Watch Dogs: Legion is an exciting open-world adventure set in the dystopian London of nearby
Watch Dogs: Legion
Welcome to resistance
Action-adventure game with a third viewfaces. The game takes place in an open world, a fictional dystopian version of London in the near future, where the player will have to take command of the DedSec hacker group and free the city from total surveillance of the population, crime and paramilitary power
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London cyberpunk
4 reasons to buy Watch Dogs: Legion:
- cool graphics, especially on powerful PCs and new consoles;
- a bunch of different mechanics and variability of passing missions;
- a daring experiment with the mechanics of recruiting any resident of virtual London;
- good plot, which is enough to keep the player.
2 reasons not to buy Watch Dogs: Legion:
- a decent number of bugs and not the best optimization on the current generation consoles;
- the presence of rather boring monotonous tasks, as in all open world games.
Fast passage:
- London on fire
- What is the gameplay, combat system and game world?
- What about leveling and crafting?
- How does all this look, sound and optimized?
- In the dry residue
London on fire
After a rather depressing Chicago and sunnySan Francisco, the third part of Watch Dogs decided to move to London. This is the London of the near future, but still distinctive and recognizable. The whole mess begins in the style of films about the well-known agent 007. And with his own improvised agent, but already familiar from the previous parts of the hacker organization DedSec, who is trying to prevent an explosion in the Palace of Westminster. Of course, the operation does not end as originally planned: the Palace of Westminster was saved, but more than one terrorist attack was planned. Explosions erupt throughout London, turning the city into a war zone of sorts.
Assumes responsibility for terrorist attacksthe mysterious hacker organization “Zero Day”. Of course, no one in the government wants to figure it out, they blame it on DedSec and almost completely destroy the London cell of the hacker organization. As the game progresses, we will have to rebuild it. The terrorist attacks became a reason to give maximum powers to the private military organization Albion, whose head, Nigel Cass, promises to “restore order.” in London. In fact, she receives full power, which she actually shares with the criminal syndicate of Mary Kelly. The streets of London are flooded with drones and cameras to monitor every resident of the city. All this looks in the best traditions of dystopian novels. To some of the famous “classic” There are references to novels in the game. And this topic dates back to the first part of Watch Dogs.
In all this chaos we have toliberate London from threats in the form of the terrorist organization Zero Day, the Albion militarists and the Mary Kelly bandits. But there is a problem: there are no people left in London DedSec. And now we have at our disposal one of the most interesting and unusual mechanics of the game, which Ubisoft has repeatedly emphasized: we can recruit absolutely anyone. Starting from war veterans and ending with builders, grandmothers and lawyers. In fact, in the game there is no one protagonist; the player is free to recruit whoever he wants into his team and take on different agents for various tasks. Each potential recruit has a written history and has its own unique opportunities. It sounds cool and fresh, but in reality it's not that good. Yes, the set of NPCs that can be recruited is huge. But it was simply impossible to register such a quantity manually, and after a while it begins to be felt due to some oddities and inconsistencies. For example, when a newly hired war veteran with a drinking problem starts talking about rootkits. Although who knows, maybe this is what the future awaits us.
In general, if we talk about the plot (as the mainlines, and side stories), it turned out very well. Yes, the script does not deserve the award for uniqueness, but it is good enough that the player does not get bored. The result was a kind of detective story with quite unexpected twists, conspiracies, several villains, and a “rogue scientist”. And all this is collected into a fairly complete story that raises, albeit well-worn, but quite relevant topics of global surveillance and control over people, artificial intelligence and dictatorship. This is all moderately diluted with humor, primarily performed by AI Bagley, who throughout the game provides all the information the player needs.
</ p>What is the gameplay, combat system and game world?
To the Watch Dogs developers:Legion managed to make the game world very atmospheric. Virtual London of the near future is a city of contrasts. Palace of Westminster, Big Ben, Tower of London, London Eye, Trafalgar Square, numerous pubs, black cabs, double deckers… And around all this there are numerous drones of all stripes circling. Starting with small observation ones, combat ones with weapons, and ending with cargo ones, which can lift a container into the air, and at the same time a drone operator on horseback. At every step there are surveillance cameras, autonomous cars, huge propaganda and advertising screens that cover most historical sights. Local protests are taking place everywhere, Albion mercenaries check and, if necessary (in their opinion), beat civilians of the city.
Of course, the city can and should be explored, there area number of different additional activities that are not tied to the main plot. Including collecting items, collectibles, technology points and liberating areas. To liberate each area, you need to complete several short and simple tasks, after which another larger one will open. Having completed it, we receive a bonus, mainly in the form of a valuable agent with interesting abilities. But let us remind you that in Watch Dogs: Legion you can recruit any resident of London into DedSec. Be it a grandmother or an Albion employee. Although in the initial stages it would be more correct to say almost any resident. There are NPCs who are hostile to DedSec: the opportunity to recruit them will appear a little later. The recruitment process follows a simple scenario. We find a “candidate”, study him (including unique skills and capabilities), communicate and offer to join. The potential recruit tells his story in a nutshell and complains about certain problems that we have to solve. Next, complete the quest for the recruit, you're done! The team has been replenished with a new agent.
