Watch Dogs : Legion (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Stadia)

goon_magee

Okay so it's winning me over. The more time I spend with the recruitment systems the more I enjoy it.

Just had a really neat little emergent moment. I was trying to hack a propaganda station on top of Buckingham Palace, which was however heavily guarded by the police. Attempted to recruit an officer to make access easier, but he hates DedSec to the point where I can't trigger a recruitment mission with him. Do some digging around in his profile which gives me all sorts of detail on his daily routines and also let's me know that he is trying to take down an associate of one of the in game gangs who helps transfer the gangs money between accounts.

I was then able to tap into this associates routine and corner him while he visited an ATM to deposit money, and empty the dodgy bank account of all funds. Doing this has now raised the police officer's opinion of DedSec which has now opened up the option to go and speak to him about recruiting him to the team.

Just a really cool little sequence that shows there is definitely at least a little more depth to the gimmick than I thought there was. The fact that the game is fully simulating daily routines for all these NPCs, which can then be exploited to aid in your recruitment of others is awesome.

What really boggles the mind is that it's clear from having another look at the area I'm trying to access, that there is at least another 2 ways I probably could have gone about getting in. So I definitely agree with TPP's post above in that I don't think the game is strictly about matching the right uniform or occupation to your objectives, it's a lot more open ended in how you can approach a given situation than that.

dreamers75

Gonzovision wrote: »

Have had 5 or 6 CTDs in around 6 hours, something I haven't experienced in years.

It's a bit of a mess in terms of bugs as well. Cars drooping through the road, same with people. A couple of cars I've hijacked, didn't even have anyone driving....

Reinstall got me a few hours game time.

Have yet to finish a main mission just fecking about, on the last boxing league thing and its stupidly easy, i dont think I took a hit in one them and the last guy always has a "surprise" one of them brought 3 other lads in it was easy to beat them all.

Game just crashed for the 1st time in hours on the 5th league fight.

dreamers75

Few CTDS thats me done for a while with it, I like the recruiting options but oddly played with the starting dude for most of the few hours the game let me play.

Bit **** I cant level him up and when you unlock a new skill that turns out to be terrible there is no option to go back to the old ones.

Its a bit boring tbh.

Gonzovision

dreamers75 wrote: »

Few CTDS thats me done for a while with it, I like the recruiting options but oddly played with the starting dude for most of the few hours the game let me play.

Bit **** I cant level him up and when you unlock a new skill that turns out to be terrible there is no option to go back to the old ones.

Its a bit boring tbh.

Have ye tried DX11? Performance worse for me, at least more inconsistent....but no crashes.

dreamers75

Found a protest leader with 4 perks and for the recruitment mission I had to rescue their buddy from jail. It did not go well and now a follow up mission I have to transport the buddies ashes to a hotel.

Honestly everything that could go wrong went wrong spectacluarly, tried to distract a guard by moving a vehicle forward, vehicle hit fuel tanks I couldnt see, buddy launched into a shutter with extreme force.

Have unlocked all the boroughs and the recruits you get from that are better than what you find on the street. The only poor recruit I have is the dude i started with as he only has 1 perk.

Cordell

Why can't autodrive be hacked to drive like a madman? I would rather have that than fast travel.

I'm barely a few missions in into the main story, in the usual Ubisoft way it keeps me distracted with recruiting and borough liberation and tech points farming. I failed a recruitment mission and I just couldn't stand having her there with the thumb down
Not stellar but quite enjoyable.

quokula

Have to say I'm really, really enjoying this. Might be a game of the year contender for me.

I bounced off Watchdogs 1 because the main protagonist had no personality and the world was generally drab and uninspiring. I thought they overcompensated in Watchdogs 2 with over the top wackiness, and again I just kind of bounced off it. I thought I was mad trying again with the third game, but I really like the idea in principle, and this time it feels like they really nailed it.

The recruitment mechanic feels far less gimmicky than I originally thought. In fact I hadn't really thought about it at all, but it works really well on a fundamental level. I've spent hours getting distracted finding people I want to recruit, and it feels really immersive when you start profiling someone, find out where they live, what their daily routine is, who their friends are, and find a way to recruit them. I've also come across random people on the street who now have prior opinions of me based on the fact I've helped / hurt people who are their friends or relatives. I'm sure a lot of it is still completely randomly generated, it probably only generates a schedule for someone once you profile them rather than all characters actually following a schedule in the world, but it works.

And then, once you recruit someone, the fact that they have their own background and personality that goes beyond the simple set of skills you recruited them for is something I hadn't anticipated. I love the level of representation, that people with backgrounds and accents that you'd normally never find in a game can now be the hero in your specific play through. Sadly the voice acting is often a let down here, possibly understandable when Ubisoft have basically had to record the entire script with who knows how many different actors, and also have to write it in a way where it holds together with the same dialog that could happen between any two people, whatever their age, class, nationality etc, but I do think the compromises are worth it.

As for the actual gameplay, the idea of hacking into cameras, setting traps etc always appealed to me in the previous Watchdogs games but this is the first time I've actually got into the game enough to fully realise that potential. I also really enjoy the extent to which you can mix it up and approach missions in wildly different ways using recruits with different skills, and have just been having loads of fun experimenting with different systems. On top of that, I love exploring London, having lived there for a few years in the past I feel like they've got the feel of the city down perfectly, even if they've taken some liberties with the geography in places. I've barely scratched the surface of the main story while I constantly get distracted exploring different areas and finding and recruiting people.

