Watch Dogs Legion

"Anyone can be your weapon."

- Tagline Watch Dogs: Legion (stylized as WATCH DOGS LΞGION) is an open-world action-adventure third-person video game being developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the third installment in the Watch Dogs series. The game was originally set to be launched on March 6, 2020, but was delayed to October 29, 2020.

In the near future, London is facing its downfall: the people are being oppressed by an all-seeing surveillance state, private militaries control the streets, and a powerful crime syndicate is preying on the vulnerable. The fate of London lies with DedSec, and your ability to recruit a resistance and fight back.

Plot
The London branch of DedSec, led by Sabine Brandt and her newly crafted AI Bagley, detect armed intruders planting bombs in the Palace of Westminster. Sabine assigns DedSec operative Dalton Wolfe to defuse the bombs. Although he manages to have some success, he quickly learns that the intruders are from a rogue hacker group called Zero Day, who have set up more bombs across London. Learning that DedSec has been attacked, causing Sabine to shut down Bagley, Dalton attempts to complete his mission by infiltrating the roof and shutting down the bombs set up by Zero Day across London. However, Zero Day's leader kills him shortly after he prevents Parliament being destroyed, but not before additional bombs around London are detonated. In the wake of the chaos, the British government contract Nigel Cass, the CEO of private military company Albion, with restoring order to London and hunting down DedSec members in the city, effectively causing social and political unrest amongst the city's inhabitants.

Several months later, Albion enforces the law without political oversight, transforming the city into a surveillance state with the aid of Signals Intelligence Response (SIRS), an intelligence agency consolidating all of Britain's intelligence network. As a result, London's citizens have their personal liberties severely restricted and their lives constantly monitored, organized crime is on the rise, and those who question Albion's methods are either arrested or disappear, including those being processed for deportation to Europe. DedSec slowly returns when Sabine finds a new recruit with the city's CT OS and assigns them to reactivate the group's safehouse and Bagley. With their help, Sabine assigns them to find new recruits, liberate city borough by encouraging their citizens to rise up in defiance of their oppressors, and to investigate the bombings that DedSec were blamed for.

During their investigation, the group discover that both Nigel Cass and Mary Kelley, a crime syndicate boss, profited from the bombings, and that each are using the current situation for their own purposes. As they investigate both for their involvement, DedSec is contacted by Richard Malik, a member of SIRS, who has a lead on Zero Day. Although his information seems true and blames the current head of SIRS, Emily Child, for the bombings, DedSec quickly discover Malik to have lied when Child reveals he plotted to infiltrate them so that Albion could hunt them down easily. In attempting to capture him, DedSec is blamed for another bombing that kills Child, and which allows Malik to take over SIRS. With Bagley's help, the group capture him, but while they clear their names for his actions, they discover from Malik that someone else was behind the Zero Day bombings. With no other leads, DedSec focus on dealing with Cass and Kelley.

With aid from a former police inspector, DedSec discover Kelley involved in abducting people from a major deportation center, and selling them as either slaves or organ donors. With enough evidence, the group pursue after Kelley at a slave auction, freeing her prisoners before leaving them to murder her for her crimes. Focusing on Cass afterwards, DedSec learn that due to his disillusions on law enforcement and politics, he intends to enforce peace across London with an automated drone army that would do more harm than good. Aided by a former friend of Cass that designed a computer system for the drones, DedSec shuts down the drone project, while exposing evidence of Cass's crime to the media. In response, Cass declares open war against anyone attempting to arrest him, forcing DedSec to infiltrate his main base at the Tower of London and eliminate him.

As DedSec celebrate their actions, Zero Day suddenly hacks the group, stealing the tech they had acquired. Tracing the hack, they quickly discover that Sabine was behind the bombings and Zero Day, and that Cass worked alongside her until he double-crossed her for control of important technology. In response, Sabine sought to restart DedSec simply to get revenge on Cass, recover what he stole, and seek out other components she needed. As the group evade Sabine's efforts to stop them, DedSec discover that she intends to use the technology she stole to create a patch that will link a series of AIs to Bagley, and use the AI to plunge the country into chaos as part of plan to force society to forgo technology and restart. To prevent this, Bagley willing agrees to be shut down and assigns DedSec to complete the task amongst the rampant chaos across the city. The group successfully shut down Bagley, preventing the patch being sent out, while killing Sabine when she attempts to stop them.

In the closing credits, the British government reviews its contract with Albion as local law enforcement begins work to resume operations, while DedSec has their name cleared and subsequently praised for exposing considerable crimes and corruption across the city. In an epilogue scene, DedSec manage to restore Bagley to his state prior to Sabine's actions, and continue to rely on him to work at exposing corruption across the city and finish off lose ends.

Main Characters

 *  Please do not add every playable character to this list. Only add characters which play a crucial role in the story. 

