Missing the forest for the trees
From it's very inception there was a promise attached to Watch Dogs Legion, and it was a promise that ignited the imagination more than any other Ubisoft property had in years; and that was the function of playing as anyone. Ubisoft are renowned for their 'gimmick of the day' approach to creative design, where they dream up a new USP for each game and just transpose it onto the next if it does well; (regardless of whether or not that game is even in the same series, or genre as the last. Drone birds in Assassin's Creed being my primary example) but even with that history behind them, there was something about Legion's approach that felt... fresher. I mean, this wasn't just a little idea that would slightly shift the way players' planning stages would play out before an outpost attack, this would be a revolutionary shift to the very fabric of the narrative: even conceptualising how this would play out in a AAA game was difficult, and that's the sort of ingenuity that gets minds racing. So now that it's out, did Ubisoft's big dream come together like the public wanted to believe it would? No, obviously, this is Ubisoft. But was it good enough? Well that's something we can take a look at.
Watch Dogs Legion's flagship feature was echoed by it's namesake, it allowed the entity of Deadsec to become an army comprised of the ordinary citizens of London that would rise up to take London back from its fascist oppressors. This seemed like a good direction based on the fact that Ubisoft are, by this point, renowned for their inability to construct truly powerful and well-written characters, so why not let the audience make up their own characters? Watch Dogs 1 had the famously unliked Aiden Peirce, who people rallied against because he... actually there's no real consensus about what people didn't like about Aiden, they just didn't. Then there's Markus who some liked, others found too quirky, and I just found to be rather empty as a person; with not enough depth to describe who he is and not enough storytelling to justify his abrupt switch in character at the midpoint. (Sitara should have been made leader, she already pretty much was for the entire story anyway. I genuinely have no idea where the storytellers slipped up with that one.)
With the 'play as anyone' system, there no longer needs to be a worry about a character who seems underdeveloped or asinine, because there are no characters in the game at all. Yeah you read right, everybody you play in the game is just sort of a lifeless husk who imitates investment in a situation, but rather pointedly has to avoid having the matter which makes up investment (such as personality, personal attachments and history) in order to facilitate the dozen or so swap-in scripts for every single conversation. Usually how dialogue goes during story segments of Watch Dogs Legion is thus; a mission giver will prattle on about a situation, your AI overload Bagley will chime in with some straight-faced snarky line, the player character will say something nondescript or make some sort of vague remark, and the conversation will sort of continue around it as though you said nothing at all. That is how the narrative is for the entire game, and I have to admit; it does technically allow players to take up the shoes of anyone, if simultaneously removing all potential for an emotional connection to the events portrayed.
Where the system shines much more in is the gameplay, wherein things play out in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the Nemesis system from 'Middle Earth: Shadow of War'. Everyone you meet in the game can be tagged by your profiler and then recruited through the completion of a randomly picked mission. (Note I didn't say 'Randomly generated'. That's because the Mission archetypes are so shallow and limited that I can only assume there's a small pool to choose from rather than a procedural algorithm.) Once you've got your new recruit there'll be certain little quirks to their stats which might make them play differently from who you've just been controlling. They'll have certain bonuses to types of attacking, unique weapons, access to special vehicles, uniforms that allow restricted access and even some really special powers like access to a swarm of nano-bees or the power of hypnosis. Some have noted that this give the game a sort of personalised vibe where missions evolve based on the tools you currently have at your disposal, and at any point in the game you can come across a potential recruit who completely upends your playstyle and makes things feel different. And all these are stark positives.
One of the biggest issues I've always held with Ubisoft games is the way that they tend to bloat themselves until the raw gameplay loop just runs as stale as possible. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was probably the last big budget title out of them which was perfectly paced, because everything after that just keeps getting longer to the state we're in now, when entire games feel like checklists more and more as you progress. Watch Dog Legion provides the tools to alleviate some of that stress by it's very nature which, if engaged with, can keep the gameplay feel fresh as you switch often between recruits. I'm also a big fan of the permadeath feature, which keeps tension up and playstyle relevant throughout each mission. Does this mean that the system is perfect and without faults? Absolutely not, and I'd go so far as to say that perhaps one of the biggest disappointments is that the system doesn't go far enough.
Perhaps the coolest aspect about the Nemesis System was the way in which it was built to create dynamic rivals for the player, but due to the very nature of the game encouraging players to turn rivals into allies (forcibly with questionable magic) it would work to make friends too. The sequel built upon this idea so that you could have great moments of interaction between your team and the armies you went up against. Watch Dogs system is built in the opposite direction, but it's a though they've learnt nothing from their contemporaries because this system hardly affects your enemies development at all. (Beyond the occasional kidnap if you've really peeved off another NPC) And that's a huge letdown because the linear and checklist nature of every Ubisoft game nowadays could have been revolutionised with such a step. Imagine that instead of hunting down questlines in order to mark of faces on a blackboard that you completely forget about the second you're done with them, there were fewer faces but more captains under them. These captains would be integrated into the gameplay so that the player's actions could directly hurt and annoy them, resulting in responses that feel appropriately reactionary. Suddenly there's a layer of dynamism woven into the fabric of the story so that the head honchos you're gunning for are unique to you as a player and hunting them down feels so much more rewarding because of it! Yes, what I'm talking about isn't exactly an easy and simple system to pursue, working as a sort of hybrid between Shadow of War and Crackdown, but it would be a fully developed system, as opposed to the one in place today which feels like a proof of concept for the next Watch Dogs game.
But now I'll step away from the 'play anyone system' to talk about the unintended consequences of it, because like I guessed from the moment I heard about it; this was kind of a tech demo. Don't get me wrong, on the high tier PCs that lie far outside the price range of the ordinary man (And especially wastrel scum like me) the game looks gorgeous and probably doesn't even crash every half hour. But for the rest of the world we didn't get so lucky. The game is unstable a lot of the time, and just plain regressive in some curious areas. It seems that in the rush to create a game that would be big enough to fit their vision for the 'play anyone' system, the Legion team squeezed out any room for the little details that really make these open worlds special. Take water, for instance, which seems to have literally no physics associated to it whatsoever and acts like the player is a ghost if they try and swim through it. (Very different to how it's reacted in recent Assassin's Creed and Far Cry games.) Police searches are pitifully short lived and easy to evade, to the point where most police refuse to even leave the road so you can just drive off of the path and loose them instantly. (Remember that London is supposed to be a 'police state' in this universe.) And then there's just your usual bevy of visual and placement bugs where models glitch out of existence or teleport a few feet into the air before the animation begins. (It just looks tacky)
Watch Dogs Legion is very much a tech demo, but it's one that has a somewhat successful system installed into it that may make the whole package worth it to some. All hope for a decent story has been gutted, as well as the effort behind making a strong open world, but they did achieve a play anyone infrastructure and that has to be worth some points. For me personally, I'm not a big believer of throwing out all the tough ingredients in order to get one part of the process work, but I fully understand those who don't mind so much. There's so many other games that are full of great, tightly designed worldspaces with systems that effortlessly communicate with each other in a congruent marriage of mastery. This game is not that. But is does have a unique selling point that those games don't have, and that may just be worth the biting of the bullet. Or you could just wait until the next Watch Dogs, which I suspect will feature a reiteration upon this system, it's not like you'll be missing out on any great story moments or characters if you do. So call me a fence sitter as I label Watch Dogs Legion a successful mess. (Which doesn't make this a review, by the by, just my two cents.)
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