Ubisoft’s had a tough run at things in the last year, with a couple controversial releases last fall that haven’t fared well for the publisher. After some serious release restructuring, the publisher is back on track and preparing for its next big release this fall: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. While it’s not surprising to see another semi-annual Assassin’s Creed release happening in 2020, it is surprising that this game may come out before Watch Dogs: Legion does.
Back during E3 2019 was when Watch Dogs: Legion was initially unveiled to the world, and was originally due for a March 2020 launch date. While the game was delayed indefinitely due to some of the disappointing releases from Ubisoft last year, Watch Dogs has been radio silent since then. Considering Legion was likely delayed to refine aspects in the gameplay, there’s a few concepts from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla that the game could borrow from or utilize.
Watch Dogs Legion: Centralizing the Narrative
One of Watch Dogs: Legion’s big selling points is the unique use of multiple playable protagonists, or more accurately the lack of a stable protagonist entirely. Rather than focusing on and writing one hero-like character, Watch Dogs: Legion seems to have crafted a fluid narrative that can adapt to any character the player is using at any given time. Players can convince and take control of any living character in the in-game world to fight for the DedSec cause. That’s where the story of games like this can run into trouble, as there’s no singular driver of the story at any given time other than the static supporting characters and the world.
Obviously Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has Eivor, and while we don’t know too much about that character’s personality just yet, Eivor is the single protagonist driving the plot forward. Legion doesn’t need to compromise its defining feature of using any playable character, but should centralize the story around an idea. Like how Assassin’s Creed games in one way or another always relate back to the Assassins vs. Templars conflict, Watch Dogs: Legion will need to flesh out a conflict that applies to everyone in impactful ways. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood had a similar system when recruiting additional Assassins into the brotherhood, but making that the backbone of the playable cast in Watch Dogs: Legion needs to be justified even more prominently.
Watch Dogs Legion: Class Progression and Perk Customization
With each available person that players can choose to use comes a unique class; the Hacker, the Infiltrator, and the Enforcer class. These are pretty straightforward classes reminiscent of Cyberpunk 2077, each with specific functional abilities unique to their character. Legion provided a glimpse of some of these abilities in early gameplay footage, but the actual upgrades and progression systems were never given an in-depth deep dive. There are some elements of progression like specific perks that characters can unlock upon reaching a certain level, as well as unique attributes that shift or change depending on the person and which class they represent.
The depth or customization of these classes is unclear at the moment, but for now it appears that each character has one special stat attribution, three unique perks, and two weapon slots. Considering this systems applies to the entire in-game world, it’s likely not going to have the same RPG-level depth that Alexios/Kassandra have in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Eivor will have in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Legion would do well to at least take some inspiration from Assassin’s Creed’s most recent RPG mechanics to allow for some upgradability or customization of these abilities. It doesn’t have to be some elaborate skill tree per se, but some flexibility would be ideal.
No Picking Favorites
Now this isn’t necessarily something that Watch Dogs: Legion should borrow from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but rather be something it should avoid in particular. With every character potentially playable in Watch Dogs: Legion, the game also utilizes the mechanic of permadeath for all characters in the game. This means any character in the game is susceptible to death and cannot be revived/resurrected in any way once they’ve been gravely injured. Likely in a way to ramp up the challenge and justify the fact that every character is playable, it may also have an indirect action of preventing players from picking favorites.
Building off that system, Watch Dogs should double-down on this threat by making every character just as vulnerable as the other in some ways. Obviously in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Eivor is going to be designed as an unstoppable and brutal killing machine as the hero of that particular tale. In the case where there’s only one playable character that makes sense, but for Watch Dogs: Legion, the threat of permadeath should be pervasive throughout the whole experience. Legion should double down on this mechanic so that it encourages players to hop between different characters and classes without picking favorites. It would defeat the purpose of the main mechanic if it’s easy for players to conserve and protect their favorite characters in a world where there’s endless characters and possibilities.
That being said, Watch Dogs: Legion’s gameplay mechanics are unique and interesting from what’s been shown off so far. The added development time can only be beneficial for the game as well, taking the time to hone and refine mechanics before release. Fans of Watch Dogs should learn more during Ubisoft’s E3 event “Ubisoft Forward” in July, since Ubisoft has only really revealed info on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla so far this year. Hopefully Watch Dogs Legion gets a significant update next month to bring the hype back again.
Watch Dogs: Legion is currently in development.
