When we first saw the original Watch Dogs trailer most people thought the next generation of game worlds had arrived. Presented with a beautifully realised Chicago in which a windswept Aiden Pearce trotted down the street, casually hacking into the technology around him like you might open a packet of biscuits. The world of gaming was no stranger to the concept of hacking, electronic espionage and open-world action games. Yet here was a title that made it all so effortless and fused it within a game world that looked genuinely stunning. It was a pity then, that what we received on launch was a pale shadow compared to the ‘gameplay’ trailers. Watchdogs was one of the first games to put downscaling on the map and yet, there was still something very special about this new IP from Ubisoft. 

This wasn’t the first time Ubisoft would tickle our fancy with misleading gameplay trailers, like the much-hyped Division. Yet for all the complaining I do about Watch Dogs, the truth is I loved the original game for the things it did get right (spider tank!). Yes, we’d been lied to but there was enough of a new idea here to make a lasting impression. A few years later the next game in the series landed in the sunny streets of San Francisco (or a Ubisoft equivalent). The established formula from the first game was expanded and improved with great success. The main characters of this sequel were largely forgettable but it was the playground of possibilities that made it so much fun. 

The Big Smoke 

So Watch Dogs Legion is set in a condensed version of central London complete with six of the most iconic boroughs. The fact that the developers have stated this is a ‘post-Brexit London’ tells you that politics are going to be on the agenda but let us park that for now. Throughout each Watch Dogs game, the digital spiderweb of powerful tech companies has become more and more intrusive. Now we see our fare capital effectively being turned into a police state of totalitarianism, being backed up by corrupt city leaders and ruthless private security firms.

The job Ubisoft have done of bringing London to life is just breathtaking and easily one of the most endearing aspects of this game. Having worked in London I know the city pretty well and even on my days off, I would explore the many sights on offer. Like Assassins Creed Syndicate, it is totally possible to just ignore the main plot for a spell and do some digital tourism. Nelsons Column, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus and hundreds more iconic locations have all been painstakingly recreated here. There is also a new fictional layer over the top of these real places which shows how the world is heading towards a more Cyberpunk-Esque dystopia. People now sport small wearables that interface with their digital lives, sound familiar? While London is situated on a fairly flat part of the UK the city itself can feel like a rabbit warren with many areas looking like layers of lasagna. This is a feeling I always got when arriving at London Euston as you sink into a man-made canyon of brick and industrial spaghetti. It is a shame that the Underground, one of my favourite things about London has not been utilised as playable space, but it does function as a fast travel system.

On top of the static aesthetics, there is also a lot going on around the player and this does cement the feeling you are in a living breathing city. Iconic black cabs can be seen doing the rounds as well as the red London busses: all with a more modern look to them. When I discovered that most vehicles were electric I was initially gutted but the electric engines do sound incredible as they hum with energy. Adverts actually play in real-time on the back or side of moving vehicles which look incredible. I also love the ‘auto drive’ facility on most vehicles because it lets you sit back and enjoy the sights while feeding those Demolition Man fantasies. There is a large range of cars, trucks and bikes to acquire (and boats), many of which are cruising around in self-drive mode. I do feel like vehicle handling has finally found its feet in this game after the previous two titles struggled to make driving feel as good as other games like GTA 5. Each car handles differently which overpowered sports cars able to dodge between oncoming traffic while larger vehicles being back end heavy when cornering. Power sliding around the corners in the Aston Martin DB5 (with missiles!) is thoroughly exhilarating.

What I also find extremely impressive is how much effort the Ubisoft level designers put in to make every grimy corner of London feel lived in and unique. This is helped by a large range of graffiti and impressive street art. The many unique locations such as Camden Market, Soho and Leicester Square all look just like their real-life counterparts. It is also very impressive that no matter how far off the beaten track you get there are things to see including a huge number of easter eggs. 

Sparks

The game opens with you attempting to foil a plot to blow up parliament, which is a pretty big nod to the Guy Fawkes gun powder plot. You are playing as an agent working for the hacker group Ded Sec and this serves as a tutorial of sorts. Obviously, things go awry and a mysterious entity known as Zero Dawn reveals itself right before setting off three devastating bombs. While the foundations of London shake all but one of the Ded Sec crew are neutralised. As the dust settles and London falls under the sway of this power grab you are tasked with making Ded Sec rise from the ashes. 

After choosing the identity of this sole surviving agent the guard rails are quickly taken off and you can start exploring this near-future metropolis. As with past Watch Dogs games you can use your phone to interact with your environment in a multitude of ways. As you scan people you can see key information about their lives and this was always both creepy and facinating. However, in this new game, the information you can see is not only interesting but can also actually be used in a more practical way. 

