05-11-2020, 04:37 PM
I'm sure this was no surprise to most people as the Watch Dogs series is already pretty hated, but I genuinely enjoyed both the previous entries and was excited about the third one both for the change in setting being so dramatic as well as the idea of multiple "protagonists". Of course I wasn't fully enveloped in the hype train. I still thought that their ideas were way too big for the team behind Watch Dogs to achieve and I knew going in that I'd have to prepare for a mediocre system. I was overestimating just how bad the character system really is.
The "realistic" character system: I know a lot goes into a video game, especially when you're trying out an entirely new mechanic for your franchise. I don't blame them for failing. I do blame them for failing as hard as they did, though. The voice acting is my first issue. In a game that is supposed to have a huge amount of unique characters to choose from, why does it seem that I get the same five or six voices over and over again? I swear every single woman in Britain is from India. Another huge issue is that randomizing features means that every single citizen that isn't meant to be in the story looks like a disgusting playdough human. They also made it so you can't change haircuts, so if you find the one human with all the skills and equipment you need, they may just end up looking fucking stupid and you have to stare at their ugly face in every cutscene. Speaking of cutscenes, none of them make any sense. I start a mission as one member of Dedsec, then switch to a different one, and the game acts like it's the same person in all the dialogue. Also, depending on the choices I make, I can be a dude wearing an Albion uniform talking to a complete stranger and they immediately go "You're Dedsec, right?" What? I'm clearly wearing the uniform of the evil corporation in control of London. Another ginormous issue with this system is the fact that I cannot make a connection with any of these characters. They repeat dialogue in every encounter and all the story dialogue they spew doesn't feel personalized at all. You can tell it's all written neutrally so it could be any of the characters saying it. This results in the "permadeath" feature only really causing you distress because you've just lost the one fucking moron in your group who owns a police uniform.
Combat: For a game that pushes combat so much, even going so far as to make a series of missions about joining fight clubs and winning, this game has some of the worst combat controls I've seen in a while. In games like Assassin's Creed, the combat flows really well and you actually feel like you're doing something (even though you're just mashing square and triangle). This game is just press square three times, dodge away, press triangle, repeat. Maybe every once in a while you manage to do a perfect dodge and counter attack. Then the enemy staggers and you do a finishing move. It's incredibly boring and tedious, made extra worse if you're trying to play by the in-universe rules and not kill unless it's your only way out like Dedsec wants you to. So clearly, I'm not supposed to punch my way through everything, and clearly Dedsec doesn't want me mowing people down with a gun. My other option would be hacking. How is that in this game?
Hacking: This game has somehow ruined the entire point of the series. I recall in both the first ones that hacking was like, an insanely huge part of the game. You would hack in police chases to get away and you would constantly need to plan your way through a field of enemies with hacks and cameras. For some reason, though, it seems like the hacking mechanic is an afterthought. Some areas are only built to take out a couple enemies with hacks, and trying to hack during a police chase will just end up making you crash when you turn around to hack the posts or cars around you. The puzzles where you turn hacking "pipes" are almost completely gone from the open world and only ever really present in the main story. Any other hacking "puzzle" is just finding out where a keycard or ctos box is and standing next to it for 15 seconds. Incredible.
The Story: Now, like I said, the horrible character system is really at it's worst in cutscenes and dialogue. Every time I watch a cutscene I am reminded of how much fun I had with the campaign in Watch Dogs 2 and how much I grew to enjoy the slightly cringe characters in that Dedsec. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of boring British mannequins as they deliver almost zero dialogue in the cutscenes and the two or three actual characters make all the jokes or deliver all the plot. Almost every cutscene takes place in the stupid hideout and makes me want to fall asleep. I remember wanting to explore every inch of the hideout in 2 and enjoying interactions with the group. Now I barely ever visit the hideout and none of the group is an actual character. For reference, when I recently replayed the first two Watch Dogs games I barely paid attention to anything outside the main story. I just wanted to keep seeing where things went and would continue story missions the second I could. In Legion, I spent the first 10 or so hours doing three story missions and the rest of the time I spent exploring and recruiting and liberating boroughs. The story is just so boring.
