‘Watch Dogs: Legion’ Gameplay Overview Trailer Welcomes You To London
by Sage Ashford
After being delayed from its original March release date, Ubisoft went completely silent on Watch Dogs: Legion until their recent Ubisoft Forward event. All we knew about the game was that its England setting and a new gameplay gimmick — the player could play as anyone in London. They would merely have to recruit them and create their own DedSec army.
Well, now we’ve seen a bit more of the game, including a mission where we start out playing as a London spy before DedSec is blamed for a terrorist attack on the city. Players are given the opportunity to play as the spy. But things obviously go bad, because by the time the game properly begins, DedSec is considered a terrorist organization and Albion has taken over as London’s police agency. The game sees DedSec trying to clear their name and free London from the grips of a fascist police organization, which feels … oddly timely considering Ubisoft’s usual attempt to pretend their games are “apolitical”.
Watch Dogs: Legion looks like it pushes the franchise further down the direction of discovering its own identity, mixing some more serious storytelling with the weirder aspects of Watch Dogs 2. But it’s a bit concerning that the game’s big selling point is the biggest question mark about the game. The ability to recruit anyone raises questions: how many times can you do that before characters start to look and feel similar? Each new recruit requires missions — how similar are those missions? It’s a complex puzzle which, supposedly, caused the game to be pushed back before; which is why it took longer to come out and hit the same year as an Assassin’s Creed title, something they probably would’ve preferred not to happen.
At the same time, this is a decidedly political plot to be telling, and if they aren’t going to apply any kind of social criticism, then what’s the point of telling a story like this at all?
Watch Dogs: Legion releases October 29th for Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Google Stadia.
