Well that’s typical Ubisoft, or shall we say, open-world games’ collectables for players. It is indeed unfortunate there isn’t a stat menu in this game. They did add operatives’ stats in the most recent update, but still can be better.
I think the collectables in Legion is okay. the ones you mentioned can be collected casually, while tech points and audio/text files can sometimes be challenging to get when they are placed in hostile areas.
I do prefer the collectables in WD1, though. You unlock a ctOS tower and all are revealed in the area (speaking of which, where’s your well-known tower mechanic in recent games, Ubisoft?). Audio logs shows how many they are in total, and the icons disappear on the map as you collect them. A progression tree also tracks your progress on collecting these items, etc.
When it comes to WD2, though, it’s similar to Legion, icons show when Marcus is near the collectable’s vicinity, a white checkmark will be shown if the item is collected. There’s one thing that is inconvenient to me is that there isn’t a progression tracker anymore, which made me still discover new songs on Songsneak app, after I thought I have collected them all.
Well, all I’m saying is, in terms of collectables, WD1 is the most convenient and user-friendliest to me, I think.
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Woooow. Just finished the 404 Main missions. That’s some of the creepiest, most unique sci-fi horror I’ve ever seen.
That entire underground mansion sequence and the house AI was fantastically directed.
I was so wowed by this storyline, I immediately looked up details about it. Here’s a pretty great interview with the Producer of WDL
I do have two complaints: in that I think Skye Larson was introduced, her plan revealed, and she was taken down too quickly.
And, I didn’t like how it featured two sequences near the end where it threw waves of super-powered, super-armored enemies at you (that tore through like 4 of my operators) but other than those points it was really well-made.
Also, not sure why there was some final choice, especially since it has no bearing on anything at all. Leftover idea maybe?
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This is it! 7 years after the release of WD1, a sneak peak of Bloodline DLC. Aiden’s back, Jordi is back, and more surprisingly, Jackson is in London as well! Now this is the stuff I’ve been waiting for.
Also, the rusty Camaro-based Vespid 5.2 is featured, I certainly hope it will be part of the DLC. What London streets need is some American muscle car! 
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FYI, the Watch Dogs Legion Season pass is currently on sale on Playstation for 25% off.
Now, that’s a massive “Ubisoft says screw you” to those who already bought it – since all the content promised (and the meaty Bloodline DLC) isn’t even out yet – but, still, figured I’d put it out there.
(I will be waiting for a deeper sale on it, since I’m only interested in Bloodline, but oooh this DLC looks hype)
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Dark and brooding is the new cool, it seems
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Apparently, zombie survival game mode is something they will add to the online mode. It is said to be released… tomorrow? Also said to be playable solo or up to 4 players.
Well this is indeed something new to the series, in case of we don’t get Digital Trips return that is. Online mode can use some incentives like new game modes to attract more players to play, making me wonder what’s next though, battle royale? 
In any case, zombie apocalypse in England does remind me of movies like 28 Days Later… or Shaun of the Dead.
Edit: adding an announcement blog post here. 
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Well that’s a surprise. I was expecting the update surprise to be new game plus or a custom character slot, but a zombie game mode is… I dunno how to feel about that.
Especially if it’s an online-only mode.
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The story is getting pretty interesting where I’m at.
There’s this SIRS spy who leaks a bunch of details about Zero Day to Dedsec, introducing a new power player – the head of SIRS, possibly behind Zero Day.
There’s a mission where your operative gets kidnapped and is unavailable for a few missions. That was surprising.
But, it turns out later, the SIRS spy set up a trap! He was stringing us along and did it so that we could blame Dedsec for another set of bombings. Damn, dude.
Also, he specifically blew up the Canada High Commission building, and now this means war. 
In terms of operatives, I’ve managed to max out my entire roster. I’m unable to track any more NPCs unless I dismiss some or they die.
I’ve found many of the smaller, simpler ones have gotten more unique lately. There’s a soldier who has a P9 Silenced and Combat Roll. There’s an animator who has a Goblin shock rifle and a Dart gun. There’s a mason worker who has a rifle, a grenade launcher, and a hammer melee. Pretty cool.
