The opening minutes of Watch Dogs Legion sees somebody pulling a Guy Fawkes, trying to blow up the houses of parliament. You play as MI5 agent Dalton, your task is to stop them (of course) along for the ride is your DedSec friend Sabine and AI companion Bagley over the coms. In a mission that can only be described as something straight out of a James Bond movie. This gameplay segment acts as Watch Dogs Legion’s tutorial teaching you the ropes and tools you will use under DedSec. From hacking to shooting and everything in-between. After successfully managing to defuse the bomb In Parliament the team find out there are other bombs all around London. Armed and ready to go off in DedSecs name! The whole thing is a setup job to paint DedSec as violent terrorists. Sabine tells Dalton that he can defuse the rest of the bombs on the roof by stopping a transmitted signal. During this however DedSec HQ is compromised and Sabine and Bagley leave your coms leaving you flying solo.

Getting to the roof Dalton defuses the rest of the bombs. (A win for the good guys yaaay… Not) doing this however causes Watch Dogs Legion’s main antagonist Zero Day to show their hands. Re-arming the bombs as they explode around London. it’s a chilling scene as you really feel the impact of each bomb with cries and sirens following each blast. You fail your mission and after a brief Thanos Infinity War style speech Zero Day has Dalton killed! (Awww I was just starting to like that guy) What follows is a cut scene time skip montage (that’s a mouthful) of the aftermath of the bombings. DedSec are branded terrorists and go underground. London is taken over by PSC (Private Security Company) Albion. Who now “protect” and watch over London with an iron fist. Surveillance Drones patrol the sky, security cameras at every corner.  Digital traffic checkpoints in every district and more. Albion own the streets, this isn’t the London you or anyone remembers.

Time passes and we find out that Sabine is still alive and intends to re-activate DedSec to fight back Albion and take back London. After controlling the awesome Face Hugger like Spiderbot in a brief platforming section all systems are go! It’s time to choose our first DedSec operative for our personal team. This is where Ubisofts unique Quantum system comes into play and the wealth of procedurally generated playable characters and their attributes hits you HARD in the best way. The detail and variety on show is astonishing to say the least. I had so many options, should I choose “Anna Chan” a graphic designer who “just purchased an ultralight ghillie suit” for her paint balling hobby? Or massage therapist Florin Paraschiv who “uploaded a viral video of himself yelling” but owns a personal motorcycle? Or even Kyle Rodriguez a cashier with a Semi-Auto Rifle? These were among many others that would take me a full extra article just to note. I eventually chose Laura Collins a pickpocket who is “banned for life from London Zoo” who has an MP5 Full-Auto SMG! (Why Laura I hear you ask) because honestly the fact she was banned from London Zoo made me laugh and someone like that should be on my team!

I need to mention before I continue that I chose the Perma Death option. Which means if any of my present or future DedSec team die they are dead for the rest of the game! No resurrection spell here. You can turn this feature off (but what’s the fun in that?) It adds a weight to your playable characters and an attachment to them with a high risk that they could die at any moment. Something State Of Decay and Xcom and other games did so effectively before it. Finally after setting up my DedSec base of operations under a pub (of course) I was free to explore the large open world and recruit other people to DedSec’s cause and my team. This is what makes Watch Dogs Legion so unique for its type of game almost ANYONE in the game world can be recruited after completing a mission for them and become a playable character. Every person has different jobs and attributes. Which means you can tackle nearly each mission any way you want giving a large variety which is very impressive and screams future replayability.

Now let’s talk tech and graphics. Watch Dogs Legion runs at a near stable frame rate of 30fps with dynamic resolutions on both consoles PS4 Pro (the console I’m playing on) running at 2880×1620 at the highest and Xbox One X running at 3648×2052 at its highest with the base consoles PS4 achieving 1920×1080 and the Xbox One S 1600×900 respectively. It’s a smooth experience that is pretty on the eyes. With good lighting and nice reflections however the texture and load pop in can be a distraction. But all in all considering what Ubisoft is achieving with the gameplay systems of Watchdogs Legion it’s a perfectly good graphic output. Also with 4K 30fos with Ray Tracing enabled promised on the PS5 and Xbox Series X with faster load times it will only improve in graphics. This does feel like a cross gen game in the graphics department but it’s not a bad thing. Vehicles handle well all be it with an arcade feel. Onfoot is fluid and vaulting and getting into cover is easy. Combat is your standard shooty punchy affair but with a wide variety of weapons and a few gadgetry tricks. It all plays very well and feels great to control.

Overall I am loving Watch Dogs Legion’s crazy London open world sandbox and amazing character system. It’s a game that I don’t think is going to get boring for me anytime soon. Now I’m off to find every other person banned from London Zoo and start a gang (in the game of course)