WATCH DOGS LEGION

Londoners are revolting

Format PS4 ETA 6 Mar Pub Ubisoft Dev Ubisoft Toronto

You could argue that Watch Dogs Legion doesn’t have a main character. There’s no front-of-box star, and you’re not pushed into playing the game as any specific protagonist. But it’s perhaps more apt to say that absolutely everyone can be a main character. In this postBrexit London, the DedSec hacker resistance can potentially recruit anyone on the street.

What’s important is the technology behind that concept,

allowing Legion to support that possibility. The database behind this isn’t some light version of a custom character creator. Ubisoft is using advanced technology to generate individual characters, with the ability to combine thousands of faces, voice acting lines, and performances to make each one feel unique. The more attention you pay to an NPC, the more the game fleshes them out.

To recruit someone, you have to find out what they need and use your hacking to help them, winning them to your cause. You even take your squad (capped at 20 members maximum) online to play with friends, progressing your campaign independently.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

But just as you can recruit anyone, so you can lose anyone too. Real consequences can befall your team. Failure in missions and violent confrontations can lead to capture, wounds, and possibly permadeath.

Just as Legion introduces the ‘anyone can be your character’

system, it also introduces character classes. Whereas before your main character could do it all, here they have specialities to encourage you to build a diversely talented team. This allows for some more built-out skill trees: Infiltrators are skilled at stealth; Hackers are, naturally, great at hacking; and Enforcers are more combat-focused and able to use heavy weaponry.

The 2020s near-future postBrexit is grim, but you’ll still have a choice in how you approach things: lethal or non-lethal, quiet or head-on. How you tackle missions affects the way private military force Albion, which keeps order in London, retaliates. We’ll miss the tongue-in-cheek prankster vibes of Watch Dogs 2’s sunny San Francisco and Marcus’ diverse and fun crew, but we’re eager to see how our very own squad will fare.

“CHARACTERS’ SPECIALITIES ENCOURAGE YOU TO BUILD A DIVERSELY TALENTED TEAM.”

The heroes you recruit are all unique characters with different backstories and personalities, fully voiced and animated. They are the stars of your story. [..] However you want to play… whoever you want to be, Watch Dogs Legion lets you be that.” Clint Hocking Creative director, Ubisoft Toronto