Four hours of ‘Far Cry 2’ memories

Before we get into the game, a brief note about Ubisoft. In recent weeks, reports have surfaced that describe a toxic culture at the company, with a particular focus on abusive behavior by people in management positions. In some cases, this extends as high as the company’s executive team (some of whom have already resigned or been placed on administrative leave). 

These latest reports coincide with (and are in some cases directly informed by) a recent spate of #MeToo allegations in the gaming space that named multiple Ubisoft employees, among others. We feel it’s important to help you understand and educate yourselves on what’s been happening. Games like this wouldn’t exist without the people who make them, and the typical video game hype machine too easily drowns out individual voices. 

We encourage you to take some time to read through these recent reports and catch yourself up.

I realized something during a recent four-hour session with Watch Dogs: Legion: This is the kind of gaming high I’ve been chasing since Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft’s 2008 game, an under-appreciated gem in the eyes of many a fan, features the same director as Legion in Clint Hocking, and it shows. Both games share the approach of stepping back from character-driven storytelling in favor of a more open-ended and player-authored framework for your play.

In Far Cry 2, you’re a mercenary on the hunt for an arms dealer in an unnamed central African country that’s been rocked by a local civil war. There are story missions, but most unfold at whatever pace you set and you’re dealing with them in the midst of a large, deadly world filled with enemies and animal predators. Also, you have malaria and are on a constant search for more meds.

In this context, the narrative becomes something more akin to a virtual stage, and the plot becomes whatever actions you take and relationships you form on that stage. It’s clear even after just my few hours playing that Watch Dogs: Legion embraces this same kind of thinking. 

Even more compellingly, it does so against the backdrop of a near-future London that’s been shaken by terrorism and tech-driven invasions of privacy. Your job? Build a resistance movement. How entirely relevant! Let’s talk about how that works.

The world is on fire

Watch Dogs: Legion opens with you trying to derail a terrorist attack in central London. The Palace of Westminster has been targeted and you’re commandeering an MI6 spy who’s also working on the side with DedSec, the pro-freedom hacker group that’s served as the “good guys” presence in two previous Watch Dogs games.

After fighting, sneaking, and hacking your way into and through the government offices for Legion‘s tutorial mission, you successfully defuse the bombs that would’ve turned the palace to ash. But there’s a catch. There are other bombs, set all throughout the city, and no time to disarm them.

Even worse, your DedSec allies are dealing with a surprise attack by unknown enemy forces back at headquarters. That means there’s no backup to rely on when, at the end of the mission, your MI6 is cornered by those same forces and gunned down on the roof of the palace.

At that point, my preview jumped ahead to a halfway point in the larger game. But the premise is pretty clear: London plunges into chaos after the other bombs go off and DedSec is effectively neutralized. The opening hours after that presumably see you rebuilding the hacker group, and how that actually happens gets at the heart of what makes Watch Dogs: Legion a little different – refreshingly so! – than your typical open world action game.

Play as anyone

In Watch Dogs: Legion, pretty much any resident of London is yours to recruit into DedSec. You can use your souped up smartphone to scan anyone on the street and get some basic information like their name, job, and a key trait or two, just like you could in the previous games. But here in Legion, that info has a gameplay purpose.

Since everyone on the street is a potential recruit – whom you’ll need to convince to join DedSec, usually by helping them with some personal task or another – their jobs and skills become important details to consider in the context of how you choose to play. My demo started off by handing me control of… well, a soccer hooligan. 

A great guy for those occasions when you just want to beat the stuffing out of a particular challenge. Good with his fists (and even better after a drink – an actual ability) and able to summon a gang of friends to help when any given moment descends into an all-out brawl. That’s not really how I play these sorts of games, but it served as a good introduction to the way Legion gamifies people’s jobs and interests.

The factual details about someone’s life tells you how one potential recruit or another will play. A construction worker can blend in more easily when you’re infiltrating a build site, for example. She can also call up a person-sized cargo drone on demand that you can clamber up onto and hijack, a useful skill for reaching rooftop objectives or secluded spots in secured locations.

A private security guard can also do the social stealth thing, but in more official settings. He doesn’t have the same kind of ready access to construction gear, but he’s armed and can generally handle himself better in any fight. All of your DedSec players have access to a range of non-lethal weapons, but different jobs can broaden the loadout possibilities – including the more traditionally lethal arms.

Traits are important, too. Some people work in recruiting, which nets you a cash bonus every time your DedSec squad grows. Others struggle with addiction, or just move and act a little more slowly because they’re older. These traits all have a range of effects, from passive bonuses to advantages and drawbacks that directly affect how a particular person plays.

It’s the jobs that really set up what people are capable of doing in the midst of a mission, however. During my playtime I saw mechanics, electricians, street artists, musicians, and even beekeepers walking along on the street. Hacking their profile gave me a full readout of their unique skillsets as potential recruits.