We have heard lofty claims before of open-world games having NPCs with real schedules that can be follow and only a few actually pulled it off. In Legion you really can scan someone (literally anyone) and peer into their life from where they will be, the contacts they know and so much more. So for example, while crushing past the Palace I decided to nip in for some cucumber sandwiches and also grab the tech points hidden on the roof. I scanned the nearest Queens Guard and saw he would be playing darts at a local pub when he clocked off. So at the right time, I made my way there and sure enough, the guard was throwing a few with a pint. I challenged him to a game and as a result of this interaction he was then open to becoming a Ded Sec member but he first needed a favour. After acquiring a fake passport for his friend the guard then became a full member who I was then able to swap to. The next morning a turned up for work at the palace with my new agent and was able to walk right in unchallenged. 

What I really like about this system is that it isn’t just giving the appearance of people having full lives to lead, they are actually going to these places and doing these things. You can see that someone is on their way to commit vandalism in a local park and actually follow them to their witness their dastardly deeds. Sometimes these links will have unforeseen consequences both in a positive and negative way. On occasion, you will even have individuals kidnapping your agents in retribution for something they see as a slight. This system is by far the most interesting aspect of Legion and unfortunately, its success comes with a few downsides.

The Agency is Dead

So let’s be honest, neither Aidan Pearce nor Marcus Holloway set the gaming world on fire. Yet despite their weak screen presence, they did carry the story along as good as most protagonists. The very premise of Legion means we don’t have a central character and anyone can be the hero whether they be a secret spy or a window cleaner. The major issue this throws up is that the player can never grow to care about any one person in the same way. Each person you recruit has their own visual look which can be tweaked with various clothing options. Ubisoft has also used voice modulation to make a few hundred voice actors do the work of thousands. I think this works with some success and the occasional funny line (“Oh my days”). However, it isn’t stellar either and you can see the cracks, especially after a few hours of play. More often than not this weakness combined with some awful lip-syncing reminds me of the Jonny Cab in Total Recall. I also have to mention the hair and beards in this game which are abominations. In many situations, your hair looks like straw covered in hairspray and the beard look like hair shavings that have been stuck back on with PVA glue.

There is a persistent character who is the lone agent who escaped the slaughter at the start of the game, but her more dialled in facial animation just helps emphasis the lower quality of everyone else. The Ded Sec AI (Bagley) does provide some variation in conversation and is well voiced by Pascal Langdale. I have also been pleasantly surprised by how many voice lines there are for any given situation. When you arrive at a mission location Bagley with start giving you a rundown of what you need to be aware of and he does it with a good amount of humour. After many hours of play I did find I was starting to grow attached to my agents but not because of what they say but the experiences we had together. A mission where you barely escape or a high-speed car chase can add those much-needed bonds between the player and their agents. 

Spider Pig!

One of my favourite new additions in Watchdogs 2 was the drone and RC car. These two items acted as an extension of Marcus and allowed the gameplay designers to create more interesting routes into restricted places. In this futuristic London, there are more drones in the sky than flys on a desert turd and any of them can be hacked to do your bidding. There is also a range of drones from the standard CToS efforts with a distract function, to news drones that can take snapshots to the fully weaponised attack drones that can cause major destruction. Interestingly there are also large construction drones which can actually be clambered on and ridden pretty much anywhere. These are fun but also cheat many of the well-designed puzzles so I’d say use them sparingly. It is interesting that Ubisoft gave players so much freedom on this one because like the flying mounts of WoW, this can ruin that sense of scale.

As a direct replacement to the RC car in Watchdogs 2 we have the spider bot which to me gave me flashbacks of the Tom Selleck film Runaway. These agile spider bots can jump around most environments with ease and also enter the ventilation systems that appear on most structures. The designers have made it so spider bots can do most of the things a human presence can, such as download information, empty a safe or take out guards with a satisfying face shock attack. 

There are some very unique missions that really stand out, such as riding a mico drone through the innards of a mainframe or killing a maniacal AI. After these set missions there are some that have a set objective that can be generated at many locations across the map of London. These could have been a repetitive slog but due to the huge range of approaches on offer they didn't. You could go in guns blazing for sure but there is a real satisfaction from working your way in with a mix of hacking and stealth. Like in previous games you can zip between any camera in range and this can be a lot of fun. It is a pity the ability to just spy on people behind closed doors just for the sake of it has been forgotten from the first game. 

Buildings still have plenty of systems which you can utilise to take down enemy guards, such as junction boxes and explosive canisters. Also flipping a car into forward drive when aiming at a guard never gets old. With that said I do feel like we could have done with a few more ways to mess with people. The ability to turn all traffic lights green has sadly gone as has the area-wide blackout, although this could have been due to how complex this city is compared to the first Watch Dogs. I will say I do like how reactive the city can be once you start testing the citizens, for example, people will pull out their phones and take pictures of anything going on. They will even stop to help anyone who has been knocked down and when the shooting starts run for their lives. 

