Watch Dogs Legion

[henke]

I think this just became my most anticipated game.



Loved WD1&2, and this one is expanding on those in very interesting ways. I like the idea of a huge cast of specialized characters instead of one main character. Also, not enough games let you play as old people!

As for the setting and themes of post-Brexit London. We've seen from Division 2 and Far Cry 5 that Ubisoft likes to use political hot topics as set dressing without actually saying anything, but with Far Cry 2's Clint Hocking at the wheel, maybe this one will actually show some teeth?

[Malf]

I like what I see too, although I doubt the actual game will deliver the same character experience seen in that video. I'm guessing the end result will resemble something like State of Decay, where different characters have different strengths and weaknesses, but dialogue is genericized and context-based.

And I wasn't thinking about it until someone pointed it out over in the RPS comment section, but the amount of gunplay is jarring considering the game's based in London, which is pretty much a gun-free society. Given the criticisms of the last game were focussed around the amount of gunplay in the game, I would have thought this would have been the ideal opportunity to make a game less focussed on guns.

[WingedKagouti]

And I wasn't thinking about it until someone pointed it out over in the RPS comment section, but the amount of gunplay is jarring considering the game's based in London, which is pretty much a gun-free society.

"But it won't sell if there's not a lot of shooterizing" - Every clueless executive ever.

[henke]

RE: Guns. This was an interesting part of Polygon's preview:

if you stick to melee, many of your adversaries will do the same. So rather than escalating, this group of guards instead sticks to punching and kicking. That is, until I press the wrong button and accidentally pull out a gun. Though half of the weapons in the game are non-lethal — and indeed, one of my weapons was set to shock — that was the moment when the police force did the same, and very quickly I was down for the count.

I played WD2 pretty much guns-free as well so I'm glad to hear they're making a non-lethal approach viable.

[WingedKagouti]

RE: Guns. This was an interesting part of Polygon's preview:

In general, in the UK non-military/non-criminal personel will not have guns on them without prior probable cause, so unless you're up against military, criminals* or professionals who have reason to expect armed conflict guns make little sense for a game set in London. Had it been set in Northern Ireland the situation would have been different.

For your adversaries to have guns at the ready Ubisoft would have to essentially write something silly like "Brexit caused massive breakdown in civil order, so a para-military company was hired to keep the peace". And that's the way I expect them to go.

*And even criminals will not always carry guns unless expecting/starting serious trouble.

[Kroakie]

Hey, I'm working on this game!

[henke]

Aww hell yeah. I hope that means it'll feature a lot of traffic in the Thames and we'll be able to jump from boat to boat.

[henke]

I played a bit of this on PS4 today.

Scattered first impressions:
-Install size is only 36GB! That's pleasantly slender for a modern AAA, especially one that contains the entirety of London.
-Game runs very smoothly.
-Having just played Mafia: DE and 3, the driving in this feels pretty poor by comparison. Also they've removed the cockpit view that was there in previous entries! Boo!
-You can actually rebind individual buttons, a rarity for console games, but very welcome!
-Kinda amazed that the random person I picked for my starting character has fully voiced dialogue in cutscenes, their facial animation in these cutscenes is kinda wonky tho.
-Andy Zaltzman hosts one of the radioshows! I used to listen to his and John Oliver's podcast "The Bugle" and I was pleasantly surprised to hear him pop up in this. His show in the game is called "The Bug".

The most interesting twist so far, besides being able to switch between lots of characters, is the PERMADEATH mode! When your character dies, they're gone forever, but you can keep playing as other members of your Dedsec crew, until you run out of crewmembers that is. I'm playing on this mode and it's making it quite a bit more tense. Just now I was infiltrating a place, but when my attempt to sneak up on someone turned into fisticuffs, which in turn alerted the rest of the enemy gang to bear down on me, I legitimately panicked and bolted out of there. I think without permadeath I'd just put my dukes up and take my chances, but I don't wanna loose a character!

[Malf]

I bought it through Uplay, but it hasn't appeared in my library, and I'm currently in support hell trying to get access. Not happy >:E
And judging by the forums and reddit, I'm not the only one.

[henke]

Ya know what, I was too harsh on the driving in my last post. It's alright, but a quite different feel to Mafia's cars. Powersliding and drifting feels pretty bad in WDL, but instead it feels like it's geared towards smooth curves and weaving through traffic at high speeds.

Here I got my hands on a decently fast car and just drove around for a few minutes:

[henke]

Here's a complete mission that I thought turned out quite well, it features a bit of everything.



I had recently lost 3 of my agents on a previous mission so I was pretty nervous on this one, especially as I was playing as my original Dedsec member, Shannon. Since I'm playing on permadeath mode, if I mess this up she really is gone for good.

There's some slight immsim tendencies here. You do have some options in how to infiltrate this place, and for instance if I'd invested more in turret hacking I'd be able to turn it against my enemies. Which operative you're playing as also matters, as they have different weapons and offensive abilities. Poor Shannon just has her stungun, which made this mission kinda hairy.

[Malf]

Over 2 weeks after purchase, and Ubisoft STILL haven't added the game to my library >:E

[henke]

Oh my god.

[Thirith]

When you play the game, henke, it almost looks like a different game from the various trailers and video reviews I've seen. You go about this so systematically, whereas most people try a bit of hacking, get tired of it and go in, guns and gadgets blazing.

[henke]

Hah, that's partly because I'm terrible at the guns blazing approach. In the missions where you're required to survive while it throws waves of enemies at you I've lost nearly half my agents. It'd be easier if I put some upgrade points into offensive upgrades, but I prefer to play as stealthy as possible. I've barely touched a gun in this, prefering to go for fisticuffs when I do get detected. Speaking of which, the fisticuffs are pretty good.