Some people have to be recruited according to the plot of the game anda number of other agents with interesting unique abilities can be obtained by “freeing” areas of London. The characters differ significantly from each other: someone has personal transport that can be instantly driven to anywhere in London. Someone carries a light machine gun. A lawyer will allow you to get out of prison faster, get a caught agent out of prison, and so on. But in general, any mission can be completed by any agent, just the approach will be different. Although there are some strange moments: nevertheless, the grandmother dashingly slapping bandits in the face does not look very realistic, to put it mildly.
The vast majority of missions, both main andand additional ones can be completed in a bunch of different ways. Including a head-on attack, stealth and the use of various gadgets. For example, in the same mission you can use a cargo drone and land on the roof of the desired building, hack a security camera and turn off the alarm, or launch a spider robot that will open a locked door from the inside. Some missions are designed in such a way that the use of drones or spiders will be mandatory. Some tasks add car chases and spatial puzzles, which first appeared in the first part of the game.
All this variability and large numbermechanics keep gameplay interesting for most of the game and encourage experimentation. But Watch Dogs: Legion is still an open world game and yes, there is some monotony of tasks, as in most similar projects. The game has both really creatively written tasks and simple ones a la “go to a point on the map and hack the server”. There is nothing to say about multiplayer yet; it will appear in December. In the future, the developers are planning a bunch of additional content. In particular, a story addition with the hero of the first part of Watch Dogs, Aiden Pearce.
</ p>What about leveling and crafting?
Detailed leveling and development branches in Watch Dogs:Legion no. Instead, there is such an entity as “Technology”. It includes both active and passive skills, as well as gadgets with weapons. There are not so many of them, but all active skills, weapons and gadgets have three levels of improvements and the differences are quite significant. For example, at first the drone can simply be temporarily turned off, and after leveling up the skill, it becomes possible to control it. All “Technology” apply to the entire team of agents. At the same time, it is worth remembering that each agent also has his own unique skills and abilities. For leveling up, so-called “technology points” are used, which are earned for completing certain (story) tasks, and are also scattered throughout the map.
You can not buy them either for virtual or,more, for real money. But after the liberation of each of the areas, we receive designations with their location on the map. So there is no particular difficulty in collecting them. As for the virtual game currency, it is spent on cosmetic items: clothing or vehicle modifications.
How does all this look, sound and optimized?
Now a few words about the technical aspects of WatchDogs: Legion. The London of the near future itself looks very picturesque, everything looks graphically nice, Ubisoft was very meticulous in its approach to the issue of recreating the city. Everything is drawn in very detail. This is especially true for the architecturally recognizable landmarks of London, typical streets and numerous pubs. The overall impression of the picture on the current generation of consoles: nice, pleasing to the eye, but not a graphic masterpiece. On “nextgen” The game looks great, there are already plenty of demonstration videos online. But it will still be interesting to evaluate it on PS5 and some gaming PC with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 series video card. We will update this review if (when) such an opportunity arises.
And now about the less pleasant moments.It is obvious that the game was developed with an eye on next-generation consoles and fairly powerful PCs. And this can be felt while playing on the PS4 Slim, which was used to prepare the review. It is worth noting that we received a press copy of Watch Dogs: Legion 2 days before the release and had time to “drive” into the game after the first day patch. So, from the obvious: there are small drops in FPS, microfreezes and frame tearing. Although this is primarily observed while driving around London in vehicles. As well as very noticeable texture loading at a short distance. During missions and indoors, the game feels more confident and stable. As for bugs, of course they exist. There aren’t very many of them, and in general it’s almost impossible to release a perfectly polished game in an open world with a ton of content and procedurally created (as far as I understand) characters. During the game, cars and characters disappeared several times, and there were holes in the textures. The AI also behaves strangely: a guard or a bandit walking into a wall is a fairly common situation. Usually all (or the vast majority) of such issues are corrected with patches.
Localization in the game is complete: text and speech. At the same time, a huge number of replicas were recorded. But, given the trick with a huge number of random characters, I dare to assume that changes in intonation / accent were most likely done using neural networks, with minimal developer intervention. So, how to hire so many actors and record so many lines is some kind of unrealistic task. The network writes that the Russian-language version of Legion is devoid of the original voice acting. I cannot confirm or deny: the press copy was only with the original track and the translation of the text. Russian-language voice acting was downloaded separately after the release. In any case, if the original is still available and you know English well, then it is better to leave the original. It adds atmosphere and surroundings. But, regardless of the voice acting, there are technical problems similar to the visual part. Along with FPS drops and frame breaks, the sound of dialogs is interrupted at times. There were no complaints about the soundtrack: on assignments, they include a characteristic background sound sequence in the form of unobtrusive minimalistic electronics. In the car - a bunch of radio stations by style. In addition to fashionable rap or electronica, there are also much heavier ones.
The bottom line is. Three things to know about Watch Dogs: Legion.
- Watch Dogs: Legion - Action-adventure with a third-person view in an open world.
- Any Londoner can be recruited into your DedSec hacker team.
- The game has a good plot that does not let you get bored.
Watch Dogs: Legion
Genre
Adventure/Action/Third Person
Platform
PC, Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Number of players
single-player, multi-player (December 2020)
Developer
Ubisoft Toronto
Publisher
Ubisoft
Localization
full (text and voice)
release date
October 29, 2020 (PC, current console generation), November 10, 2020 (Xbox Series X/S), November 12 (PS5)
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Thank you
The editors thank Ubisoft for kindly providing the game for review.