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I got the same feeling too. I certainly didn’t ask for zombie survival, yet here we are. Perhaps this is the closest we can get as a Digital Trip replacement, more precisely Alone. There are some similarities like streets full of abandoned cars, you have to collect items, avoid dangers, and go to certain locations of the city. I still prefer Alone over zombie survival, though.
SIRS storyline is probably the longest one in the game. It has some unique cutscenes like seducing a government agent in a pub or spy meeting, etc. I think this is an attempt of Ubisoft tried to write a Bond-esque corporate espionage story into Watch Dogs, so some twists are included in such story. I don’t have problem about it, but it does feel less impressive than 404 storyline to me. The storyline does have a challenging finale at the end, so prepare yourself. 
Are they the green dot potential recruits that Bagley tagged on the map? Just curious. The game seems to generate more people with powerful traits later in game. Otherwise I’d say you’re very lucky to have them, cherish them while they last! 
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Definitely got Alone vibes from watching the preview footage. The removal of all the neon lights and colours gives off a great tone.
I dipped my toes in Online a few weeks ago, and it just wasn’t all that great. Feels so empty and aimless. There was a track of (limited-time) cosmetics like Wrench’s mask and outfit, but other than the enticement of that, it didn’t feel worth it over playing single-player (but, maybe it’s fun with a group of people you know, also with LegionofDead probably).
Having an (implied) lesbian sex scene was an interesting surprise in this game, though maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised since WD2 was already pretty progressive with its themes and characters.
Also, loved many of the espionage scenes I’ve seen so far. Makes me wonder how they’d look with Aiden involved.
I’m pretty sure the ones I mentioned were recruited from random Bagley finds, yeah.
Bit of info on Legion of the Dead, no patch notes yet:
It’s only out in Alpha on PC for now… 
Q : Why did you decide to release the Alpha only on PC?
A : We want Watch Dogs: Legion of the Dead to be developed together with our players, meaning we want to iterate on it often and patch it frequently. To make this possible we need to be able to deploy patches fast and we have full control over this on PC via Ubisoft Connect. As we move towards the Beta phase, we look forward to getting reinforcements from players on console, Stadia and Luna.
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Well here’s an interesting surprise for you. She will actually be interested in operatives of both genders. It all depends on whoever you send to her first. She will reject them, then you will be prompted to switch to an operative of opposite gender. With this trick(?), what I want is to play this particular mission with Aiden, just for the giggles. 
Well this is indeed a bummer. The game mode isn’t what I was looking forward to, but I bet console players would like to play it as well. Hopefully it will get better developed as they suggested.
The patch notes for Title Update 4.5 are out now. It’s now possible to enable 60 fps performance mode for next-gen consoles and cross-family play (e.g. PS4 & PS5). Unfortunately, Helen, the free E3 operative, will be released 2 weeks later instead of now. I guess I will just wait for Bloodline to be released or delayed, perhaps. 
https://www.thegamer.com/watch-dogs-legion-update-4-5/
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If Wrench’s personality hasn’t been changed too much from WD2, I’d kill to see how he woos the ladies.
Dang it.
She better have some cool unique skills because I’d rather not get a Low Mobility/Hacker character I can already get in the main game.
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Okay, in terms of Helen, I have no idea what kind of character she might be, since she was first announced in E3 2019, back before the whole game’s RPG system was scrapped.
We know that she can deploy spiderbots, wields a tazer for her takedowns, and uses a non-lethal gun, but those are all skills every dedsec agent can have.
At the very least, she should be low-mobility, but other than that, idk. I’m guessing she’ll have some unique skill combo. Maybe special gun+low mobility+hacking ability.
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Yeah, it’s hard to see what’s so unique about her in the E3 gameplay. She mostly served as a mascot/comic relief while the footage featured more serious stuff like Permadeath, oppressive PMC, and human trafficking, etc.
Like you mentioned, Helen better has unique traits when she becomes available to players. Or else it won’t add up why she is delayed while new premium operatives are made available today.
