The Outerhaven’s Watch Dogs: Legion Review

We are the Legion, for we are many.

Watch Dogs: Legion occurs in London’s futuristic city, where a private military contractor called Albion has set up shop. After a rather nasty scenario that painted DedSec, the group of hackers you play as the villains, Albion has been called to replace the police. So, say goodbye to your freedoms and hello to a dystopian cityscape, with armed guards patrolling the streets, harassing innocents, and making your task of cleaning DedSec’s name that much harder. Along the way, you’ll start to unfold the plot of the story via missions that progress the narrative.

Game Name: Watch Dogs: Legion
Platform(s):  PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Google Stadia
Publisher(s):  Ubisoft
Developer(s):  Ubisoft Toronto
Release Date: October 29, 2020
Price: $59.99
Reviewed On: PC

An old friend in the form of ctOS, the Central Operating system featured in Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2, is also back. Only this time, the OS’s 3rd iteration is much larger than in the previous games. Here, the OS is incorporated into just about everything in London; cell phones, vehicles, drones, and even persons using optiks, a device that provides real-time updates. Meaning everything in the game is susceptible to being hacked, and I mean everything. Cars can be commandeered just by pointing at them and commanding them to come to you, or you can weaponize them. Drones can be commanded to drop their cargo, providing you with resources, or you can call them over to give you a ride. 

Needless to say, ctOS is a massive part of Watch Dogs Legions, and at certain points in the game, you can basically hack your way through missions without breaking a sweat. This is immediately apparent when you utilize the Spiderbots (I love those little guys).  While it may seem like ctOS is the best thing ever, it’s still the same oppressive system made out to be in the other games. If you pay attention to radio in the various vehicles you’ll use in the game, London citizens aren’t fans of the OS. From the towers planted in the city, making the area look bad, how much danger the operating system poses against people’s freedoms. 

There’s so much to do

Watch Dogs’ selling point: Legion is the vast amount of characters you can play as. See an old lady across the street and think she’d make a cool operative? Recruit her! See a guy who has an interesting skill set and weapons? Then recruit them to the cause. See someone being opposed by the Albion goons? Help them out, and they’ll join up with you. You can even recruit people from Albion, who are some of my favorite characters to so as they can access certain areas easier than others. I love the freedom of being able to invite just about anyone into the DedSec fold. Once you’ve recruited them, then all you have to do is complete a mission for them, which usually involves getting them out of trouble, doing something for a friend of theirs, and so on. Do that, and they’re yours. This is great and all, but the downside is that there is no main protagonist and no emotional connection.

I noticed that while the selection of characters is generated from what seems to be an unlimited pool, the recruitment quests are not. On several recruitment drives, I’ve noticed that a similar quest appeared multiple times, which disappointed me. I was hoping that the missions were also randomly generated, but it doesn’t appear to be the case.

Watch Dogs: Legion presents multiple opportunities to do more than completing your main objectives to complete the game. There are recruitment missions that have to be completed to bring in new operatives. When you’re not grinding out the main objectives, you can partake in mini-quests that involve sticking it to Albion, a fight club questline. Perhaps go shopping and waste some of that ETO, the in-game currency, and buy yourself a wardrobe upgrade, which is the only thing you can currently do with it. Or hit up a pub and get wasted, play a game of darts or stroll the streets, and emoting with random NPCs. 

If you’re feeling adventurous and bold, you can steal anyone’s vehicle, ranging from exotic cars, motorcycles, trucks, cargo drones that let you surf the sky, and so much more. Or scuffle with Albion in Grand Theft Auto-like stand-offs, trying to see just how many I can manage to attempt to hunt me down. Which, as I found out after losing several operatives, a lot. Albion does not play around, and they will come after you with a force hail of bullets if you piss them off enough. Thankfully,  you can avoid most confrontations, while others, the Albion pursuers, will give up if they lose line of sight with you. 

