Watch Dogs Legion
When the original Watch Dogs was revealed at E3 2012 everyone was blown away by the graphics and the apparent openness of the game but there was a hint of disappointment when the game finally released and didn’t quite live up to the heightened expectations. There’s a slightly similar feeling this time around to Watch Dogs Legion with the ‘play as anyone’ reveal at this years E3. We want to be excited, we really do, but there’s just a touch of scepticism hanging in the air on whether they can pull this off. We caught up with Creative Director Clint Hocking and Game Design Director Kent Hudson to find out more about the game and how the play as anyone mechanic is going to work.
As we know from the reveal Watch Dogs Legion has moved across the pond and is set in a near future version of London. Private security forces have been empowered to replace the police and military and DedSec are now building a popular resistance to fight back against the emergence of an authoritarian regime. You do this, of course, by picking ANY person from London, play their backstory and recruit them into your team.
Clint tells us that they picked London for this reason. It’s an incredibly diverse and colourful city full of life and vibrancy with lots of neighbourhoods and districts all with distinct characteristics. As a game where you can play as ANY person in the city it made sense to bring it to London, a city where more than 200 languages are spoken, where you had a really meaningful choice of people to play as. If everyone was similar what would be the point!? Clint was keen to stress that as you recruit more people to your team, when you’re not playing as them, they continue living their own lives. So, if you recruit a bartender – he’ll likely be working when you switch to him in the game. Kent tells us that you can swap characters at any point - as long as you’re not in a gunfight. When you bring up the map you’ll see where each character in your team is currently located and use them as a way of fast travelling to the next mission or objective.
And, as we saw at the press conference there is also permadeath in Watch Dogs Legion, so you could lose your favourite character forever at any stage of the game. You can of course, recruit replacements and have up to 20 operatives as part of your team at any one point. How you build that team up is entirely up to you – it could be a team of badass grannies, straight-up lawyers or an eclectic mix of your choosing. Being able to play as anyone frees the game from being tied down to one character like Aiden or Marcus in the past games and really lets the player mould the story the way they want too. We’re assured that cut-scenes and scripts really will be different depending on the characters being used.
Kent goes on to give us further info on the 3 different classes in Watch Dogs Legion – Enforcer (run and gun), Infiltrator (stealth) and Hacker. Each class has it’s own special ability. The Enforcer has a sticky mine – a non-lethal explosion which can be placed and detonated. The Infiltrator has an AR cloak which is essentially an invisibility cloak. The Hacker class is a hybrid class that has a spiderbot that you can control. The spiderbot can be used in two ways. You can just chuck a couple down in combat and they’ll help you fight but you can also take over the spiderbots and control them to move stealthily around levels and take down guards silently – you can sometimes even complete an entire objective without entering the location yourself by making use of them.
Clint goes on to tell us more about the recruitment of people into your team. It’s not just a case of finding someone and clicking a button and they’re on your team. You need to intervene in their lives and try and improve their opinion of DedSec first. Particularly early in the game when they may not be aware of who DedSec are and what they’re trying to do. Everyone has got a support level for DedSec, so when you profile people you can see this level and you need to build this up before they’ll join you. So, you maybe able to play as anyone but you need to convince them to play with you first! When you scan them you try and find out what they’re story is, maybe they are being harassed by the PMCs (Private Military Companies) or they are in debt to crime gangs after borrowing money to cover medical fees after their Health Organisation collapsed or something like that. You figure those out and then help them overcome these problems to convince them that DedSec is here to try and make the world a better place. Clint says that there’s a ton of different ways to go about this. For example, you could go and beat up the loan shark and clear the loan but don’t forget that loan shark is also a potential playable character in the world. Even the guards you fight against have simulated lives and are potentially playable. So, if you beat them up or shoot them then their family members hate DedSec so support levels drop for other potential playable characters. You need to think about your actions as they really do have consequences in the game.
Nearly half the weapons in the game are non-lethal so you don’t have to go around shooting everyone and losing support for DedSec. There’s an improved melee system in Watch Dogs Legion and there’s also more stealth – whole objectives can be played without a gun. If you don’t pull a gun, the opposition won’t either so you can get through sections without killing people, if you want to, of course.
Klint and Kent wrap the chat up by telling us their favourite classes. Klint goes for Infiltrator as he spent a lot of working on the Splinter Cell games and likes stealth and sneaking around in the dark. Kent is torn between Infiltrator or Hacker. With a hacker you can also be stealthy using the spiderbot so it depends on what day you ask me!
And everyone agrees that their favourite characters are grannies of course! Watch Dogs Legion is out 6 March 2020, PS4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia and is available to preorder from The Game Collection now.
- Giles
