DedSec has become an International cause beyond the U.S. to the U.K.; but, the war stretches beyond Blume to a whole new war that puts DedSec into jeopardy once again. Below is our open-world campaign and storyline review of Watch Dogs: Legion (Watch Dogs 3).
It’s “Zero Day” in London…
Just like when no-one expects the unknown to happen overnight through vulnerability and weakness, Watch Dogs Legion takes place in the 2020’s-2030’s heart of London where Artificial Intelligence in the form of aerial drones, automated cars, and factories have taken over the city to make it supposedly a healthy city
However, that all changes in one night at the mercy of a “Zero Day” attack on the city and neighboring cities around the U.K…
An unknown hacker group only known by the name “Zero Day” has taken responsibility for the bombing attacks on a number of London’s sites and has taken the city “by the balls” to pushing it into chaos and destruction eventually towards another “reset” in civilization.
Other than making sure London comes falling down, Zero Day also makes sure the people working within DedSec live in hell for Zero Day’s terrorist attack.
London Martial Law under Albion
Zero Day is not the only one hunting DedSec…there is Albion, a private military corporation led by Nigel Cass that has taken over London’s police force to enforcing curfews in the city.
Albion acting on “false reports” from unknown sources and the media are capturing or killing innocent DedSec operatives around the city while many operatives are forced into hiding.
Other than hunting DedSec, Albion intimidates London’s citizens on the streets with it’s ruling of martial law and taking away civilian rights or forcing people to disappear for opposing Albion rule.
Clan Kelley Organized Crime
With the entire city of London under martial law, the opportunity for organized crime has risen behind closed doors of Clan Kelley, a crime syndicate led by Bloody Mary Kelley.
The Clan Kelley gang in London is unlike any other previous gang in Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2 with this syndicate orchestrating “underground slavery.”
Clan Kelley kidnaps people off the streets for only the pleasure of forcing these people to serve Mary Kelley as their master…or else suffering from the microchip triggered in their skulls to having their organs ripped out and sold on the black market.
Rise and Fall of Broca Tech
Organized crime is not the only rising metric DedSec has to stop; but, also the mind of a “mad scientist” who believes in turning the human brain into another A.I. product potentially better than Bagley.
Using information from the hacker group “404,” DedSec can investigate the motives of Skye Larsen and her company Broca Tech on the developments of what “Project Daybreak” is to what top secret plans are known.
Beyond just developing a future A.I. to the cloud, the evil mind of Skye Larsen meets the eye of forcing anyone to take part in this psychopathic plan even her own dying mother can testify to DedSec on Skye’s intentions of making the neural network of the human brain work in cloud networking.
Watch Dogs Legion Gameplay
Watch Dogs Legion has a much different style of gameplay than the original Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2 where you play as any operative you want to instead of following a storyline with one main character previously.
Besides recruitment of operatives, the gameplay of Watch Dogs Legion brings in new gadgets, character upgrades, and ways for the good people of London to rise up to fight for DedSec’s cause of liberating London.
Along the way, you as any DedSec operative don’t have to worry as you’ll have assistance from Bagley (the pestering Blume A.I.) and the rest of your recruits to stand hand-in-hand to pinch in whenever.
Recruit Anyone Into DedSec
From the start of the game, a “random” operative with a distinctive perk is used to start out with that matches your gameplay style whether you’re wanting to start out with stealthing through each mission or going in guns blazing. The other detail is the random operative starting out with does not give the opportunity to customizing the operatives characteristics (facial details, hair details, eye color, etc.).
The biggest difference from previous Watch Dogs games is the opportunity to recruit anyone out on the streets of London whether the game picks possible high value operatives for you or by simply scanning operatives through the phone that details whether the possible individual would be good fit for DedSec’s cause or not.
For special operatives to recruit into DedSec, a MI6 spy can be useful to become another “stealthy” ace in the hole while a Paramedic speeds up recovery for the downed operative and a Barrister can go to bat for arranging quicker bail times for a captured operative when caught by Albion.
In Watch Dogs Legion, the right operative can be used by exploiting a disguise to casually walk right in and walk right out without raising an eyebrow…just don’t get too close otherwise you’ll blow your cover since not everybody will recognize who you are and what you’re doing in their area. This gives an opportunity to recruit a Construction Worker, Albion merc, or other individual with a uniform to exploit.
With up to a 45 operative max to recruit to DedSec’s cause, it’s up to you on who to choose to use for missions whether it’s someone with quicker gadget cooldown periods, quicker hacking times, unlimited distancing to downloading access keys that benefit stealth gameplay to operatives that may have bee swarm capability, Counter-Terrorism/Riot/Chase drone hijack capability to attack enemies to bail out an operative under fire in a full-on assault environment.
Permadeath to not Permadeath…
The biggest change to a Watch Dogs game this time around is the choice of enabling “Permadeath” or not which means if this feature is turned on and left on after the first mission of the game then no matter what happens to any of the operatives you have…if they die at anytime on a mission or not then they will be deleted from your list of operatives.
By using Permadeath, this puts the pressure and challenge on you to not screw up or face the additional task at hand to scout and recruit another operative that closely resembles the same operative you just got killed on the forefront.
However, Permadeath is NOT by any means a requirement to play through Watch Dogs Legion…if a classic Watch Dogs gamer then it can be turned off since Watch Dogs Legion is only a video game and not the real deal!