You can explore the city and observe London’s citizens in their day-to-day activities. You’ll find that the city is vivacious and there’s always something happening. Albion altercations can result in citizens being harassed or fighting back. At the same time, other people stroll down London’s streets while yelling into their phones or couriers trying to make their deliveries. 

I even found out the hard way that some don’t take too kindly to Albion; as I was using my former Albion operative, I was sucker-punched a few times out of nowhere. Although, they never did that to the actual Albion. There’s so much taking place, all the while you’re trying to rid the city of any wrongdoing, but sometimes I just stopped and took it all in. It would be wrong not to do so, especially since the amount of detail and the effort of making the world one that’s teaming with life.

Graphically, Watch Dogs: Legions look amazing on the PC, thanks to the high-resolution assets and Ray Tracing reflections if you have access to an Nvidia RTX 2000 or 3000 series card. As one of the AAA games with Ray Tracing enabled, you can see why everyone keeps talking about the buzzword. The reflection bouncing off the walls, glass, and puddles throughout the game has made me a believer in the tech. Just looking at the city at night, right after it rained, makes everything pop, even if it does come with a hefty price.

Autodrive, where have you been all my life?

Ok, I know this is trivial, but I really love the Autodrive option. It’s an innovation, a time-saver, and it makes for a nice distraction while playing the game. All you have to do is hop in a vehicle, select your destination on the map, then enable Autodrive. The vehicle will drive you to your marked location while completely abiding by the land’s traffic laws. I’ve marked long drives from one end of London to the other to see what happens. I love this feature and hope more open-world games implement something like this.

Yes, there are microtransactions.

I know just mentioning the work microtransactions is enough to make most people’s hairs stand on end, but thankfully, how it is implemented doesn’t break the game. Instead, the microtransaction only extends over to cosmetic items and various boosts to gain more ETO. Everything there is optional, so while there are real money transactions, they aren’t required so ever.

 

Optimization is needed

Let’s get this right out with it; Watch Dogs: Legion on PC is taxing even on a modest PC. I’ve tested on several PCs; One equipped with a Ryzen 7 2700x + Nvidia RTX 2080 Super and another with a Ryzen 9 3900x + Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti. On both machines, trying to run the game at 1440p with very high or ultra settings was a task, and despite multiple attempts, getting the game to run at a stable 60 frames per second just wasn’t possible. It got worse when I hopped into a car or jumped onto a motorcycle; the frame rate tanked hard. We’re talking from 50ish frames to around 30-40 when driving. This was also after the first patch released for the game, which was one reason I delayed this review as I wanted to see if the patch would address the issues. Here’s to hoping that Ubisoft is working on another patch to address this game’s performance further.

What about the online gameplay

Sadly, the online portion of Watch Dogs: Legions wasn’t available and won’t be until December 2020. Which meant the co-op missions or PVP modes weren’t available to check out. Once they are available, we’ll be reviewing those as a separate review. So be sure to check back in December 2020.

Mind the language

Now, I normally wouldn’t care too much about this, but I’ve also become responsible for what my children and other children are exposed to as I’ve grown older. And while I understand that London citizens enjoy their freedoms, perhaps there’s a bit too much going on in the game regarding profanity. Far too often, I heard some profanity, and at one point, my wife had walked in on me to see what exactly I was doing. There’s currently no option to disable this, so the next best thing is turning the in-game dialogue completely off. Which stinks this means you miss out on all the other dialogue such as the radio chatter and warnings, the citizens on the street, or other places.

Overall, Watch Dogs: Legion is a mixed bag. There’s the right amount of action, and while the story isn’t amazing, the plot was interesting enough to make me keep looking forward to what happened next. However, the lack of a focus on a main protagonist does hurt the game, as there’s no emotional attachment. My biggest detector is the game’s performance on the PC; it really frustrated me despite having modest hardware that runs other AAA games without issue. Despite the flaws, Watch Dogs: Legions is a solid addition to the series and is an enjoyable game. More so when they hammer out those performance concerns.

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