It depends on how you play I think. I rarely, if ever, used the disguise stuff. I found that it was way too limited for my taste and the effect wears off too quickly/easily. The hacking, to me, is the core mechanic.
That said, some of the operatives have certain affiliations that they can use. It’s not a disguise, per se, but you may have an operative who was a member of Albion before you recruited them. They are allowed to be in an Albion-controlled location without drawing as much suspicion while other operatives aren’t. It’s not like they’re actively wearing a disguise, they are just being themselves.
The biggest difference is the lack of any main character. As a result, you don’t really relate to the operatives at all. They have no real back story, no real motivations (other than freeing London) and the story is entirely driven by the missions rather than the background and history of the player character. It works, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like playing a strong character driven game.
As someone who was really into WD2, and not into WD1, I can say that WDL is worse than 2, but not that much worse. WDL combines elements of the first two games but is still way better than WD1
Negatives are it removes some of the hack skills like being able to call police on people or start gang wars, which is something I always found fun in WD2. There is no interaction between the factions at all in this game. Also hard to get weapon unlocks, the only weapons I’ve been able to unlock for other characters to use are all revolvers and stuff, which to me is pointless because I didn’t come to a hacking game to play as Rambo (I wanted to unlock the policewoman’s taser, or the nurse’s tranq gun). I’m 2/3 of the way through the game and the missions feel more ‘same-y’ than WD2; I haven’t yet come across anything as cool as that side mission in WD2 where you set up a series of traps of your choosing before a convoy of criminals arrive. Combat and cover system feel a little clunkier than WD2.
Positives are Play as anyone + Permadeath mode bring a new, challenging way to play. It’s cool scanning people to see what they could bring with them to the team, and then what you have to do to recruit them (I’ve recruited like 10 people all up and surprisingly they haven’t been the exact same repetitive quest over and over). The only downside is with permadeath sometimes you get a mission where there’s a ‘twist’ where an army will come out of nowhere and you have to survive for a certain amount of time without leaving the area, those are quite brutal and are usually the only time I’ve lost a squad member and failed a mission (one was a recruitment mission)
Don’t even ask me about Multiplayer, I haven’t really tried it yet, gonna wait to finish the story first. But in this one MP is not integrated into the SP experience, so you won’t have random crap and possible tasks popping up while you’re in the middle of your game, you can decide whether that’s a good or bad thing. Though I do miss being able to just switch between SP and MP seemlessly by going to my phone and hitting Player Invasion (which wasn’t even in WDL until recently). There’s not even a phone in WDL, it’s just a menu with a map screen, team screen, missions screen and data screen; so no music app or car app (only characters who own vehicles can call them)
Anyway, like I said for me it’s still good, even though it’s not as great as WD2, I suspect you’ll feel the same
Thanks for the info. To sum it up, I’m guessing that there is less hacking in it, which makes sense as some characters are better than others, but it’s still a shame.
I really enjoyed driving along and randomly making people crash etc. Gang wars were useful if you needed to wipe out a lot of gang members before entering their base too.
I didn’t realise they got rid of the phone too. It was quite a cool feature seeing as the whole game is about technology.
TU 5.6 was our final update for Watch Dogs: Legion. However, you can look forward to reward tracks in the Online Mode, containing both new and returning rewards.
Well, that was it, fellow hackers. Legion won’t receive any new treatments from Ubisoft, and it’s hard to predict the future of the series. But I would still think it was a fresh experience, which differs a lot from its 2 predecessors. And Bloodline is a fun and solid story DLC for long term fans who enjoy Aiden and Wrench’s stories.
Until there’s news about the next installment then. Regardless, I hope you all still enjoy any of the 3 Watch Dogs games!
Damn. I saw a fan movement to try to bring new single-player content to the game, but I guess Ubisoft is done with it and wants to focus on its online (and other online games)
The game had it’s faults in the main game mode, mostly in how basic and superficial the “assemble a team of nobodies” concept was. But I had some fun with it, and some of the DLC characters are going to be fun to revisit the game with – Also there was the really great Bloodlines DLC.
So I’m interested in seeing how they evolve the game (or regress it) in 2-3 years. Hopefully 4 so there’s more time in the oven.
I’ve been trying Resistance Mode on WDL recently, and I think I’m at a point where I just can’t stand the inflated difficulty. There’s some promise in how it twists the game’s normal systems to make things a little more inconvenient, but overall the insane amount of times you’ll get into an unwinnable gunfight really kills the mood.
The no-fast-travel system is interesting, especially with your operatives spread across the map, usually hanging by mission objectives, if you want to swap to them to get there faster.
Security Checkpoints needing to be avoided is also an interesting twist, though the novelty of it becomes a bit frustrating, given you’ll almost always need to take a detour on your way to a waypoint lest you risk increasing your wanted level. Thankfully London is full of twists and turns, so there’s usually one right next to a checkpoint, but still, it’s inconveninent.
I’m not sure if Liberating boroughs does anything, I think it might reduce the number of active checkpoints, but not completely.
