After its announcement at E3 2019 last month, we’ve been asking big questions about how Watch Dogs Legion really will be in practice, but Ubisoft’s answers continue to assure us that this could really be something special.
The premise “Play with any NPC” is exciting, for example, but how does it affect the quality of the central narrative if we are losing a fixed protagonist? Fortunately, Kent Hudson, director of game design for Watch Dogs Legion, promises that storytelling will remain the main focus of this third installment of the series.
“I know ‘play as anyone’ is kind of a crazy technological innovation with the simulation we’ve done, but story is still a huge part of the game,” Hudson said. “It’s a huge part of the franchise and this game is no different. We’ve got five different storylines in the game, so it’s five main – you could call them quest lines if you want – and each one of them is tied to one of our thematic pillars.”
“So, for example, we’re gonna be looking at today a storyline that’s about the surveillance state. It’s basically about the spies of the nation turning their technology inward and actually spying on the citizens of England and London. There’s one that’s about the surveillance state. There’s one that’s themed around the private military contractors who’ve supplanted the police in the city, and they’ve actually taken over.”
So the game will have five different story lines, each focused on a distinct aspect of dystopian London, certainly sounding ambitious and sufficient, even though there is no Aiden Pearce or Marcus Holloway at the front commanding the plot points this time around.
Watch Dogs Legion will release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia on 6 March 2020. What do you think about it? Tell us in the comments below.