Allies

 * Kaitlin Lau
 * Nowt
 * Connie Robinson
 * Hamish Bolaji
 * Dalton Wolfe
 * Bagley

Antagonists

 * Sabine Brandt
 * Nigel Cass
 * Mary Kelley
 * Skye Larsen
 * Richard Malik
 * Emily Child

Others

 * Claire Waters
 * Gabriel Isa (DLC)
 * Harriet Park (DLC)
 * Joeri Martens (DLC)
 * El Rubius OMG
 * Aiden Pearce (DLC)
 * Wrench (DLC)
 * Darcy (DLC)
 * Mina (DLC)

Gameplay
Watch Dogs: Legion is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view. The game is set within an open world, fictionalized representation of London, which will encompass notable landmarks, boroughs, and cultural styles of the city. The game's setting takes place within a London that has become a surveillance state. Personal liberties have been vastly limited, and citizens are constantly monitored in their activities by Albion, a private security company that acts as the city's law enforcement. The player will have the ability to navigate the city either by foot, using vehicles, or fast-traveling via the city's Underground stations. Unlike the previous games in the series which focused on the use of a single protagonist to drive the story's narrative, Legion features the ability to control multiple characters within the game's setting. Each of these characters can be recruited through a unique mission, though this depends on their standing with DedSec; for example, a character who the hacker group helps out will be in favor of aiding them when asked and completing their recruitment mission, whereas a character whose family member was accidentally killed by a DedSec member will not tolerate the group and likely refuse to join.

Once a character is recruited into the player's roster, they are assigned to one of three classes: combat, stealth or hacking. Each class features its own set of tools and ability upgrades when a character levels up from completing missions and activities. Each character also has their own background which dictates a special skill or trait they have. For example, a recruited character may be more skilled with drones and thus can do more damage with them, while another is an "adrenaline junkie" who deals more damage but at the possible risk of dying at any random moment. All characters in the game recruited into the player's roster have their own personal lives when not being controlled, can be fully customized with various clothing options, and can wield a mixture of lethal and non-lethal weapons, the latter featuring a more extensive selection than in previous titles.

Permadeath
Because the player can recruit a large roster of characters to control, Watch Dogs: Legion introduces the permadeath feature to balance things out, where each character can be permanently lost during the course of the game. Characters risk the possibility of being killed either while conducting operations for DedSec against other groups or against local law enforcement, provided that players have the permadeath option enabled. In the event where one surrenders and is arrested, players can use another character to rescue them.

Once recruited, these characters must be appointed to one of three classes: combat, stealth or hacking. Players can also join a team of up to 4 players in cooperative gameplay, sharing progression between single-player and multiplayer modes.

Combat
Watch Dogs: Legion puts more of an emphasis on close quarters combat: there are certain enemies who will use melee weapons to attack you and you can either use your weapons or fists to take them out. Weapons have become more customizable giving you the option to choose between setting your weapon to Lethal or Non-Lethal. Each decision you make as different characters affect the world, the personality of your character and the world's perception of DedSec. Like Watch Dogs 2, drones are a big part of Watch Dogs: Legion, featuring combat drones that take over the role of the traditional cop car chases (and military checkpoints that replace police blockades), construction drones that carry payloads (and can be ridden on once hijacked), riot drones that replace police officers, etc., and these drones can be hacked only by those whose skills are great at hacking. Additionally, driving has been given a new feature: auto-driving; this enables the car to drive itself, or (if the player wants go the route of Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2) they can disable it in favor of manually driving the car.

All characters are equipped with basic hacking skills, like profiling, hacking into cameras through anything, distraction, disruption and hacking into vehicles. In order to balance out the privilege of being able to play as anyone, a new feature has been added to the Watch Dogs series: Permadeath; permadeath means that, if the player character dies, they're gone for good and do not respawn, thus triggering the necessity to choose another character to take over.

Development
Watch Dogs: Legion is being developed by Ubisoft Toronto, with additional work being provided by sister studios Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Kiev and Ubisoft Reflections. The development team is headed by creative director Clint Hocking, who was recruited to assist on the game's creation due to Ubisoft moving development from their studio in Montreal to Toronto, and recruiting developers who had previously worked with him on Far Cry and Far Cry 2.

Release
Watch Dogs: Legion was teased by Ubisoft via Twitter on June 5, 2019, before its announcement at E3 2019, where the game had its release date revealed as March 6, 2020. On October 24, 2019, Ubisoft announced that the game would no longer be released on March 6th, 2020, with its release date being delayed to Ubisoft's fiscal year. On July 12, 2020, Ubisoft announced that the game would be released on October 29, 2020. It was, in fact, released on October 29 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Google Stadia, November 10 for Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, and November 24 for PlayStation 5.

Reception
Watch Dogs: Legion received "generally favorable" and "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic getting a Metascore of 75/100 on PC, 73/100 on PS4, and 77/100 on Xbox One.