“Trapped” Data Points are just annoying. It auto-spawns a handful of enemies around out from thin air. There is a reliable system where Public Data points are usually Trapped, but Restricted Area data points are safe to grab, but still, with how much you’ll want to unlock in the skill tree to make the game easier, it’s not particularly enjoyable – especially in an open-world environment
For whatever reason, fistfights will turn into gunfights without prompting. Usually no one pulls out a gun until you do, or it takes them quite a while, but often times in Resistance someone’s threatened to pull a clip on you before you’ve even beat your first enemy of the group.
You also die extremely easily. About 3 shots or so and you’re dead. It really doesn’t help that you’ll have nearly no way to distract or disrupt enemies from shooting you at the start of the game if they have line of sight.
So many Albion enemies are upgraded to Elite Status – so, Kamikaze drones, AR Camo, Thick armour. They’re tough to take down and easy to kill you.
I really do like the freedom of approach with the Watch Dogs games, and this one does a great job too. But the extreme difficulty just doesn’t suit the game’s combat, upgrade, or stealth systems that well if you’re reliant on doing long missions to recruit people, and those people end up dying quite fast if you get ambushed by more than one person.
I do want to try out WDL again, especially with the DLC characters, just not like this… If ever I get one of those mythical PS5’s, I’ll be sure to do a normal, no permadeath, DLC Characters Only playthrough of WDL and see what their dialogue and unique perks bring to the table.
Installed the PS5 version of WDL today. The load times are really good. It’s only a handful of seconds to get between fast travel points or swap operatives which I love.
I did it so I could see if the trophy migration would work with my PS4 cloud save, but unfortunately it’s very buggy. I had 2 or 3 trophies auto-pop upon loading the old save, but the others I had to manually trigger.
Some pop after only performing one specific action, others I have to manually re-complete (kill X enemies with Y character), and a few are totally bugged (drink/darts at all bars, all story-related trophies).
Guess I’ll have to get those done in a new playthrough.
This is one of the few PS5 upgrades I own that features ray-tracing, so that should be nice. The reflective puddles and windows already look pretty.
Also, I stumbled on an NPC with an outfit I’ve never seen before! Everyone I’ve ever seen or recruited has their bare face out in the open, so you can see what they look like.
I’ve recently started to replay Watch Dogs 1 for the hell of it, and while it’s definitely not the underrated gem a bunch of people somehow claim it to be, there are a lot of underrated pieces to this game that were either left at the wayside in future entries or simply forgotten about, brought down by more prominent mediocre aspects of the game…
I’ve also casually watched this pretty deep retrospective while doing some chores today from Whitelight. I think he accurately explains and shows off the nuggets of good vs. the wave of uninteresting stuff in this game.
The side-characters, the overarching themes, the action-heavy gameplay (held back by restrictive mission design), among many other things…
Now hold on to your breath, a 4th game wasn’t announced, I am here just to post Whitelight’s new video about Legion.
Man, what an absolute blast of 2 hours! It’s once again a very thorough essay video about the game. Everything that was done good or bad about the game is in it. Will we ever get a new sequel of Watch Dogs? Chances are low, but it’s nice to relive and regain memories of playing these games with the review.
Dang, that was a good retrospective, and I like how he delved into Bloodline and how it was a major improvement on Legion’s mediocre, flat story.
I honestly hadn’t noticed or hadn’t bothered to pay attention that every character you play is a wide-eyed idealist, eager to fight together for the sake of good, not unlike any typical anime protagonist or very generic “optimist morals” from children’s literature.
And they’re all idealists in the face of the supposed main themes of a surveillance state, invasive technology gone wild in the modern day, or what should be a dour tone for the dystopian future the game is supposed to show.
It’s been mentioned time and again, but it really is a damn shame that Legion ended up unfinished the way it has. And yes, it’s either unfinished or terribly stripped-back.
Part of that I’m sure has to do with the core genre-shift the game took mid-development, as it disappeared for a year and came back without any of the Lite RPG elements or distinct character gameplay stats the first showcase had.
There’s still more opportunities for (unrealised) potential for the series, so I hope if it does come back, it’s actually done right, with all the major missteps and regrets taken into account the series really can’t escape from.
Anyway, I should try playing Watch Dogs 2 again sometime given how highly he spoke of it. (And I don’t think I’ve ever seen his review either…)
Yeah it is a shame that the game boasting about playing as anyone. It might just as well be taken as playing as no one, since every operative you control simply become the same once recruited. There were no drama, very few interactions between DedSec members, and no different personalities to shake things up a bit. All we have is different accents and looks to differentiate them. Maybe things would indeed be different if the RPG elements were kept, so that we could build connections with characters we develop.
But anyway, what happened happened. Let’s hope the next installment will be a lot better in this regard.
Watch Dogs 1 is now the best game it can be for anyone on PC!
Apparently there’s this massive mod that adds in cut modes, new features (like gang/police calls from WD2), extra content (online races now offline), better open-world random events, and lots of QoL options! This is massively cool!
