The future is ugly and dark, but there is always someone trying to reform and save what can be saved, four years after the last part and Marcus' adventure in San Francisco, and after the game was postponed several times, the DedSec group returns again, but this time in an attempt to save and liberate London from the chaos and corruption that is spreading Everywhere in the city.
the story
The story in Watch Dogs: Legion revolves around the DedSec group, a group of hackers trying to rebalance and save the world. Surely you know them if you played the previous parts of the series, but if you did not play it is similar to the F Society group from the famous Netflix series Mr. Robot.
The story of this part takes us to London in the near future as the city faces a major economic crisis that affected it and its position politically and in order to save face, a strange group called Albion, led by Mr. Nigel Cass, took it upon themselves to protect London with its citizens and began to deploy its forces everywhere until it turned into a political force A tyrant controlling the country from the inside, Albion's real motives towards control and control began to emerge little by little, and of course the future DedSec group is there to solve the crisis and save London, but they did not realize at the time that there is another danger waiting for them, represented by the Zero Day group, which caused more than a deliberate terrorist bombing in London .
This held the DedSec group fully responsible and turned the city into a battlefield, so DedSec's public position and opinion began to decline and only here begins Watch Dogs: Legion by building an all-out resistance team by hacking to meet the London appeal, liberate it and chart a new future for it.
Welcome to the Resistance .. Welcome to Watch Dogs: Legion, where you can play any character in the game's world!
In Watch Dogs: Legion, you have the freedom to actually recruit anyone you see in the open world and choose who will be the heroes of your game and the stars of your story. You can choose characters based on their appearance, dress code, and how they behave, or because of their playing abilities and skills or tools that will help you meet the game's biggest challenges.
The start of the game seems somewhat slow, and it is the first inconvenience caused by the game, as the game does not put you in the midst of events quickly and takes time to explain everything, especially as the game is trying to deliver a new idea that is applied for the first time, so there is no specific "hero", in fact I do not want to go into more detail in the details of the story and I will leave that to you to avoid any burning, but what Ubisoft is trying to deliver in this way in this slow story presentation is a great focus on recruiting elements and building your army that is supposed to liberate London the way you want it.
For example, there is a task in the game that requires entry to a construction site, and thus recruiting a construction worker and playing with him that task will be much easier in order to move inside the mission and save it quietly, you can of course use any other agent to carry out the mission, but the soldiers and enemies will suspect you quickly, i.e. Someone is around and it will make the job difficult, with using the right person for each task it will be much easier and it is a great idea "on the surface."
But I paused during the game and quickly remembered Agent 47 and the Hitman Series, and wondered why I would recruit a construction worker even though I could easily buy or wear construction workers' clothing and go into that area and do the job this way as well?
Was that idea really successful? To be honest after going through the events of the story and delving deeper into the game during my experience with it, I preferred the idea of the hero that I relate to the idea of recruiting any element to play with him, for example I cannot forget "Arthur Morgan" nor "Geralt", perhaps even "Marcus" and "Aiden Pierce" from the same parts of the series, but of course I will not remember any character in this part, the idea remains revolutionary, you can actually recruit any NPC in the game, whatever it is as I mentioned, and start using it as your main play character and carry out the tasks with it, but here it was necessary This is polished more than what is presented in the game.
Because it is not normal for all humans in the future to be "fighters" and ready to join DedSec, yes there are simulations of people in the game world where their actions and actions affect their opinion and idea about DedSec, but during my experience I asked myself that no one refused the application for recruitment, why is there not in The world of the game is only innocent people who do not want to fight, do not care about the resistance, do not stand on the side of Albion, or even oppose the idea of resistance and take the other side even if you treat them well? Yes, there are members who are against DedSec, but in the end you can recruit them in some way.
Even that old woman of 80 years old can recruit and use her to kill and carry out tasks, which I found completely inconsequential.
Add to this the fact that the recruitment missions are a little "boring" and do not have much detail. After you ask anyone to join your resistance group you will be forced on a mission in order for the client to transform from a "potential recruiter" to a "playable character" with Time went by and "I got tired" of playing this kind of task over and over again.
"Tracking people's lives and simulating them in real time and knowing what is happening to them as your assistance to them, negatively or positively, affects their thinking about the resistance is one of the things that distinguishes Watch Dogs Legion from any other game, and it is a revolutionary idea along with the system of recruiting and playing with anyone NPC in the game"
Nevertheless, there are "skilled agents" who have characteristics unique to the regular people on the streets of London that you recruit, and you will find them on the map in green and you can unlock them as the story progresses.
Among the things that I liked about this idea is that before the start of the game, you can activate the option of "eternal death" for clients, which means that any agent who will recruit into the resistance during your progression of the story will die "permanently" if he already dies in the game and will not be playable again, you can of course Disabling that option, but I preferred to open it in order to be forced to focus more during the tasks and punish in some way at death, and also an opportunity to recruit more agents instead of laziness and contentment with playing the tasks with one or two agents.
The most interesting thing about this new way of playing style is that it maximizes the role of "the group" and teamwork. Indeed, as the game said, "Welcome to the Resistance," you and your team work to help each other, for example if you embark on a mission with a client and you are arrested or injured. It does not necessarily mean that the mission has failed, you will come back again, but with another agent, as the injured client will not be available for thirty minutes after his arrest, or perhaps the game will ask you to use another agent to free the arrested client from Albion's grip. This means if you kill some people and get arrested and start the mission again with another agent, you will find that the people you killed have already been killed.
This idea "I mean the idea of recruiting and not having a main hero for the story" although it is wonderful and paves the way for much bigger things in the future of the industry, especially for open world games, but it negatively affected the quality of the characters in the game, there is no inspiring character or you can attach to it, all The characters were designed in a normal and traditional way in terms of drawing or even voice performance and interaction with the environment, which is something we did not like greatly and had to be mentioned.
