Watch Dogs: Legion - Preview of the new Ubisoft openworld

Among the many brands that Ubisoft has been able to bring to light during these last generations, Watch Dogs is undoubtedly the one that has most divided critics and audiences. After a first chapter that left many users cold and was followed by a Watch Dogs 2 improved in terms of play but terribly poor in narrative terms, many began to wonder what future there could ever be for the series, an endless flurry of questions that were finally answered in the midst of the Ubisoft conference held on the occasion of E3 2019. The stage of the Los Angeles fair proved to be the perfect place to present to the world Watch Dogs: Legion, new chapter of the epic of the French publisher who has been able to show himself in decidedly dazzling form. The development team would in fact seem willing to bring to our screens a product with bases not dissimilar to what we have seen in past chapters, but at the same time characterized by important playful / narrative novelties potentially capable of bringing a large slice of players back to the IP. from the two previous chapters.

We are the Legion

Narratively speaking, at the moment we only have a few preliminary incipits useful to get an overall idea of ​​what the work will offer. Watch Dogs: Legion will in fact be set in the London of a very near future where Brexit has led to the worst imaginable hypothesis, with a totalitarian government that, thanks to advanced surveillance systems and privatized military corporations, has begun to practice techniques of terror to bring the people into total submission. The economy has collapsed, citizens live in the most rampant poverty and the fascinating luminous signs of the most populated centers quickly give way to degraded suburban areas where criminal gangs reign supreme. Finding a job has become a utopian dream now that state-of-the-art machines and sophisticated artificial intelligences produce most consumer goods as the pound loses more and more value. In such a hellish context, it did not take long before violent protests began to spread everywhere, with a population now exhausted, poorly equipped and with nothing left to lose forced to face armed soldiers and combat drones located in every street of the great capital of England. Fortunately, however, citizens will be able to count on the invaluable help of the DedSec, who have in fact decided to actively contribute to the civil war that has arisen.

The first detail that stands out within the playful experience is identified in the lack of a real protagonist. Watch Dogs: Legion, in fact, will give you the possibility to enlist - and therefore control - any NPC you meet in the vast London, all with the ultimate aim of being able to exploit it in the way you deem most appropriate. Cops, bums, employees, seniors, students, any character you see in-game will be able to participate in the cause, and each of these will have its own unique characteristics. Ubisoft has in fact explained that each citizen with whom we interact will have his own history, a home, a work situation, his habits, his vices and his relationships with other people. As elements of DedSec, we will be given the opportunity to scan anyone with our trusty cell phone to understand how much the person who stood before us can actually be useful for our purposes. But don't think that it is enough to press a button to have a new member at your disposal, for any attempt to expand resistance will require patience and meticulous work. Once we have chosen a target, we will have to study it and understand its history, its working hours, what it does during its free time and, above all, its opinion towards DedSec. By completing specific objectives and diversified activities, we will then be able to influence his opinion on the group of hackers that all fans of the brand know, turning his life upside down and thus pushing him to join us in favor of the revolution, a work that will end with a final mission - according to the team, articulated, long and diversified from NPC to NPC - to be completed in order to see the ranks of our "army" expand. In short, we are talking about a new play structure that could potentially give great moments, pad in hand, but at the same time it is impossible not to think about the obvious limits that will characterize the whole - after all, we certainly cannot expect that every single background character present in the game is truly unique - and the risk of depersonalization towards our digital alter-ego.

London Revolution

Wanting to continue talking about new features never seen before within the franchise, for each new member that we will enlist it will be necessary to choose a class among those present. Going more specifically, we can choose between the infiltrator, more focused on stealth and hand-to-hand combat, the enforcer, expert in firearms and perfect for throwing himself at the enemy with his head down, e the hacker, with which it will be possible to make the most of the numerous gadgets present in the title. Each of these classes will present different unique perks, although each character will only be able to exploit three of them, a choice designed to force the player to carefully choose which member of the group to use depending on the situation to be faced, and be careful not to take lightly the obstacles that they will block your way, as the punishment will be nothing short of drastic. Watch Dogs: Legion will in fact present a real permadeath system so, in the event that we are defeated in a firefight or captured by the police, for our digital alter-ego it will be the end, we will no longer be able to use it and we will necessarily have to choose a new NPC among those we have recruited.

As it was obvious to imagine, the title will then feature an intricate open-world structure through which it will be possible to tour all over London on foot or by some vehicle. Side missions and optional activities will be on the agenda and Ubisoft has promised a great variety of situations and total freedom in the approach that can be adopted during each assignment, all coupled with an even more enhanced and expanded hacking system than in the past. Instead, if we want to concentrate on the more strictly visual side of the work, what we have been able to see seems to promise very well. The London created by Ubisoft appears well diversified and rich in detail, with each of the 8 suburbs of the city characterized by its peculiar visual and artistic style, its inhabitants and its unique shops, all in order to create a world that can appear the as alive as possible, with an attention to detail that has been able to impress us positively. Clearly there is still a lot of work to be done, but what has been presented so far has appeared to us far more promising than we could ever have expected. At this point we can not help but cross our fingers and wait until March 6, 2020, the day in which we will be able to buy the Ubisoft-branded creature on Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia.