want that? It's just going to reduce the quality of the content, as they have to make it more generic to fit all possibilities.

You can play as a merry band of cockney chimney sweeps.
What more do you need to know?

Not feeling the hype for this one. Amazed that Ubisoft is content to release its two open-world titles in the same Q as the other.

speedboatchase wrote:Not feeling the hype for this one. Amazed that Ubisoft is content to release its two open-world titles in the same Q as the other.

3 if you count Immortals: Fenyx Rising

twitter.com/AutomaticZen/status/1313517425481134081

This made me laugh

The NPCs are probably going to provide a lot of that sort of entertainment once again. Even without hacks, some of the best moments I've had exploring in Watch Dogs 2 is just seeing the random things NPCs are getting up to.

Watch Dogs Legion - Post-Brexit London setting

Who is online

Affiliates