"Hack" is everything!
The gameplay in the Watch Dogs series has always been based on hacking things, everything is connected and everything is hackable, your mobile phone is the tool that controls everything in the game world, and this matter did not differ much in Watch Dogs Legion, piracy is still at the heart The fantasy of the series, but in this part things look a little different, as the skill tree of the character Skill Tree has been canceled, which is normal, as this part mainly focuses on recruiting, and therefore each character in the game world has special skills different from other characters, while the first two parts of the series have a special hero .
In this part there are new ways to penetrate, but they did not change the concept of hacking in general in the game, there is a group of new devices that are controlled remotely, such as the infiltrating robot Spider Bots, which was useful in accessing some places that are impossible to reach through your character We found him to be overpowered in some way, as he can penetrate most doors and enter places that the enemy does not see. He can also fight "undercover" and eliminate enemies.
There are also drones or combat drones, and drones you will find are widespread in all London streets, something that was not present in the previous parts and it is easy to penetrate and use them in missions or to detect places, especially in the restricted areas.
It is always important to penetrate the cameras in the restricted areas before entering them to know the movement of the enemies and what awaits you inside them, which is not new and we have seen this in all parts of the previous series, as well as some light puzzles to hack things that become boring with time to repeat.
The driving style of the vehicles in the chain was always suffering from problems, unfortunately the matter continued in this part as well ... Cars differ in the way they drive in terms of feeling and this is a positive thing, but the way of driving itself I found it uncomfortable and there is no kind of pleasure in it. It is only a way to get you going and it will often be too heavy for your heart.
The cars are well varied and have a lot of detail in terms of design and they really look from the future where the game takes place, but there is no kind of customization or modification to them which is a little disappointing, most cars you will find on the streets of London through the autopilot (there is no People inside) which makes it easier to steal, in the previous parts also you could deactivate the car engine in order to disguise it to escape from the police, for example, as well as control it from the cockpit position or camera, but all of this is not present in Watch Dogs: Legion.
Everything is connected to each other in Watch Dogs, and it was self-evident that the idea of recruiting characters affected the style of play also in relation to vehicles. You cannot buy special cars for each character like the previous parts, but the characters whose skills include a "car" or a "motorcycle". Only she can access those personal vehicles at any time, this may be a disadvantage for some, but it magnifies the idea that every person is different in the game and therefore you cannot buy cars with all the characters, as well as the ease of getting a car from the streets of London without punishment from Albion or Police officers is also easy from this.
The biggest change to the fighting style in Watch Dogs: Legion is the hand-to-hand combat, as the methods of fighting with weapons and taking the Cover and also the parkour movements have not seen any significant changes from the previous part, and it seems that the developer has focused on this particular point where you will find a tutorial at the beginning of the game for the style The new fighting Melee Combat that has been added and it is really cool, as there are many wonderful animations that you will see during the fights with hands, and these scenes vary and change according to each character, as a character uses their skills, tools and weapons for you in the fighting and this creates a kind of diversity.
Hand combat depends on four basic elements, consecutive or normal hitting, avoiding strikes from the enemy, breaking the shield or the enemy's method of blocking, and finally the finishing moves, which are the most fun, but the thing that destroyed this a little is the artificial intelligence of the enemies in the game in general, where The fact that it is a hopeful game for new generation games cannot be accepted and there is no development in artificial intelligence, and on the contrary the enemies were dealing "stupidly" most of the time.
Graphics and ray tracing technology, did the new generation fingerprint appear ?!
Personally, this is the first game that I fully play with ray tracing technology activated from the very first moment, and this is also the first game that I liked the effects of ray tracing technology, I have my own opinion in that that the ray tracing techniques were really not ready to work Completely with the previous generation of Nvidia cards as the previous generation devices did not support this either, the matter has changed now, the feasibility of ray tracing technologies is more important at the present time than ever before.
With the support of the new generation of technology devices, focusing on it more and also with the presence of DLSS technology that reduces the load on the GPU to obtain a higher frame rate, the future of this technology is impressive and what I saw in Watch Dogs: Legion during my game was really impressive, whether at the level of graphics or Performance with the activation of technology, the graphics to be honest may not meet expectations in reality, and not much different from the previous part, which was issued four years ago, but the ray tracing technology gave a special appearance to the game, especially in the reflections on surfaces, mirrors, and during the rain.
The game world is beautifully designed and has a lot of details, which is in contrast to the design of the characters in the game, which was not up to expectations, with the difference of night and day, or the weather, whether rainy or clear, the game looks very good at the visual level and there is no disparity also between graphics The game is in different places, not even inside or outside buildings, which is rare to see in an open world game of this size.
The conclusion
Although Watch Dogs: Legion tried to offer something unique in terms of recruiting NPCs and building your resistance army according to your playing style and the way you want to carry out the missions, but this method will not suit everyone to be honest, especially who prefers the hero. To do with it from start to finish, it was a bold move for developer Ubisoft Toronto to take the step and abandon the main protagonist in the story in trying to implement this new idea.
In a way, it can be said that this method needed to be more "fine-tuned" to become perfect. The many characters in the game that can be played with fell into the trap of not paying attention to the details related to them, which made them all uninspired characters with modest vocal performance and acting, which is unusual from Ubisoft. The one that promises us always introduces characters related to the mind.
The idea in itself remains revolutionary and we liked it a lot, and I cannot say that it was poorly applied, but as I mentioned it needed more work to become better, and we are eager to see more games that support those new ideas that reminded us of the Nemesis System from the Middle-Earth series of games.