All you need to know about Watch Dogs: Legion

You will join the infamous hacker group DedSec. Seen in previous Watch Dogs games,  the group is back with their London branch to try and liberate the city from the military group Albion.

The story starts with a group called Zero Day looking to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The hacking organization gets blamed and are forced to go underground due to Albion locking down London.

Headed by CEO Nigel Cass, the military group have access to the city’s Central Operating System, or ctOS for short, making the city a surveillance state where citizens are constantly monitored. After initially being driven underground by the company, DedSec are back to stop Albion and bring normality back to the capital of England.

If you think Albion are enough to go up against, then you’re wrong. you will also be coming into contact with the head of a London-based Crime Syndicate looking to take advantage of the situation to make more money from the Dark Web. Mary Kelly is not a nice customer as she sells people, and isn’t afraid to engage in violence.

This may all sound like one story, but it’s actually five! Legion will have shorter stories than the previous games in the series, but this totals over 60 missions to play.

And there’s a familiar face in the game,  London-born Stormzy artist will have his own mission. The motion-captured rapper’s mission will be called “Fall on my Enemies” which is based on a lyric from his track, Rainfall. However, it’s not yet confirmed if the 27-year-old will be playable in the game.

Ubisoft have done a terrific job in recreating the city of London with all of the famous landmarks there to explore in the open-world map. However, this post-Brexit interpretation of the Home of Big Ben Is very dystopian thanks to the changes made by Albion.

Whilst you may not see drones flying everywhere in real-life, the security company are just one of the users of the high-tech machines as they scan the public and shoot any troublemakers.

Of course, you can hack these to do your bidding too. As well as use them as a handy way to travel and break into areas that your car may not reach. You know, like the tops of buildings!

It’s not just Brexit that has already happened in this timeline though, Scotland is also independent of the UK in this version of events.

One of the biggest features of the game is the recruitment of new DedSec members.

In the game, there is no main character. Instead, you can recruit anybody on the streets by doing quests to improve their relationship with the group.

It’s not just those you’d expect that can join DedSec. We’ve seen a rather handy Grandma bringing her take of violence to the city. Plus, an activist that has a host of cool weapons that you can utilize to complete the missions.

All characters can hack traffic lights, vehicles, and many other things in the game, of course. They’re part of a hacking group after all.

All of the Londoners you can recruit will have special stats and abilities. For example, an ex-Albion member may get themselves into more places without resorting to breaking people’s necks and a construction worker has their own Cargo Drone.

The game isn’t just regular folks either, you can recruit a futuristic beekeeper, who reminds me a bit of Batman, as she controls the bees to stun enemies.

Not every ability is positive either, there’s a hitman that has hiccups that give away their location. While another character may just die randomly.

Now that doesn’t sound too bad as they could just respawn right? Well, they don’t. Watch Dogs: Legion has permadeath for the characters, so if your character dies you best get recruiting new ones!

Customization is a big part of the game, with the option to customize looks, weapons, and abilities. They also can be assigned to one of three different classes.

An Enforcer is combat-focused with lots of explosive options. Whereas if you are more of a stealthy player, you may want to put the Infiltrator class on your characters. The most notable ability of this is to gain cloaking abilities, but you can get others, such as suppressors for SMGs.

The last class is the most obvious one - the Hacker! Hackers are more attuned to using drones to do their work. The one we’ve seen the most is the creepy but very useful Spiderbot. 

This small but fast drone may be missing a few legs as it only has six in total. But don’t let this fool you, it can take down enemies and complete missions without the need to even step inside the building.

In typical Watch Dogs fashion, there are a variety of weapons to use. Some are low tech, like the Wrench, whereas others are a bit more high tech like the Shock Drone.

If you’re planning on doing a “No Kill Run” then you can choose non-lethal options. According to Ubisoft, half of the game’s weapons are non-lethal, with the stun gun making a return, as well as a Batton for a stereotypical British policeman weapon.

Who you pick, and the weapons you choose to use will allow you to complete missions in different ways. In the gameplay trailer, we’ve seen how to tackle a mission in the Tower of London using three different types of characters. That won’t be all though with the devs promising hundreds of other ways to finish the game.

You don’t have to tackle Albion alone. Legion will contain 4 player co-op. You and your friends can team up in missions designed for playing as a team. Or if you’d rather you can participate in activities, such as bare-knuckle boxing or illegal couriering.

There will also be a multiplayer mode, however, Ubisoft hasn’t announced details of this yet. But it has been said by the Toronto-based developers that the single-player will be a “springboard” to the multiplayer with the promise that there will be a “larger player count” than in previous Watch Dogs games.

Aiden Pearce is returning to the UK, the Northern Ireland-born protagonist of Watch Dogs, is a skilled hacker that will be older in Legion, but not wiser if you are to believe the announcement video.

The legendary vigilante was last seen in San Francisco in Watch Dogs 2, and he will be a fully-playable character in DLC for Legion.  Available with the Season Pass, the DLC will “open up a whole new chapter” in his story. This sounds like there will be more Aiden Pearce content coming after the DLC drops.

A whole chapter in one of the two-story expansions will be dedicated to the character, with three DedSec missions also part of the Season Pass, and he is just one of the four new heroes that will feature new abilities and customizations. So we could be seeing more famous cameos or returning characters after launch.