Watch Dogs: Legion Review I

When we are playing open world action games, we will hardly take notice to passersby. Neither will we think about whether they have talents or potentials to become a here or not. Not to mention we take notice to other things when we are driving. But when I am playing Watch Dogs: Legion, I will pay more attention to passersby than when I am playing the other games. Ubisoft’s improvement to the game makes it like the hacker version of State of Decay: NPCs can be recruited as characters. And since different NPCs have different weapons, powers and features, the experiences of controlling different roles also differ. The mode that all roles can execute the same mission in the game makes Watch Dogs: Legion more like a sandbox game than the previous two games of the same series. The game is a little bit rough, as the innovation is a kind of experiment for Ubisoft. But Ubisoft’s courage of innovation makes me believe that they will make it a better one in the future. 

The map of the game shows us the future outlook of centre London, whose design is similar to the thumbnail of San Francisco Bay Area in Watch Dogs 2, with beautiful details and high definition. On the other hand, the new map has been added with new elements: a large number of drones in the sky monitoring the street and delivering materials, old-fashion cars in the street, automatic cars like Tesla, slogans of monopoly firms in the city, and eye-catching holographic projections. You can enjoy a cool visual experience in the game, with only a little defect: when you are in the busy streets, you will find the frames drop, even you are using i7 7700K+RTX 2080Ti.

The story of Watch Dogs: Legion is not related to the previous two games of the series. The only connection is that the stories revolve around the secret hacking collective—DedSec. In the game, DedSec is fighting against a fascist regime, who uses technology to manipulate England. The fascist regime came to power after a severe terrorist attack to England. And DedSec was framed to be the perpetrator who designed the attack.

Watching the stories of Watch Dogs: Legion is like watching the drama Black Mirror. We can see how anti-social elements behave after they master high technology. Some extreme ideas in the game are derived from movies and dramas launched in the past ten years. And the villains in the game put those ideas into practice, including a technology tycoon who is a totalitarian and a leader of a human trafficking group.

By contrast, the image of the allies in the game look to flat, as we find them not impressive at all. While Bagley, the smart sentient AI program is a funny character, who says something funny to you and tells jokes on other characters. And not like the other games who tend to copy GladOS (AI program in Portal), Bagley is unique. Besides, the stories of the side missions in the game also worth watching. In my opinion, you need about 40 hours to go through the whole game.