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Helen is out already lol, so there was literally no reason to keep her until the 15th.
They must have gotten a lot of complaints 
She’s got Fast Hacking cooldowns, a Bogen 25 Vehicle, and Low Mobility.
That’s… Basically what I expected. Meh.
Though she does come with “unique clothing” so there’s that.
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“Look who showed up early,” really, Ubisoft? Isn’t it actually a day or two late than the plan shown on the last roadmap?
Well, at least it’s now possible to play as her through the story. Might as well turn my team into ‘Team Helen’ where everyone dresses like her! It will be funny when Bloodline is released and putting her clothes on Aiden and Wrench.
Her voice is available and already shared with other senior female operatives. There are a few instances that the dialogue varies depending on the operatives you use, such as picking up an old-style flip phone during a SIRS story mission.
Watch Dogs Legion is now finished. Finished the story, got the side-missions all done, and the platinum trophy unlocked. (yikes, sorry for the wall of text)
Okay, where do I start with this game?
Let’s try the good:
- London was a pretty unique-looking environment. Seeing that european architecture was cool, and the future-tech was nice, but maybe they went a bit overboard.
- The Play As Anyone system is a nice system, (but doesn’t hold up against having fewer or more engaging characters), I can tell a lot of effort was put into creating it and the schedule tech behind it, but… something’s missing.
- The melee combat system was well-implemented, I’d say. Tedious and repetitive at times, but it offered more solutions to combat than pure stealth or guns-blazing.
- The story was pretty engaging… at times.
- Permadeath on Hard really upped the tension and attachment to characters.
- Bagley is a pretty fun main character in this game. Took me a while, but I finally warmed up to him after a bit.
- That big drone Cass boss battle was pretty unexpected and pretty fun. What came after though…
- The driving feels a lot better than WD2. Doesn’t feel like you’re driving on ice anymore.
- The light Hitman social stealth was cool. Hope that returns.
The not-so-good:
- The Play-as-Anyone system feels unfinished. The voice-mods the game uses almost never makes someone sound genuinely real. There aren’t enough voices to differentiate characters in your team. Swapping between characters feels clunky and slow. There isn’t enough sense that you’re building up a community/team, despite the fact that’s what the idea behind it is… Also the characters feel way too isolated and situation-specific.
- The story: At times, pretty fun and intriguing. At others, boring and not engaging, mostly dependent on the random character you’re controlling. Their lines can either bring you in or take you out of the moment. Also, of the 6 big baddies of this game, 4 of them are dealt with in cutscenes completely out of the player’s control. Felt a bit cheap.
- There aren’t enough side-activities. Watch Dogs 2 had drone, car, boat races. It had landmark photography. Taxi delivery missions. Plenty of collectibles. This one has… Post deliveries, Darts, and a boat-load of collectibles? Not much. Heck, with the darker tone, they could have brought back things from WD1 like Marked Man,
- Cool features from WD2 were removed. Police/Gang forgeries. Music on-the-go. Fluid movement. Easy-to-access-menu. At least BotNet points are gone.
- Online feels so empty, like an after-thought. And it seems like Ubi’s going to only add to their Online portion now, which isn’t really going anywhere cool. I really hope Invasions still comes to single-player, no idea how it would work otherwise.
Sidenote: The line “we’ll be the watchdogs of London” was used in the final cutscene. Is this the first time the title of the game was used? I don’t remember a stand-out moment like that in the other titles.
Overall, it’s a nice 6-7/10 game. But is the worst out of all the WD titles.
With the release of Bloodlines soon, I kinda want to revisit WD1 again. It had great gunplay, dark moody themes, and was a fun start to the series. But maybe later. I just finished an open-world game, don’t want another one yet.
Here are my final operatives, as I leave this game. I don’t know why I can’t replace some with specific ones like Helen, but maybe it auto-chooses the cast here based on your most-played operatives.
The surviving crew
Character occupations under here
RIP Aaron Park. He was my soldier, and quickly became my favourite character to use.
Simple, only having a P9 Silenced and Combat roll, but he got the job done.
Died by ambush during a side-mission, post game. There was no escape. Thankfully I took some pictures beforehand.