Biggest flaw with the game for me is still the driving, the car handling is just incredibly dull compared to something like GTA, there seems to be no concept of tyre slip at all. You'd think they'd have got it to a better place by now. Police chases are pretty woeful too as you're never remotely in danger of being caught, but it can take ages to finally randomly go down the right set of streets where you don't get spotted and lose the heat. And it's also hard to drive fast without running over seemingly suicidal pedestrians, which feels wildly out of character and uncomfortable. I've taken to travelling by cargo drone a lot, which is certainly slow, but I enjoy the sights and check out every potential recruit walking the streets along the way.

martingriff

Cordell wrote: »

Why can't autodrive be hacked to drive like a madman? I would rather have that than fast travel.

I'm barely a few missions in into the main story, in the usual Ubisoft way it keeps me distracted with recruiting and borough liberation and tech points farming. I failed a recruitment mission and I just couldn't stand having her there with the thumb down
Not stellar but quite enjoyable.

So I am not the only one. Tried so hard to get someone who hates me for too much time I want to admit. I realized damn was not playing the story suddenly it says permadeath and realized I now need to recruit people as I know I will die

Also have they completely gone the opposite way with hacking mini games. There was too much in 1 not too sure of 2 as I never really played it as my playstation was not in a great condition to (admittedly only in the first real mission of Zero day) it does not seem too much just press a button.

I do like the spiders.

Love attacking with them

quokula

Is there a limit to how many people you can recruit? Or a point where you start getting duplicate voices? I mean, there must be. I'm a bit worried about recruiting too many people and not having room when someone important comes along later.

Also, I notice the game sometimes puts a green circle over certain people's heads and recommends them for recruiting. But half the time they don't have any real useful skills beyond regular characters. For example, one was a "shooting coach", I thought getting him would unlock a training area like the boxing ring or something. But after getting him, he seems to be just a normal recruit, who comes with a gun (which many random civilians also do)

I've got a few others around the place with circles over their heads now but I'm more interested in finding my own recruits if there's no strong reason to get the marked ones.

martingriff

quokula wrote: »

Is there a limit to how many people you can recruit? Or a point where you start getting duplicate voices? I mean, there must be. I'm a bit worried about recruiting too many people and not having room when someone important comes along later.

Also, I notice the game sometimes puts a green circle over certain people's heads and recommends them for recruiting. But half the time they don't have any real useful skills beyond regular characters. For example, one was a "shooting coach", I thought getting him would unlock a training area like the boxing ring or something. But after getting him, he seems to be just a normal recruit, who comes with a gun (which many random civilians also do)

I've got a few others around the place with circles over their heads now but I'm more interested in finding my own recruits if there's no strong reason to get the marked ones.

I know there is an achievement on PS4 for having 20

martingriff

So can you only get people who dislike Dedsec or is there a way to get hate also

MOR316

Worth getting?

Cordell

Right...

so while looking at an Albion guard I hear my operative saying something like "anyone can change". So I said why not recruit this lad. I profiled him, he hates Dedsec, so I recruited his mother and his girlfriend, then found out where he hangs and went to him as his mother. He acted like he didn't recognize her, he got angry when I got close and shoved her and called her a moron. He clearly acts like it doesn't connect that I'm his mother. Something is clearly wrong with this, I suspect this system is a mix of randomly picked scripted events that this time they just don't line up

Cordell

So far it's perfectly fine on PC.

quokula

Perfectly fine for me too on Xbox One X.

martingriff

Fine for me on the PS4

dreamers75

Fine on PC in Dx11, unplayable in 12 for me anyway.

Loading is fine and running it in 2k and its hitting 60fps so thats fine.

I am well down the storyline now, only recruit people with 4 perks and now looking offload my starter dude as he only has 1 perk and is letting the team down. On Uplay+ (I using that) they give you 3 prestige recruits from the beginning, one is a merc with an AK and grenade launcher, other has a silcenced SMG and the last one has some drone skills. Very OP the 3 of them are.

I mostly using the spy I got for liberating a borough kinda Kingsman vibe from him.

After a good few hours there seems to be something missing or this is the new Covid reality of games.

goon_magee

Playing on PS4 Pro and I'm holding off for now until I get my PS5 in a couple of weeks.

I'm finding the loading to be unbearable now; load screens are both too frequent and too long so I'd rather wait. I've hit quite a few bugs as well and had numerous crashes to the main PS4 menu.

quokula

The load times are quite long but you can easily play for a few hours without ever seeing a loading screen. I’ve mostly been doing recruitment and side quests so maybe the main story missions have more loading, but for me the vast majority of the game plays out in the open world where there is no loading.

Sephiroth_dude

2 crashes on ps4

Cordell

There are performance and optimization issues, like not properly loading the CPU and GPU, which will persist on the next gen if left unfixed. For example DX12 performance is worse than DX11, this will affect the series X.

Dr. Bre

Enjoying it so far. Bagley is a pain

dreamers75

Close to the end but havent been arsed to finish it.

I found the best 1 perk member ever, they are old and slow and fat but that one perk.....

Hypnotise!!!!! They can turn Albion dudes just like turning drones, I cleared the the 2 bridge missions by just hypnotising the baddest looking enemy and then waiting.

Sephiroth_dude

The Phantom Pain wrote: »

Got the platinum.
The story is really good, some really disturbing parts in it and I thought the conclusion was nice too. I saw all the twists and reveals coming a mile away but that didn't make it any less compelling.
Not as good as Watch Dogs 2 due to too many optimisation and bugs and a lot of removed features but this game is fun.

What I love is that the NPCs are like loot. It's fun running around London trying to get the best possible roll of NPCs i.e. visual appearance, voice and skill set. I've been incredibly lucky as my team look and sound great for the most part with badasss skills. My fave is a handsome Irish construction worker - voice, look and skill set is perfect. Couldn't believe it when I found him, excellent roll.

Any tips for getting 100,000 cash for that trophy?