If you took the time to read my Pokemon review from a while back; first of all I'm sorry, and secondly you'll have noticed that I have a particular love for games that take place in my home land. Call it whatever you want, (except 'national pride'. Hate that term.) but something inexplicable has me go soft on titles that take place in England and practically ensures they'll end up on my 'must play list'. Therefore it should make sense that a game like 'Watch Dogs: Legion' should be a regular on this blog, given that it is not only set in jolly old authoritarian London but also features a delectable cyberpunk-ian Dystopian twist that gets me feeling all tingly on the inside. But I haven't mentioned it much recently, and that is because there has been literally no new news on this title since it's grand debut at E3 last year. Today I wanted to pontificate about why that might be, and just who might be to blame.
If you were paying attention to the news feed last E3, you'll have noticed that Legion didn't just grab the attention of folk like me, but just about anyone who was interested in cutting edge gameplay ideas. People were calling the systems that this game was running 'revolutionary' and 'magic' if only they would work as advertised. This is because, as the gameplay demo showcased, Watch Dogs Legion was built around the premise where every single NPC in the game could potentially become a playable character that you could recruit and send on missions. They would all come with their own animation sets, fighting styles, backstories and buffs, and a handy 'perma-death' functionality would mean that this title would have an almost XCom-esque flavour to it's character rooster. And if you ask me, this is one the reasons why we haven't heard anything out of this title for a while now.
You see what 'Legion' is attempting to do with that system is big, very big, and I'd imagine that nailing down every single aspect of that system to perfect working order is likely the primary focus of everyone in the Watch Dogs Dev team right now. And by that I mean to say, I don't exactly think that Watch Dogs Legion is quite in the state for another showcase right now, in fact it was barely in that state during last E3. Now this is something that you'll likely not have noticed if you only watched the pre-recorded gameplay reveal, but I hawked every single minute of this game's gameplay, (Like I said, I'm an obsessive) and even with the vertical slice I saw of the game there was still some jankiness going on. The most notable one that I noticed was one character, that they inexplicably decided to linger on for an entire mission, who was a white skinned man who spoke in a deep Caribbean accent, clearly showing a slight issue with the random generation software. (I'd concede that it might have been intentional if only he had dreadlocks, alas that was not the case. Also his eyes were pitch black for a reason that I can only assume was missing textures.)
So far so normal, games find themselves a little buggy from time-to-time, that makes sense. But Ubisoft did develop something of a negative reputation for that precedent all the way back in 'Assassin's Creed Unity' when they shipped a barely functioning product. The game was so rough that even with several patches the team could only manage to stabilise the core-game, the multiplayer which had been flaunted so highly had to be left as being basically unplayable. I'd imagine that such a humiliating experience might have ignited something of a neuroses in Ubisoft higher ups where they do not want their products being associated with that sort of buggyness ever again, so as soon as there was hint of it in the Watch Dogs Legion coverage, they would have chosen to shut down any communication outside of the studio until the game was fully presentable. Of course, that is just speculation, but there is another potential factor for the radio silence with a little more evidence behind it.
A while back I think I reported on how Ubisoft had recently suffered a big loss in the wake of last years' 'Tom Clancy's Breakpoint' and even 'The Division 2' was below expectations. (I genuinely can't remember if I covered this before, so I'll go over it now just be sure.) Basically the issue was that a certain executive had been handed too much control over the projects that he was overseeing and he allowed his personal preferences to seep into his recommendations. This meant that Breakpoint ended up adopting a god-awful 'looter shooter' facade that ill fit the franchise's roots and directly clashed with Ubisoft's other tactical military 'looter shooter': The Division 2. This behind-the-scenes mess ended up resulting in a discussion to revamp the structure of Ubisoft and ensure that something like this doesn't happen again. (Quite the blowback for a single mistake, huh?)
On a more specific level, this mess had caused Ubisoft to commit to the Anthem model to success; overhaul everything and cross your fingers. And when I say 'everything', I only hardly exaggerate. The team have plans to completely rip-out all of the 'looter shooter' aspects to the game in something called 'immersive mode' whilst doing their utmost to make the title playable for people offline in order to make it so that the game doesn't boot people the second that they lose connection. (I actually suffered from that a bit during my time with the game.) All of this shows that Ubisoft are not in their most confident state-of-mind right now and are willing to completely second guess their core design decisions in order to placate fans. On one hand I think this is good to the point that they are dedicating themselves to addressing their feedback and making changes, but to on the other hand I don't like this trend of "We'll fix it in post" that is becoming more and more prevalent in the triple AAA world.
What does this have to with Watch Dogs Legion? Everything. The reshuffling of the company is actually a huge factor in that, I think. It means that a whole new set of eyes are likely landing on production and handing their two-cents on the development room-floor. Additionally, I'd imagine that 'Legion' might have been a game that suffered from the homogenising influence of the old structure, so there might be some significant restructuring and reshaping going on with the game what we'll never formally hear about. Finally, there is the issue that I dislike bringing up in this blog but it still has a part to play, and that's Covid-19. This virus has resulted on a a few gaming conventions scaling down and has the potential to get E3 cancelled, that alone will hurt the marketing cycle for this game which could be reason enough to delay the release. (Heck, even the latest James Bond movie delayed itself to September because of this incident.) Of course, we haven't actually been given a potential release for Watch Dogs Legion yet, (Is was slated for March 6th but that obviously never happened) but I'm sure that closed door projections have been affected a least a little from the goings on.
So what happened to 'Watch Dogs: Legion'? Just about everything that could happen to a game beyond being cancelled. (Which I really hope it isn't, this title looks cool.) The reveal event was mostly positive, but unveiled a few untimely warts; the entire company underwent a restructuring; and showevents have been delayed by an unpredictable outbreak. (Hardly the typical game development cycle.) But if there is one silver lining to this, when the game finally does come out all of this will make for one heck of a war story to tell in a documentary one day. I just hope that all this flux-state that is revolving around the title doesn't end up irrevocably changing it from the original vision which excited me so. Oh, and I really hope they don't use this time to get in actual English VA's, I love the idea of Americans thinking we actually talk like that...
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