Watch Dogs: Legion Review

Ubisoft's open-world hackathon Watch Dogs{=nofollow} returns, this time swapping a singular agent of heroic cyber squad DedSec for a whole city of them. Here, almost everyone in near-future London is a recruitable agent, bringing unique skills, identities, and abilities to the fight against a neo-fascist force called Albion that's taken control of the capital.

At least, that's the pitch. In practice, having a near-infinite variety of playable characters means they blend into a blur of non-identity. Upgrades to technical abilities are shared across your network of operatives and, with the exception of hard mode where agents can permanently die, that means no real reason to switch between them.

Legion is at odds to try to make you think there's notable distinction though, even though most weapons, gadgets, and hacking skills can be equipped to any agent. For example, one story mission requires you to recruit a construction worker to DedSec, under the auspices of them being able to operate heavy-duty cargo drones – hefty aerial robots you can sit atop to fly around the city like a budget Green Goblin. However, by the time this mission came up, we'd already been hacking cargo drones and flying around for hours, making the recruitment of a specific character feel pointless.

A small exception to this is if you recruit agents with specific job roles - turn and recruit an Albion guard, for instance, and you can walk freely through their controlled facilities, or bringing over a Royal Guard to DedSec can get you inside Buckingham Palace. However, gadgets such as the hyper-agile spider-drone – which is small enough to usually avoid detection, can zap unsuspecting enemies into unconsciousness, and can interact with enemy systems – is versatile enough to complete most objectives in sensitive areas anyway.

Narratively, the game struggles to balance what is a clear anti-Brexit statement (Albion is cracking down on immigrants and more specifically Europeans, there are food and medicine shortages, passersby complain of a lack of jobs, and the government is shown to be utterly ineffective) with a tale of cyberterrorism, digital disinformation, and even shades of transhumanism, with a plucky band of resistance fighters opposing an Orwellian dictatorship. The story it's trying to tell just doesn't really jibe with the environment it's telling it in.

What really stands out though in Legion's recreation of London itself. It's a breathtakingly detailed virtual version of the real thing – not entirely accurate but also not far off. Anyone familiar with the city will have a blast exploring it and seeing how it's been adapted for Watch Dog's dystopian near-future.

There's also a host of supplemental material to find, and while much of it is the now-typical notes, memos, and files, Ubisoft has gone above and beyond in creating a series of in-game podcasts. Fashioned as contemporary pirate radio, with plucky presenters giving the real view of the people after mainstream media has been corrupted, these are brilliantly well-produced slices of world-building. The downside is that some have pretty lengthy run times, and there's no way to listen to them outside of menu screens. Even there, they lack any media controls to play, pause, advance, or rewind. Hopefully, some way to listen to them while exploring London will be resolved with a future patch, as it's an odd – and annoying – oversight at present.

While Watch Dogs: Legion{=nofollow} has plenty of good ideas and a fantastic world to explore, a lack of personality coupled with a fractured political message hobbles it. Enjoyable, but lacking the revolutionary spark it promises.

Buy Watch Dogs: Legion now on PlayStation and Xbox{ =nofollow}.