The difficulty curve is a bit uneven. Surviving gunfights is too hard, but escaping in a car is way too easy. In the original WD I often had to use every hacking trick up my sleeve to get away, but here I haven't had to hack as much as a traffic light. Just a few powerslides and cutting through some tight alleys and I can easily outrun anyone. I wish this had individual difficulty sliders for combat and driving, like Mafia: DE did.

[Malf]

Sod's law.
I finally get riled enough to open a Twitter account so I can tweet UbiSoft in an attempt to get my case resolved, and what do they do in order to ignore me further?
Only go and start a fucking hostage crisis.

In all seriousness, I hope this gets resolved quickly and peacefully and that no-one gets hurt.

[henke]

Seems like it's blown over and people are coming out. https://twitter.com/perreaux/status/1327349365317529601

Most likely someone swatted them.

Hey Malf bout time ya got on twitter, follow me, for all your Stilt Fella update needs!!

Also I do hope you get your Watch Dogs situation resolved soon, I wanna hear your thoughts on this one, and how authentic it feels to a real Brit.

[SubJeff]

That driving was very interesting. You drove down a couple of routes I've done many, many times. It was very familiar and a super cool recreation.

The only thing is, it's significantly smaller than the real thing.

Crate and Crowbar talked about this extensively this week. Sounds deeply flawed to me.

[henke]

The city is big enough that I sometimes use fast travel (aka taking the tube) if I need to get all the way to the other side of town. So for gameplay reasons I think shrinking it from realistic scale was the right choice.

Listening to that Crate & Crowbar ep now, and they are bringing up some good points about how unintuitive some elements are. I had that exact same mission where you need to destroy a crate and I ran around for a good while trying to figure out how to destroy it. Likewise I tried shooting it with my stungun but found that did nothing. Only later on did I discover that you can destroy these with the stungun but you need to shoot them 6 times before they break! Thing is, there's really NO WAY of knowing that. And if you only shoot them 5 times there's no indication that your shots are doing anything.

RE: using the spiderbot for everything instead of infiltrating places yourself, this sounds like the classic example of players optimizing the fun out of games. I've adopted the motto of "don't send a spiderbot do a hacker's job (unless it's really dangerous then ok)" so I pretty much always sneak into places myself. But sure, you can often just send the spiderbot in instead. You can also just play on easy mode if you don't enjoy challenges.

I've also never used the personal cloaking device, or the electropunch that lets you take down enemies faster, as it seems they'd make the stealth too easy. I will, however, use the ability that lets you camoflague downed enemies, since the game doesn't let you pick up and hide bodies.

[SubJeff]

It just sounds broken to me.

[Malf]

It's taken so long to resolve my case, that if I were to buy the game today, I would get a hefty discount.
As today was the last day for me to escalate my case with PayPal, I contacted the UbiSoft support team via chat one final time. They have now promised to refund the purchase themselves, but a requirement was that I close the PayPal dispute.
Given their utter uselessness so far, I wasn't keen, but was able to secure a promise in writing. So if the worst comes to the worst, at least I have some legal recourse.

This whole experience has guaranteed that for the foreseeable future, I will not be buying anything directly through Ubi. If I want to play any of their games going forward, I shall by buying keys through the grey market. I would highly recommend that others follow suit, lest they encounter similar problems.

[Malf]

Finally got my refund (although not the 100 points I used to get a 20% discount), and the wholo experience has somewhat tempered my enthusiasm to say the least.
I don't see myself buying this in the immediate future.
And if and when I do get it, it certainly won't be through Uplay, unless it's a freebie.

[faetal]

Did they say what the problem was Malf?

[henke]

A shame you had some much trouble, Malf. I would've loved to hear what you think of the portrayal of London and the britts. As an outsider, it seemed pretty accurate to me. You guys all say stuff like "cor blimey iz da rozzas guv, ya betta scarpa", right?

[Malf]

Did they say what the problem was Malf?

Nope.
Given my experience, I am assuming gross ineptitude.
Seriously, quite possibly the worst support experience I've ever had, with the one redeeming exception being that I did eventually get everything refunded.

Their case handling is atrocious.

Having raised the case, you would expect some sort of communication from them, right? Even an automated mail saying that they have received your query?
Nope, nothing.

So after a day or so of hearing nothing, you start at the basic level and post another comment to your case asking for an update.
Nobody responds.

So you're left with the only other option, which is to initiate a web-chat with an agent.
Only, despite being an international company, chat is only available at certain times of the day, and it's not even an 8 hour window.

You finally get an agent, and it's patently obvious they're reading from a script and are mainly just there to fend you off.
Under no circumstances will they commit to a timeline in order to provide you with even an update for your case, and they will never put you in contact with a superior, stating that they don't have one.
You are told to wait for an update with no idea as to when to expect that update.

If pressed, they will tell you that support can't resolve your case, and that only the "store" team can.
If you ask to be put through to the store team, they will tell you that they have no channel of communication with them. Which in itself raises a red flag, as if that's true, how will the team who can resolve your case ever actually hear about it?

And here's the critical thing, that they won't tell you immediately:
Every time you start a chat session, despite it being the only way to ever get a response from them at all, it reverts your case to square one, de-escalating it and effectively putting you back to the start. I was only told this after starting several chat sessions.

Oh, and the icing on the cake?
If you contact them too many times, they will threaten to ban you from support for spam.

To add insult to injury, you will never get put through to the same agent twice, which means no one person is responsible for handling your case, which in turn means there's no personal accountability on their behalf, and therefore no reason to process cases in a timely manner.

Fuck Ubisoft.

Edit:
Oh, and to top off this Kafkaesque nightmare, don't even bother trying to get an answer through Twitter either.
It turns out that any tweets they receive... get logged as a new case on the same system your existing case is already on.