(OK, I need to describe the beekeeper. She shoots swarms of high-tech bees at people. She also carries a special “gun” that, when fired at bees swarming an enemy, triggers an area-of-effect shock that incapacitates anyone hit by it.)

Just don’t make the mistake of equating the social makeup of Watch Dogs Legion‘s world with any kind of “realism.” We learned previously that there aren’t any fat bodies in this version of London. There’s also the “little old lady” character type and, apparently, no “little old man” to go with it. I didn’t see any other characters with their movement hindered, so I’m forced to assume at this point that the enfeebled “old person” body type only applies to women.

Ubisoft has had its struggles with representation in the past, and there’s fair conversation to be had on the way Legion apparently – this is still a preview, and things can always change ahead of release – sacrifices some of the diversity you might see in other open world games in favor of its unique, job-and-trait-driven sandbox. But that’s a conversation best had post-release, when the finished piece can speak for itself. 

Beat the system your way

As epic as Legion‘s beekeeper job is, I didn’t pick the right recruit during my preview session. The one I convinced to join DedSec was also a little old lady. In gameplay terms, that means she walks and runs more slowly, and she can’t take cover behind knee-high objects. There’s no tradeoff there, either – it’s just harder to play as an older person.

The mission I sent her on involved breaking into a construction site in order to free a kidnapped man who had information that could help DedSec. I didn’t get more than a few feet inside before my hapless beekeeper was spotted. She did her “shoot swarms of bees!” thing and it was admittedly awesome, but with nothing to hide behind and enemies moving in, she was quickly overwhelmed.

Failure isn’t the end in Watch Dogs: Legion, however. My beekeeper didn’t die. Instead, she was arrested and sent to prison. Imprisoned members of DedSec are knocked out of commission temporarily – some for longer than others, if they happen to be, say, an ex-convict on parole – but that just means you need to use someone else.

You can get your people out of prison sooner. If your DedSec ranks happen to include a local barrister (we call them judges in the U.S.), you’re all set. I didn’t spot any during my session, but the option is there. The game even prompted me to go find one after my poor beekeeper was shuffled off to a cell.

I didn’t do that. Instead, I turned to a DedSec-aligned construction worker, which let me stroll right into the mission location. So long as I generally kept my distance from people and quickly slipped out of sight whenever I started to draw suspicion, I was fine. The couple times I got spotted, a few quick whacks with my monkey wrench knocked out any attacker before an alarm could be raised.

That wasn’t my only option, though. A hacker, for example, would have had an easier time finding and downloading the digital key that unlocked the door to my objective. Just about every challenge I encountered in this Watch Dogs: Legion preview could’ve been approached using any number of tools and skills. It’s the entire premise of this game.

No matter who you’re playing as, basic Watch Dogs abilities like hijacking security cameras and commandeering drones are still in your toolbox. You can also unlock gadgets, including two types of remote controlled drones (for stealth or for assault), a personal cloaking device, and an “AR shroud” that lets you hide the bodies of dead or incapacitated enemies wherever they fall.

So regardless of the DedSec operative you’re controlling, you can always count on having the tools you’d need to do all the familiar Watch Dogs things. Picking different team members just means you complement that toolbox with advantages (or disadvantages) of your choosing, based on the challenge in front of you or even just how you prefer to play.

Where’s the story?

The one question I’m left with after four hours spent in near-future London is what Legion‘s story can realistically look like when there’s no fixed protagonist. Watch Dogs 2 works as well as it does because Marcus Holloway and his DedSec crew in Silicon Valley are, for the most part, fully realized individuals. They have hopes and fears. Desires and aversions. They have feelings, and those feelings evolve as life unfolds around them.

Of course, that’s all thanks to a carefully plotted script. There’s some open-endedness in the way Watch Dogs 2 lets you choose which missions to tackle and when, but the game’s strong emotional arc is rooted in deeply character-driven writing.

The basic framework of Watch Dogs: Legion leaves me wondering if that kind of experience is even possible. Your recruits all have voices, and lines from a script to deliver in any given mission. But the very nature of how you come to know them, randomly off the street as DedSec recruits, leaves little room for proper character development.

This is where I think back to Far Cry 2, though. It’s a similar situation there: You pick a mercenary from a set roster at the start of the game, and that choice determines your character’s voice and other basic features. The few cutscenes there are focus on non-playable characters, turning your merc into more of a passive participant.

There’s a different sense of investment that makes Far Cry 2 work, and it’s what I hope will make Legion‘s story work as well. You form an emotional attachment to the character you play as and the relationships you build because they’re powered entirely by your choices. The script is in your head at that point; you’re making the connections and filling in any blanks that the game can’t possibly address.

Assuming it all works as intended, you’ll feel fully invested in the process of building and executing a resistance movement – and the story will come tumbling out of that. The point of Watch Dogs Legion isn’t to follow a scripted plot. Rather, it’s up to you to understand the big picture narrative and define for yourself what the plot looks like through your own choices and actions. 

Watch Dogs Legion is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on Oct. 29.