When looking at combat the game is a mix of successes and a few missteps. Given Ded Sec tend to avoid lethal force (Batman would be proud) the majority of the standard weapons are of the shock variety. You can recruit people who do carry a small arsenal but these characters are quite rare. I am really impressed with the diversity of combat styles on offer, whether it be the nano bees or spraying people with paintballs. There are even characters who can hypnotise enemies to fight for you which is a very useful trick. Melee combat is a let down as it basically consists of three moves although some of the ‘takedown’ animations are fantastic. On the flip side, the lack of one single protagonist has limited how far these characters can be improved and the upgrade tree is sadly lacking. I do appreciate this different direction Ubisoft have tried but given the choice, I would prefer a return to one playable character for the next game. 

Is it PC?

I have been genuinely surprised by the discrepancy between the mainstream reviews of Legion and the smaller sites/YouTubers. This game is one of the worst optimised PC games I’ve seen in years and even with a beastly RTX 3090 card one reviewer was getting FPS in the 40-45 range: this is not good. There is no denying that Legion is a step towards next-generation graphics with such a beautiful game world. Cruising around the city streets at night and seeing all the neon lights reflected in puddles and glass is a sight to behold. However, the awful performance is only half the story. There has also been a whole catalogue of bugs and crashes reported across all platforms. I’ve had my character just stick to the floor or people I talk to just instantly die. There is also an infuriating bug which means it takes around 45 minutes for the game to exit to the main menu. If you just tab out and close the game autosave/sync doesn’t kick in and you can lose hours of progress (I did). I do hope Ubisoft doesn’t do a few minor patches before marching off to the next big release because this game world deserves that extra work.

I will also make a special mention of the RTX and DLSS implementation. At the time of writing the latter is just not working for me with very little improvements in FPS. There is also a weird blurring effect that for me makes this current DLSS not even worth switching on. As the new 3000 cards are now out in the wild RTX is actually a realistic option for many gamers but with a game so demanding on performance, I wouldn’t recommend turning this on unless you have a 3080 or higher. However, when RTX is on lighting and reflections look absolutely jaw-dropping, this is a really exciting glimpse of how game worlds will look in the future. 

Your augmented reality system will flit between the many objects and people you come across like an over-enthusiastic kid at the zoo. In my opinion, this is one reason why playing on mouse and keyboard is way better because not only do you have a fine degree of control but you can spin the camera around on a dime. This is especially useful when in tense firefights or high-speed car chases. You can, of course, manage just fine on a controller but it many situations the slow turning speed can feel cumbersome and restrictive. However, I do keep a controller handy for riding motorbikes as the analogue sticks work way better for this mode of transport, even if the game does freeze for a few seconds when you swap over

While I have covered the voice acting how is the actual sound design and music? I am happy to say this is mostly excellent throughout. When driving through tunnels the roar of your electric engine changes to a more echoing sound and even when driving into tight alleyways you can hear the tone shift as sound bounces back at you. The whir of drone blades, traffic noises and a whole manner of city-based sounds have been handled with skill. I will say that while I’m not at all against profanity in games they have gone way overboard with it both from people around you and characters in cut-scenes. As most real Londoners will confirm, it is against the rules to engage anyone in public (especially on the Tube!) The music has also been handled extremely well with many top drawer British bands available to bomb around London to including Blur and Muse.

Conclusion 

I didn’t get off to a good start with Watch Dogs Legion and this was largely due to the woeful performance on PC. I spent a good few hours pouring over the many graphical settings while feeling like no matter what I was sacrificing the gains were minuscule. Right now I just don't think this game runs well on any but the most powerful systems with high end 3080’s or higher. However, after gaining a deeper appreciation of how many systems are running at any given time, I am a little more forgiving on this one.

Looking at the entire package and ignoring the performance issues, Ubisoft has succeeded in what they set out to create. An entire city of people where you can recruit anyone who crosses your path and take them with you on your adventure. Given the current situation in the UK, this game couldn’t have avoided politics if it tried. I am actually impressed by how many topics this game gets through, such as the ethics of artificial intelligence, the surrender of privacy for security and the replacement of government/police with private corporations. In addition to this, the writers don’t really shove any of this in your face, it is just presented as part of the setting and leaves you to make your own mind up. 

If you have a powerful rig and like your open-world romps, I can recommend Watch Dogs Legion. Right now one of my favourite parts of the prior games has been held back until December and that is the multiplayer. Invading other peoples single-player games and messing with them before they realised you were there was the dog’s bollocks. As the multiplayer modes will unlock in December (which includes co-op shenanigans) I will be revisiting London to finish this review off. For now, I’ll be moving onto Ubisoft’s next big launch but dreaming of what it will be like to play Watch Dogs Legion when we get the new gaming rig next year.

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