Watch Dogs Legion Gadgets & Upgrades
On the same subject with using drones to a DedSec operative’s advantage, there is a common strategy of using news drones to performing aerial reconnaissance or hitching a ride on a cargo drone to making it easier to gain entry into a restricted area. In other cases, a cargo drone could be used to make a quick getaway when in a pinch…
In addition to picking an operative to do each job, customization of each operative can be upgraded based on gadgets and upgrades to carry into each mission that benefits the style of gameplay to achieve.
If wanting to stick with stealth gameplay, the AR cloak can come in handy to bypass numerous enemies in a heavily guarded area or to stay out of enemy line of sight when a restricted areas is put on alert and the cloaking shroud can be used to hide dead bodies from being noticed other guards and patrolling drones.
In other ways of infiltrating, the infiltrating spider-bot is another gadget that is most used in Watch Dogs Legion to not only gain access to crawlspaces and high places the DedSec operative cannot access physically; but, to also hack into computers and devices whenever physical interaction is not necessarily required.
For full-on assault tactics when forced into it, attack drones (CT, Riot, and Chase drones) can be disabled for a short-time to allow the operative to destroy the drone or in smarter ways to force the drone to betray the opposition by attacking other attack drones and enemies on the ground to give extra firepower when all else fails…it helps to use the attack drones when defending a download or upload on a server from 50 offensive enemies (it will happen!).
Other than using attack drones against Albion and Clan Kelley enemies, defense turrets can also be disabled and hacked to attack drones and enemies as a part of an operative’s upgrades.
In other areas of hacking upgrades, an operative can gain a capability to digitally jam an enemies weapon to gain the upper-hand before the enemy gets a chance to fire 50 holes into you and an operative can be upgraded to have “deep profiling” of people that would provide further detailing of individuals to help reduce ejections of people joining DedSec and the cause.
Overall tech upgrades for gadgets, perks, and weapons can be bought by collecting and using tech points found around London to upgrade your operatives to make their jobs a whole lot easier and less challenging.
Rise of the People – Borough Missions in Watch Dogs Legion
When Albion struck fear in the People of London, DedSec is unphased to making sure the people can rise up again to fighting back for the cause of restoring liberty in London just as much as DedSec is already fighting a war to clear their name from the false accusations.
Watch Dogs Legion has a total of 8 Borough districts with 3 or 4 objectives to complete which may include releasing a captured civilian falsely accused on being a DedSec officer, neutralizing a V.I.P target, photographing valuable intel that would be useful to exposing Albion’s plans…and changing propaganda billboards to put the backbone back into the hands of the people.
By accomplishing the objectives, a final objective in the form of a borough mission will be unlocked to be completed in order to fully level out the defiance of each borough…even getting “Big Ben” to chime again is another sign to show the people that DedSec is fighting for London.
The reward for completing each Borough mission is unlocking all tech point locations that makes them easier to find if the 130 tech points weren’t picked while on one of the campaign missions or on the go.
Become a Prizefighter in the Bare Knuckle League
Underground boxing is the real deal in London so is the opportunity to earn respect from London’s top bare knuckle pros.
Around each borough are different “Bare Knuckle League” tournaments a DedSec operative can take place in to compete against 3 amateur bare knuckle fighters and a 4th/final fight against a pro fighter.
By defeating the pro fighter, the operative would not only receive the cryptocurrency prize; but, the opportunity to recruit the pro fighter or one of the 3 amateur fighters into DedSec by successfully completing a task for the fighter you choose.
Watch Dogs Legion Paste-Ups & Collectibles
Much like in Watch Dogs 2, every operative gets an opportunity to leave a “calling card” much like Marcus Holloway did on a number of tourist sites back in San Francisco by pasting graffiti and expressing DedSec’s work of art as another way of letting everyone know DedSec isn’t dead yet.
Throughout London, there is a total of 47 paste-up locations to tag to grab the “Piece de Resistance” achievement for completing this collectible task.
The other collectible type found around London are random relic collectibles which can be old historical items and old technology to past DedSec memorabilia left behind from previous DedSec members…even the old mix tape made in the late 1990’s can be found in the collectible suitcases.
Personal Views about Watch Dogs Legion
Watch Dogs Legions is considered an “over-rated” title in Ubisoft’s arsenal despite it being futuristic and advancing the growing trends of technology to allow DedSec to use out in the open-world against Zero Day. The days of hacking cameras and using ground reconnaissance is no longer needed to infiltrate in Watch Dogs 3. Aerial Reconnaissance and using enemy drones is the new age of a Watch Dogs game that does take away the challenge of ground infiltration.
Getting the hands of every London civilian dirty to do DedSec’s grunt work is a different and conspicuous way to fighting for the cause; but, does cheat the Watch Dogs gameplay of adding “bullets” to the chamber while providing different gameplay styles to suit each player.
On the contrary, Watch Dogs Legion is poorly optimized for the PC platform even for 3000 series GPU’s that makes Ubisoft look like fools for not taking the time to fix FPS and processing issues out in the open-world before releasing the game on the PC.
In addition, there was no manual save method in the game ((this was fixed in the December 2020 updates) neither a way to restart a mission even after completing the main storyline (Watch Dogs 2 allowed players to access the DedSec app on Marcus phone to replay missions at any time, this isn’t possible in Watch Dogs Legions which is a disappointment and means you’ll have to start a new campaign to go back to a mission you want to play).
