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WATCH DOGS: LEGION

We’re hoping the truth won’t be any stranger than this fiction

- Pub Ubisoft Dev Ubisoft Toronto ETA TBC

Five Ubisoft titles debuting at some point during the company’s next fiscal year will be coming to PS5, with this Brexit-’em-up leading the charge.

CEO Yves Guillemot told all in a recent conference call with investors, saying, “When you come early on the next generation of consoles, you can sell your games for a long time. So we are very happy to be close to the launch of [PS5] because it’s going to benefit all the games we launch.”

While we’re already living the Brexit nightmare/fantasy (take your pick) in merrie olde England, we’re hoping there will be more than a few degrees of separation between our mundane reality and this dystopic vision. We can only hope for face masks as fashionabl­e as those of our DedSec hackers…

BIG BEN DATA

DedSec is back and looking for more than a few helping hands. This time, rather than a Stateside hackathon, England is in need of some cybervigil­ante justice.

DedSec is staring down not only an oppressive surveillan­ce state and a private military outfit, Albion, which has usurped local law enforcemen­t, but also a shady organised crime syndicate. Automated checkpoint­s, manned by killer drones with no human capacity for nuanced

understand­ing and all the fire power, line the streets. Every citizen has compulsory cybernetic implants that track their location, monitoring all they do… though that’s less science fiction than, uh, the phone you have in your pocket right now.

Thankfully, this time it’s not just a group of stylish youths chilling in the back room of a game shop versus the world. This time, you’ve got the opportunit­y to bring all of London together under your cause’s banner, with almost every NPC a possible recruit. Some will require more work to get on side than others, but each new recruit is guaranteed to bring a selection of unique perks and attributes to your movement. If you jump through all the necessary hoops, you can even bring Albion’s own operatives on board.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Every NPC Londoner has an opinion of DedSec, and there are plenty of opportunit­ies to improve public sentiment towards your growing army of hacktivist­s. Take it from us, almost everyone dislikes it when you rack up unnecessar­y civilian casualties.

How do we know this? Well, let’s just say that during our hands on we took over an automated car and our driving prompted the developer guide to ask nervously, “Uh, so, do you drive in real life?”

But the feature most likely to take full advantage of nextgenera­tion tech is the way each member of DedSec goes about their daily routine in real-time. You can pull up the map, check out what your girl Helen Dashwood is up to and immediatel­y switch to her perspectiv­e as she sits feeding the ducks. All the while, everyone else on Team DedSec is carrying on with their lives in opposite ends of London, waiting for you to drop in at any moment. Each operative can be dynamicall­y inserted into any story cutscene, though we have yet to see just how much this will switch things up. After all, elderly Helen is likely to have a different way of dealing with things to your other operatives… though we wonder just how many problems can’t be solved with her trusty spider robot.

“EACH OPERATIVE CAN BE DYNAMICALL­Y INSERTED INTO ANY STORY CUTSCENE.”

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