Watch Dogs Legion

[faetal]

Was about to cite Kafka, then saw your edit.
I fucking hate modern sales support - everything is designed to make you weigh up if it's worth the bother.
Good that you got a refund.

[henke]

Well here's a surprise. Watch Dogs Legion is GMTK's pick for "most innovative" this year.



There's no spoilers in the video. He goes into how the character generation system works and how impressive it is, and also how un-impressive its actual effects on the gameplay are. And, yeah, I agree. I do like playing as a big cast of characters, and the stories I create with these characters make them more dear to me than many pre-written characters, especially when it comes to Ubisoft protagonists (like that dull psycho Aiden Pearce). But on the other hand there's not really huge difference gameplay-wise between any of em. They all hack and parkour and do stealth-takedowns more or less equally well. I wish Ubisoft had gone further in making each charcter's strengths and weaknesses more pronounced.

[Thirith]

That sounds fairly similar to the recent Errant Signal video on Legion - to such an extent that when I got the Patreon update regarding GMTK I thought, "Didn't he already do that video?" Have you seen the ES video, henke? If so, are the two reasonably different so that they both warrant watching?

[henke]

Yeah I've seen the ES video. The GMTK video is worth watching for the demonstration of how the characters are generated, at least if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of gamedev.

[Thirith]

Cheers, I'll put it on my "Watch later" list then.

[henke]

Here's some kinda half-assed review.

Tech Talk

Like the GMTK video says, the "play as anyone" system is quite impressive under the hood, but its actual implementation is so-so. What I found most impressive though is that all the characters you can play as have fully voiced dialogue. At first when the random character I'd picked at the start talked in cutscenes I was impressed but figured they'd probably just talk in a few introductory cutscenes and then shut up for most of the game while the established story characters did most of the talking. But no! They keep on blabbering throughout the whole game! HOW DID THEY DO THAT? This is especially impressive considering that in this age of 100GB install sizes being common, WDL fits all of this AND THE ENTIRETY OF LONDON into a svelte 38GB! Also it looks good, runs smooth on a base PS4, and I barely had any bugs. On the technical side, this is impressive.

Narrative

Storywise, well, it's not much better than most Ubigames. Like FC5 and some of their other recent games it gets darker than it really deserves to. There are bright spots tho. The Skye Larsen storyline I liked a lot. It's kinda a Black Mirror-esque story that happens halfway through the game and it had me genuinely hooked. The characters you play as often have slightly odd animations in cutscenes and their dialogue lines might feel kinda clunky. But I did still care more about them than most Ubigame protagonists. My favourite established character was Sabine, who acts as your mentor throughout the game. She's got a wonderful sad girl energy.

Screenies!


Wearing Aiden Pearce's ICONIC HAT and Marcus Holloway's ICONIC JACKET and feeling pretty dang ICONC.


Pretty cool when you're driving around and suddently realize "hey I know that place!"


Living statue pose-off.


I guess someone had to say it.

Conclusion

I liked it. Gameplaywise it's pretty identical to WD2, tho with a few new wrinkles. Tho I think WD2 might still be the series-best.

[Thirith]

Btw, thanks for the heads-up concerning the GMTK video. While there is some overlap with the ES video, you're right that it's still worth watching both, especially since Mark Brown talks more about how the system works specifically. And it is pretty impressive - which makes it all the more disappointing that they didn't really know what to do with their cool system. (Or, just as likely, they had ideas but the game wasn't supposed to impose any real restrictions on players based on their choices... which is sadly ironic, since without restrictions, so many of the choices end up being meaningless.)

[henke]

Oh I'm sure the devs had plenty of ideas for what to do with the system. But it's still a Ubisoft game, and the higher ups seem intent on never allowing any of their big games to stray too far from the formula.

[Thirith]

Such a shame, especially considering that Clint Hocking was the Creative Director. I wish Ubisoft allowed for some real experimentation with the formula - they could alternate between games that basically replicate the Ubisoft open world to a T and smaller, weirder, more experimental takes on it. I don't expect them to do what they did with Far Cry 2 with every single title, obviously, but just occasionally...