[REVIEW] Watch Dogs: Legion

Watch Dogs isn’t a series I ever really thought I’d play. In fairness, I can’t say I really knew much about the games beyond some vague commentary on the marketing, but what I knew could be boiled down to, “Look at me, I’m a cool guy doing cool things, look how cool a guy I am, being all counterculture and not letting anybody tell me what to do.”

Yeah, anybody who’s played the games can see at a glance that the above description isn’t remotely an accurate description of Watch Dogs.

But then I found out it was a series about using technology and hacking to take down corrupt organizations and expose nefarious plots against humanity, and oh hell yes, sign me up for some of that!

I want to state right from the outset that I haven’t played any of the games in the series beyond Watch Dogs: Legion. Thus, I’m only judging this game as a newcomer to the series. I can’t comment on its continuity with regard to the prior 2 games, I can’t comment on any possible recurring characters, I can’t say if certain game mechanics are similar to what came before. I realize it might seem strange, jumping into a series partway through, but people do that all the time, and so I figure newcomer opinions on those games are valid, and especially helpful for other potential newcomers who want to play a certain game but might not be able to invest so much time and money playing all the previous games first.

A CONSPIRACY OF THE POWERFUL

The game begins with you playing as Dalton, making his way secretly through London’s Houses of Parliament, working to defuse a planted bomb. Dalton is part of the hacktivist group that, well, does what hacktivist groups do. Expose corruption, gather intel, end tyranny, all through technology and hacking. Dalton discovers, though, that a less civic-minded hacker group called Zero Day is behind the bombs in Parliament, as well as other major landmarks throughout London. All of which are set up to look like DedSec themselves caused the terrorist attack. This results in enough public fear that Albion, a private military/security company, moves in and essentially sets up a surveillance state, all under the guise of keeping people safe from the monsters of DedSec.

And, y’know, other terrible crimes against society. Like being an immigrant. Or witnessing Albion employees attacking people on the street because they happened to wander too close to a suspicious arrest. Albion essentially becomes the city’s police force, and you can just imagine what kind of hell happens when a private company that can watch you at all times becomes your primary form of law enforcement.

Combine the surveillance state with a lack of jobs due to increasing automation, and you have a situation that’s tailor-made for the powerful to seize more power, and for those without it to be oppressed. It’s this world into which DedSec revives, intent on finding out who Zero Day is, and taking down the enemies of freedom and justice along the way.

And there are many! Albion seems to have its fingers in many pies, but then there’s also Clan Kelley, an organized crime syndicate with about as much charm as you can imagine from the sort of people who would run a human trafficking ring. Broca Tech’s advanced AI plans have some terrifying human consequences. And then there are just yur garden-variety people on the street who don’t take kindly to DedSec’s very existence, still believing them to be the threat that Albion says they are.

The story of Watch Dogs: Legion might be relatively short, but there’s a whole lot crammed in here, much of it social commentary of the sort that, well, might well piss off those who dislike left-leaning policies. Unsurprising, really, since you play as a group of freedom-fighters who are vehemently anti-tyranny. There are protests against Engand’s new surveillance state all over London, taking about how people need jobs, how immigrants are not the enemies of the country, how Albion is fascist, how politicians need to listen to the voice of the people instead of telling the people what to say. Immigrants have been blamed for terrorist attacks. There is a curfew in the city (which people mostly ignore anyway), there are frequent alerts about the terrorism threat level, and people are detained for unknown reasons all the time. You can’t play this game without getting steeped in the problems of the oppressed, of the people who are just trying to live their lives safely but are blocked from doing so by Albion or Clan Kelley. The game gets you thinking about the parts of society you don’t see, because it forces you to look.

I have to respect that a lot. I also have to respect that, by extension, the game makes you, the player, feel powerful. There you are, an ordinary person who was recruited off the street, doing your part to end tyranny, to make the guilty pay for their crimes against humanity, to expose the shady dealings of powerful organizations to either consider themselves above the law, or just consider themselves the law. Yeah, I freaking love that. I love thinking that I can make a difference. I love feeling like, even if it’s just in a video game, I can do something to take down corruption.

Even if it’s just by learning what corruption looks like.