All in all, I was way way more disappointed in Legion than I thought I would be going in. Hopefully the awful technobabble they spew in this game will keep me distracted enough until December when Cyberpunk is supposed to come out. Here's to hoping that game won't disappoint as well.
The "realistic" character system: I know a lot goes into a video game, especially when you're trying out an entirely new mechanic for your franchise. I don't blame them for failing. I do blame them for failing as hard as they did, though. The voice acting is my first issue. In a game that is supposed to have a huge amount of unique characters to choose from, why does it seem that I get the same five or six voices over and over again? I swear every single woman in Britain is from India. Another huge issue is that randomizing features means that every single citizen that isn't meant to be in the story looks like a disgusting playdough human. They also made it so you can't change haircuts, so if you find the one human with all the skills and equipment you need, they may just end up looking fucking stupid and you have to stare at their ugly face in every cutscene. Speaking of cutscenes, none of them make any sense. I start a mission as one member of Dedsec, then switch to a different one, and the game acts like it's the same person in all the dialogue. Also, depending on the choices I make, I can be a dude wearing an Albion uniform talking to a complete stranger and they immediately go "You're Dedsec, right?" What? I'm clearly wearing the uniform of the evil corporation in control of London. Another ginormous issue with this system is the fact that I cannot make a connection with any of these characters. They repeat dialogue in every encounter and all the story dialogue they spew doesn't feel personalized at all. You can tell it's all written neutrally so it could be any of the characters saying it. This results in the "permadeath" feature only really causing you distress because you've just lost the one fucking moron in your group who owns a police uniform.
Combat: For a game that pushes combat so much, even going so far as to make a series of missions about joining fight clubs and winning, this game has some of the worst combat controls I've seen in a while. In games like Assassin's Creed, the combat flows really well and you actually feel like you're doing something (even though you're just mashing square and triangle). This game is just press square three times, dodge away, press triangle, repeat. Maybe every once in a while you manage to do a perfect dodge and counter attack. Then the enemy staggers and you do a finishing move. It's incredibly boring and tedious, made extra worse if you're trying to play by the in-universe rules and not kill unless it's your only way out like Dedsec wants you to. So clearly, I'm not supposed to punch my way through everything, and clearly Dedsec doesn't want me mowing people down with a gun. My other option would be hacking. How is that in this game?
Hacking: This game has somehow ruined the entire point of the series. I recall in both the first ones that hacking was like, an insanely huge part of the game. You would hack in police chases to get away and you would constantly need to plan your way through a field of enemies with hacks and cameras. For some reason, though, it seems like the hacking mechanic is an afterthought. Some areas are only built to take out a couple enemies with hacks, and trying to hack during a police chase will just end up making you crash when you turn around to hack the posts or cars around you. The puzzles where you turn hacking "pipes" are almost completely gone from the open world and only ever really present in the main story. Any other hacking "puzzle" is just finding out where a keycard or ctos box is and standing next to it for 15 seconds. Incredible.
The Story: Now, like I said, the horrible character system is really at it's worst in cutscenes and dialogue. Every time I watch a cutscene I am reminded of how much fun I had with the campaign in Watch Dogs 2 and how much I grew to enjoy the slightly cringe characters in that Dedsec. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of boring British mannequins as they deliver almost zero dialogue in the cutscenes and the two or three actual characters make all the jokes or deliver all the plot. Almost every cutscene takes place in the stupid hideout and makes me want to fall asleep. I remember wanting to explore every inch of the hideout in 2 and enjoying interactions with the group. Now I barely ever visit the hideout and none of the group is an actual character. For reference, when I recently replayed the first two Watch Dogs games I barely paid attention to anything outside the main story. I just wanted to keep seeing where things went and would continue story missions the second I could. In Legion, I spent the first 10 or so hours doing three story missions and the rest of the time I spent exploring and recruiting and liberating boroughs. The story is just so boring.
All in all, I was way way more disappointed in Legion than I thought I would be going in. Hopefully the awful technobabble they spew in this game will keep me distracted enough until December when Cyberpunk is supposed to come out. Here's to hoping that game won't disappoint as well.
![[+]](https://leakedbb.com/images/collapse_collapsed.png)