For many years, the UBISoft AAA-releases have been built on open worlds where you need to perform a huge number of tasks. These worlds are inhabited mainly by statists – but Watch Dogs made a noticeable attempt to humanize them. The protagonist, a seasoned hacker, could rightly hack the phone of any passerby to find out his name, age and even facts from the biography. The third part of the series, Watch Dogs: Legion, develops this idea even further. In it, every passerby is already a potential playable character.
"Brexit"
The action of the "Legion" takes place in London of the near future. Great Britain is experiencing a difficult political crisis: the government has completely lost control of the country, and the private military company Albion is refueling everything. During the announcement of the game, the developers talked a lot about the fact that these are the consequences of Brexit, but now this word in the game no longer sounds. Perhaps after the Brexit really took place, but nothing terrible happened to the country, they changed their minds to tie an anti -utopian future to real events.
Albion controls everything, including the media, but ordinary British do not believe the company and try to resist it as much as possible. That is why any of them can be recruited in DedSec – a hacker group familiar in previous parts, for the members of which we have to play.
At the very beginning of the plot, DedSec is largely substituted: they are accused of committing terrorist attacks. The organizations have to find out who is behind this, simultaneously recruiting new recruits and reducing the influence of Albion in each of the regions of London.
City of hackers
Watch Dogs: Legion no specific hero. At any time, the current agent DEDSEC may transfer responsibility to its friend. And it organizes the whole network of artificial intelligence named Balegli – a talkative and not without a sense of humor. It is he who directs the heroes to tasks and gives them advice during adventures. Perhaps it can be called the "soul" Watch Dogs: Legion.
Because it does not work about the characters themselves. No, they are not silent faceless protagonists – on the contrary, they actively participate in dialogs, but … their remarks are too standard, uninteresting and sometimes go out of place with the mood of the conversation. If you liked Marcus from Watch Dogs 2, then the absence of the Leovegas Casino same charismatic hero in the third part may push.
At the same time, the characters are voiced well. My spy had an amazing Scottish accent, because of which half the time had to look at subtitles
But this is the price of an infinite number of playable characters. The very fact that any passerby is a potential hero with his voice acting, skills and even a quest line, impressive. But it also causes some dissonance: it turns out that in order to be a hacker and break everything in a row, it is not at all necessary to have at least some qualifications!
Easy to light
As in the previous parts of Watch Dogs, all Legion characters know how to fight, crest and break – these are three pillars on which the gameplay of the entire series. Moreover, any of these aspects is as simple as possible both and apply: for each action you need literally one button. And in order to lay the enemy, and to remove the corpses from the eyes, and to neutralize the enemy drone.
Each character has personal skills and gadgets, but in reality they are not so needed: in theory, any operative can pass any mission in any way. The old woman will cut down the harsh mercenaries, the former janitor will hack any network, and a pike student will easily shoot the guard from the machine gun.
Legion – a game about resistance to the regime, and not about funny youth, so stupid jokes from the second part in the third should not wait
Legion tries not to drive the player into any framework. Each mission here is essentially a sandbox, where you need to have fun, and not bother due to lack of skills. Difficulty level – in any case, at the beginning of the game – prohibitively low. Enemies can only crush in number, and then only if you are careless. To drop the "tail", just go around the corner. But even if the character is grasped, he will just sit half an hour in prison while you play for his colleagues, and then return to duty again.
Legion – not about a serious challenge to your skills. Rather, you yourself can determine the level of complexity, setting yourself the conditions and trying different approaches. And if something goes wrong, it will always be possible to go in a gratify.
Like Watch Dogs 2, Legion also offers a wide range of non -lethal means to eliminate enemies. Even a non -lethal shotgun!
Create what you want
Those few tasks that I managed to complete in Legion seemed to be the same. Basically, they came down to the same thing: it is necessary to penetrate the protected territory to hack the desired terminal or save the NPC. And the latter also includes hacking, because the keys are electronic and for some reason are read from monitors.
Since opponents are quite weak and stupid, there is a lot of wrong solutions for the most seemingly wrong solutions. For example, to get a person out of the camera, I did not look for a key from her. Instead, I just seemed to the guard who was sitting inside: to catch me, he jumped out – and opened the door to me himself. After that, it only remained to show him on the head and calmly go out with the captive.
I arrived at another open air mission by car and just crushed a significant part of the guard. And when my goal for hacking was on the roof of one of the buildings, I switched to the builder, climbed onto his cargo drone, flew into the next roof and from there calmly shot all enemies. They could not get to me – they only sent attacking drones. But to no avail? After all, drones are neutralized remotely by pressing one button.
In general, it was the builder with his cargo drone that seemed to me the most attractive character. What are spy gadgets and hacking in comparison with the ability to literally fly around the city?
However, if we talk about playing the roles, then there is a policeman out of competition. He is not only able to go to places where the entrance is forbidden to extraneous, but can also be shaken into handcuffs at his discretion. I wonder if this opportunity will leave this opportunity, given what kind of sick topic is a police arbitrariness now.
Questions on the map
Typical tasks “penetrate and hack” appear not only according to the plot. For example, when I decided to recruit a random woman on the street, it turned out that she was also a hacker and actively digs in the files of a local hospital. To convince her to join DedSec, it was necessary to first get into the hospital territory and drag the data from the server. And then also steal a car on which the organs were illegally transported – this is exactly what the future heroine led.
Almost all side activities on the map work similarly. To configure the townspeople to resistance, for example, you need to change the propaganda of Albion to DEDSEC advertising. That is, to get to the construction site – the uniform of the builder will come in handy again – approach the banner and hack it. Or get to the Albion base and arrange a small sabotage, spoiling high -tech equipment. You can even penetrate the local hub of CTOS – then the hero will hack a whole plane on which political prisoners are transported by the autopilot.
When all activity in a particular area will be fulfilled, local activists will contact DedSec and share their information. And this means that it will be necessary to go on another task of penetrating and hacking. How else?
Well, at least its completion is celebrated by fireworks
Legion looks pretty modest: it is much closer to Watch Dogs 2 than to Cyberpunk 2077 – this is clearly a game for the outgoing generation of consoles. By gameplay, it is felt as a natural evolution of previous issues. And in tone – like a golden mean between a gloomy original and a cheerful sequel. “Legion” is unlikely to be able to impress the plot, but fans of the series are probably expecting this from him not, but a large and cheerful sandbox. And just her Legion provides: now in Watch Dogs you can not only hack anyone, but also to be anyone.
- We played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. One step forward, two back
- Paratopic and No One Lives Under the Lighthouse. Full horror in 60 minutes
- How free Helltaker has become a cult sensation?