ONE OF MANY, ONE OF YOU

Watch Dogs: Legion doesn’t have you play as one character so much as many characters. You start off with just a single operative, recruited into DedSec by its only remaining London member, Sabine. From there, your roster of operatives can increase, allowing you a greater variety of characters with their own special skills and uses and suitability to different situations. You can switch team members almost at any time (exceptions being high-risk dangerous situations). Recruiting and playing as a construction worker, for instance, means you blend in more at construction sites, and enemies there won’t think much of your presence. Playing as a medical professional means you can blend in better in a hospital setting.

Character traits might also include having a wide range for hacking, or the ability to gain more money when you skim it off cryptocurrency machines. There’s a good variety of skills to play with, which allow you to customize your team of DedSec operatives to cover as many situations as you might encounter. There are also some drawback traits on certain characters, though, such as being famous and so more easily recognized in public, or a long cooldown time if you get arrested, all the way up to the chance that a character might just spontaneously drop dead. So you really have to consider risk versus reward with some potential operatives before you recruit them.

Recruiting people can be done by scanning them first to see if they’re friendly, neutral, or hostile to the idea of joining DedSec (you don’t want to accidentally try to recruit a bunch of Albion employees, for instance), and then pressing the “Recruit” button. More often than not you’ll be given a quest to complete in order to successfully recruit the person, usually involving uncovering something Albion did or stealing back something Clan Kelley took, or something of the sort. In other words, a lot of people out there have problems with the city’s power structure, and helping them gets you on their good side, making it likely they’ll help you out. Some people will join up, though, based on little more than the knowledge that a family member or close friend is already an operative.

Each recruit also comes with their own profile, which contains often irrelevant info, like the notation that Billy Gillespie (as seen in the above screenshot) is afraid of clowns and apparently not super social given that he asked as AI how to make friends. It’s all flavour text, really, and when you get enough recruits you’ll start to see a lot of overlap in the descriptions, but there’s enough there to give a good variety of character traits that don’t make a difference to the game but nevertheless make the characters feel a bit more human.

Part of me wonders if you’re able to recruit the entirety of London with enough patience and gumption.

IN PLAIN SIGHT

Many’s the time you’re going to need to head to dangerous locations, filled with guards and drones who are on the lookout for anything suspicious. While it might be tempting to go in guns a-blazin’, this is more often than not a sure way to end up in more trouble than you can handle. Attacked guards will call in reinforcements, drones will start shooting at you, and if you’re on the streets, police cruisers will start chasing you down, ready to immobilize and arrest you (or worse). No, the best tactic is to be sneaky. Hide behind things, wait patiently for the best opportunity, and move forward bit by silent bit, all under the noses of guards who don’t even know you’re there.

This doesn’t always work flawlessly, and there are some places that don’t have good hiding locations. Sometimes you’ll need to get rid of guards in order to move forward, and yes, you can shoot them or punch them and draw the attention of other guards because guns can be loud and punches mean you have to be right out the in open, but I found the best option was a takedown. Sneak up on a guard from behind, and just… take him down. It’s a sneak attack that definitely takes the target out of the picture and makes sure they won’t get in the way of your covert activities.

Admittedly, that sounds nice and nonlethal and all, but one time I was controlling a paramedic and the takedown move was to whip out a portable defibrillator and shock my target’s head, so, uh, yeah. Not coming back from that one.

Anyway, there are different gadgets you can use to aid in your sneakiness. Need just a split second out in the open to rush a guard for a takedown? Activate a cool techy invisibility cloak and nobody will see you. Need to get into a room but the only access you can find is a tiny heating duct? Bring out your trusty spiderbot and let it run through the vents and get where you need to go. These gadgets can’t be swapped out once you’re in danger zones, and they can’t be relied on for everything, but they can really turn the tide in a tricky situation, and can allow you to think a little more outside the box when it comes to infiltration.