RIP
Also: SPOILERS (2nd Albion Chapter)
This boss battle was stupid easy. The one just before, not so much, it was hard, thank god there was a checkpoint, but this? Lmao. “Can’t beat me!” dead
https://youtu.be/z66-FKPJT8k
Also this was fun to see (spoilers, SIRS chapter)
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I am guessing it’s because the actual gameplay doesn’t fulfill the promise of it. Even we get to know an operative’s job, relationships, trivia stuff, he/she is still just a randomly generated character. We don’t take part in their personal lives, and most of their randomly generated backstories doesn’t add characteristics to them much, either.
Still a bit too twitchy for me. Some cars don’t like bumps and can be out of control from time to time. But I especially appreciate the auto-drive mode implemented in this game. It’s like you can explore the city while riding a taxi, but you can choose whatever model you like on the road.
You’re absolutely right about this one! Building up a team feels like collecting disposable character to use. Well of course it can be explained that inactive operatives are doing off-screen works like developing tools or gathering intel. But the active one which the player controls is still all alone on field. It would be better if other operatives can join you and provide combat support, etc.
I think this is a failure of the open-world activity design of this game. Surely I can get a PMC controlled city won’t allow you to mess around as a citizen, but like you said, it’s hard to keep engaged and distracted by the minigames in Legion.
Adding street races will be enough for me. Maybe it invalidates the overall settings of the game, despite speeding in the game doesn’t attract any authority attention. But I can make good use of getaway drivers here. 
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Feel like this needs a separate post. Here’s an answer to your question here:
If you’re talking about the ‘watchdogs’ term in particular, there is a line in the original Watch Dogs.
During the final mission, Aiden is tasked to hack the satellite, shut down ctOS, and track down Damien. After he uploaded virus on 3 locations and got chased by CPD all around the city, Aiden returned to the building to proceed. Dedsec then hacked into the TVs in the building to convince Aiden to install a back door for them on the satellite, which Aiden later refused. The conversation is as following:
Dialogues
DedSec: Aiden Pearce, wait. We are DedSec. We’ve been watching. We know what you’re doing. You’re killing the lines to CTOS.
Aiden Pearce: Enjoy the show.
DedSec: Give us 30 seconds.
Aiden Pearce: For what?
DedSec: 30 seconds inside CTOS. We drop in our code. Then when the system reboots, DedSec will control the machine from inside. We will correct what Blume has broken. 30 seconds is all we need.
Aiden Pearce: 30 seconds, no one knows. Our little secret?
DedSec Speaker: We will be the watchdogs.
Aiden Pearce: No. I’m tired of all the noise.
DedSec: We will not forget this.
source: Sometimes You Still Lose/Transcript | Watch Dogs Wiki | Fandom
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Yes! Big agreed on that one.
Some of the better moments in the side-activities were the borough missions, which, true to what the developers said: they were missions that provided a unique gameplay structure compared to the rest of the game. One was a hacking puzzle on the side of a building, the other was a speedy drone destruction flying over a borough, another was a race through checkpoints in London.
That last one I did very recently, and it made me wonder: Why isn’t this a normal part of the game? Races have been a part of every other Watch Dogs game, either through Multiplayer or Singleplayer, and the non-grid-layout that London uses would have made for some great tracks, but, then I guess that Borough mission wouldn’t have that same level of “wow”.
Yeah, I was expecting more of the game to feature some team-based infiltrations, but apart from the final mission, where we kiiinda got that – one operative is locked into Blume Tower, the other locked into Broca Tech, it’s all solo ops. Even encountering Operatives in the open-world doesn’t feel like they’re a part of the same team or are on your side.
Ah, cool. Yeah, I don’t remember any “Watchdogs” word being used in WD1 or 2, but at least there’s that. Thanks.
And I forgot Aiden had nothing to do with Dedsec in the first game. They were just some shady hacker group out to maybe help Chicago? I wonder what made Ubisoft think: “we need this kind of group to be the franchise’s mascots” then turn it into a millennial, colourful group in San Fransisco.
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