LOS ANGELES—The rumors and leaks are true: the next Watch Dogs video game is titled Watch Dogs Legion, it's set in near-future London, and it lets you play the game as any of the characters you encounter in its GTA-like open world.

What we didn't know until this week is exactly how that works in action. But a 45-minute hands-on demo with WDL's E3 alpha version filled in a few gaps on what to expect when the game launches on March 6, 2020. In short: yes, even sweet British grandmas can become killing machines, but it's not as simple as "haxoring" their brains.

Grateful (to) Dedsec

WDL's "control anyone" twist works in a twofold manner. First is the incredible claim that its "heroes" are so distributed that, according to game director Clint Hocking, "there is no 'main character' or guy on the box cover art who stars in all the cut scenes." In fact, every voice-acted sequence, including "60+ story missions," can play out with any of the game's characters as lead actors (hence rendering the usual gaming acronym of NPC, or non-player character, a bit moot.)

When walking or standing around, focus your aim on any character, then hold down the "hack" button (left bumper on an Xbox gamepad). A small information box will appear with the citizen's name, their primary "special" stats, and a tease about their backstory. A character might have a mix of bonus (increased shotgun power) and burden (higher vulnerability to enemy melee attacks), for example. They also all get a specific job title or criminal history as a single line.

Should that basic info intrigue you, add that character to your "contacts" list and look them up within a pause menu, at which point you can learn exactly how to convert them into a playable character.

The primary stat in this screen is a red or green meter that tells you how sympathetic the character is to Dedsec, the hacking collective from previous Watch Dogs games. Maybe that person has heard anti-Dedsec propaganda from an increasingly militarized British government (more on that in a bit). Maybe they've been personally wronged by Dedsec. Or maybe they are fans of your cause's robo-hipster outfits and are already charmed.

Whatever the case may be, that person can be won over to your cause to become a fully militarized member. How? By using your other characters' hacking and combat powers to do good deeds around town on that citizen's behalf. Maybe they're getting consistently harassed by someone in town at 3pm every day. Maybe they have some financial issues that could be conveniently wiped away with a single computer hack. Their veritable to-do list (and a time-marked map to match) is in your hands, and knocking out the peskiest tasks will get them to call you up and offer their services. With a single button press, you can fast-forward to a useful time of day or night in a pinch.

How many actors did they cast?

Ubisoft wouldn't clarify exactly how many unique people we should expect to find wandering the streets of WDL's London or whether tricks are being employed to duplicate characters in the game's bustling city. There's certainly fewer characters wandering through this virtual city than we've seen in other typical open-world games, which seems to imply that Ubisoft is taking this "full backstory for every character" gimmick seriously.

We did get confirmation of one sly Ubisoft "shortcut," at least: in order to hire fewer real-life actors to fill out so many unique passages of spoken dialogue, the company is playing with "octave modulation" tricks. That means one actor can sound like a variety of people.

There's also the issue of exactly how the game's police and military forces can be won over. Yes, in-game menus hint at this being a possibility, but plenty of cops will show up either in specific campaign missions or emergent run-from-the-cops moments in the other open-world content. Ubisoft didn't go into further detail on this aspect.

Trying to Brexit from a political conversation





























We were also given a vague explanation of how WDL's overarching plot will play out, and this included some curious attempts to call out modern-day headlines without taking a stand on them. After calling the game "a real powerful fantasy that's resonant with things happening in the world today," Hocking called out Brexit by name, saying, "London is at a critical point in her history today. It's hard to predict what the future holds for London."

But apparently, it's not hard for Hocking and his crew to try their hands at a prediction. WDL's London is contending with massive waves of unemployment, as driven by "the accelerated rise of automation and artificial intelligence." This larger issue is compounded by the rise of organized crime, cryptocurrencies "overtaking" the British Pound, and government-run deportation centers. And that whole messy slew has proven ripe for a rising terrorist threat known as Albion to take advantage of.

(By the way, you may have seen a recent Q&A with a Ubisoft vice president about how the studio's video games don't take political stands and how the studio wants to empower players to make up their own minds. After seeing WDL, I'm not sure what that Q&A's participants were smoking. This slice of WDL squarely paints Brexit in a negative light and is full of protesters who fight back against specific issues like repressive deportation practices, and that's just in the game's opening salvo. Good luck with that whole "neutral" stance, Ubi.)

In the meantime, Ubisoft is remaining coy about how Dedsec becomes organized from that point on in the story. Throughout the missions and open-world content I played, I heard chatter from an apparently helpful AI. This all-seeing robot seemed to run lead on organizing my missions, which seemed odd. Isn't this version of London furious at robots takin' their jobs? A Ubisoft representative declined to answer how that would work in the final game. I get a sneaking suspicion there's some "would you kindly" at play here.

One guess why it’s not called Watch Dogs 3

In terms of beat-to-beat gameplay, meanwhile, WDL currently feels less like a true sequel. I pressed the design team about new mechanics in the game, and they repeatedly emphasized that there's a new melee combat system, which players can use to avoid shooting guns and thus alarming nearby guards and police forces. But non-lethal combat has always been an option in the hack-and-sneak world of Watch Dogs, and the melee combat I got into certainly didn't feel revolutionary. Punch, grapple, or block. That's it, and this rock-paper-scissors fisticuffs system doesn't flow as elegantly as years-old series like Batman Arkham.

Other than that, you're utilizing largely the same kinds of "if you see it, you can hack it" scanning systems from prior games, mixed with open-world traversal and multi-path options to completing missions. The ability to pluck out and become any citizen in the game is certainly intriguing from a technical standpoint, at least, but I wasn't rapidly swapping from one character to the next to take advantage of wildly different powers or diverging plotlines. (If that kind of stuff exists in WDL, I haven't seen it yet.) I only got a hint of how this system might really affect game flow: by changing up the "fetch quest" paradigm of other open-world games.

One example came when I took on a favor for a potential Dedsec recruit: beat up a harasser. I proceeded to show up at a certain hour in a certain London neighborhood, then pummeled a grumpy, hooded woman. This gave me some positive Dedsec points for the person being stalked, but then I got a tip from a Ubisoft rep nearby: go into the pause menu, and you'll see that harasser whose butt you just kicked. How about we go recruit her?

She had a pretty stark note on her profile, saying that her opinion of Dedsec was in the toilet owing to how one of its punks put her in the hospital. (What a baby.) If only she could get faster treatment at the hospital she's at, though, that might change her tune. They're taking their precious time, and she's in pain. I set a tracking point on the in-game map, got to the hospital, and scaled one of its walls in order to personally access a computer system on its rooftop panel, where I found a patient listing and the option to either "prioritize treatment" or "neutralize" for anyone on the list.

So I turned a potential foe into an ally in a surprising way. And that kind of organic quest breadcrumbing, from one bustling-city citizen to the next, could prove a lot more interesting than the usual Ubisoft mode of zillions of fetch quests. Its success, of course, remains to be seen, but even if WDL falls flat on its face with its mix of ambition and overly familiar content, I want front-row seats to the results.

Listing image by Ubisoft