While the game’s AI is pretty good and definitely keeps you on your toes at times, it’s not perfect. More than once, while freeing unduly-arrested people from Albion’s arrest-happy employees, I had to make a break for it or else risk my own arrest or possibly death. Now, you’d think the best solution to this would be to find cover and hide. Duck down a dark alley and try to dodge in so many directions they can’t keep up. And yes, this did work for me. Once. But more often than not, the best solution was to just run in a straight line. That’s it. Keep running, and before too long I’d heard a report that they’d lost me and were calling off the search. Never mind that I was running down a straight road. Never mind that one time I had a police car literally keeping pace beside me. 30 seconds of all-out running down the street and boom, safe.

I’d say this is commentary on how people will do the absolute bare minimum they have to and will give up on something super easily, but given that I once spent nearly a solid 10 minutes doing my “dodge and hide” technique while being set upon by wave after wave of people and drones, all intent of shooting the crap out of me, following my every move as I ducked behind garbage cans and jumped over fences… Nah, this was just some weird thing where likely the game was programed to give up looking for me if I was a certain distance away from where most of the cops were. Or something like that, anyway.

ENDLESS OPPORTUNITY

While Watch Dogs: Legion really showcases the blend of beauty and brutality that is near-future London, it also gives the player an absolutely buttload of content to play with during their time in game. While not every square inch of London is available for you to explore, there’s still a lot to see and discover. You can, as I’m showing in the above screenshot, climb on rooftops and watch the sun rise, since there’s a day-night cycle in the game. There are walls you can grafitti, in order to spread awareness of DedSec and show Albion that their fascism won’t be just calmly tolerated. You can disrupt propaganda and bring the DedSec name to billboards, you can free people who have been wrongly imprisoned, you can play darts, you can drink mugs of beer, you can buy clothes and customize your outfits. You can hop in a car and set it to auto-drive and just cruise around the city, seeing the sights and taking in the huge amount of detail that went into the environment, from the slums and high-rise apartment buildings, to the fancy rich sections of the city, to buildings that have stood for centuries and are historic landmarks.

You could watch weird glitches fling NPCs across roads like they just stepped on warp tiles. Or find drones that got stuck in trees, and laugh because why should you be afraid of these things again?

(Like I said, the game isn’t perfect, and there are a few wonky aspects to the code. But that can pretty much be said of any games, and none of the glitches I encountered were game-breaking.)

And that’s not including the main story and the mystery behind Zero Day, or the process of recruiting loads of operatives and running through their side missions.

There is so much to do in Watch Dogs: Legion that you could be forgiven for occasionally taking entire hours away from the main storyline just to look around and see what you can see. I feel like this is the sort of game that could hide dozens of one secrets for players to find, ones that might take months of years to uncover because the city is so vast and there are so many people in it. I wouldn’t

I might not have discovered any fascinating secrets myself, but I did encounter a few things that surprised me. Being able to control the self-driving cars (and making use of that to create distracting accidents). Thinking that it was weird that there were so many visible marginalized characters in the game but nobody with disabilities… and then finding a random NPC who was listed as having Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (yes, this is a real condition, and no, it’s not nearly as badass as it sounds). It’s the incredible level of detail in Watch Dogs: Legion that stunned me, the weirdly mundane things that didn’t need to be there and yet make the game so much richer for their inclusion.

And speaking of inclusion, Watch Dogs: Legion has a number of accessibility settings to play with. Colourblindness settings to make certain aspects of the HUD clearer, the ability to have full subtitles including sound effects, along with directional cues for where those sound effects were coming from, even things like auto-aim (which I took full advantage of because my reflexes and reaction times aren’t good enough to handle manual aiming most days). There’s no ability to remap buttons, which is a shame for those who need it, but there are a lot of other options to help those with certain disabilities and challenges better play and enjoy the game, and I’m thankful for that.

There’s a lot to like about Watch Dogs: Legion. I enjoyed the stealth mechanics more than I expected to, and quite frankly, I want to play the rest of the series now, after having played this one.I want to see how this game ties int a larger narrative. I want to see what else the series has to say. Heck, I want to play this game again, as I only played it during the free-to-play weekend, and I know I didn’t get the chance to experience a lot of what the game had to offer. I’d like the chance to revisit it and take my time, especially after playing Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2. The message is something I can really get behind, and the gameplay is satisfying and engaging, and if I want to feel like an awesome freedom-fighter some days, then this is one good way to live that dream.