Watch Dogs Legion test: an attractive but repetitive concept

Amusingly enough, Watch Dogs first of the name was among the early standard bearers of the current generation of consoles. That was 7 years ago, and today Watch Dogs Legion is about to close this chapter to guide us to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X.

Watch Dogs Legion test: an attractive but repetitive concept See PriceRead ConclusionWatch Dogs Legion

Embody any passerby
London, sublime and pleasant to explore
An exhilarating hacking arsenal
Missions with varied approaches...

A diluted narrative
Driving, still just as chaotic
Totally screwed up AI
... but very repetitive

A lot has changed in the way of designing triple-A open-world games over the decade. The Witcher 3 has been there, and thrown a stone's throw from video game storytelling. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild taught us that betting on wide open spaces and emerging gameplay could be enough to make an impression. A philosophy from which Ubisoft has itself drawn much inspiration by infusing these two proposals into its latest Assassin's Creed.

A great lesson was therefore taking place under the eyes of Ubisoft Toronto. But rather than listen and take a few notes, the studio founded in 2009 by Jade Raymond said to itself that it would be entirely appropriate not to change anything in the recipe.

Test setup : High / Ultra settings at 1440p on a Ryzen 7 2700X, RTX 2070, 16GB RAM and NVMe SSD. 40 fps average with RT On and DLSS Quality.

Perfidious Albion

A little reminder of the forces involved. In Watch Dogs Legion, we play as a big-hearted hacker who must work to restore London to greatness — one hack at a time. Usually very cautious on the subject, Ubisoft signs here its most political game: in the near future where a series of attacks has shaken the British government, a private military company by the name of Albion has taken power and established an Orwellian surveillance society.

You see it coming: we will have to roll up our sleeves and rally the population to its cause to overthrow this new order. District by district. Pure Ubisoft, even if we escape – thank God – from the incorrigible “captures of tricks” of which the Spanish publisher is usually so fond.

To do this, it will be a question of tickling the revolutionary fiber of the various London boroughs. Various civil disobedience activities are available to you to increase the appropriate gauge and, ultimately, trigger a riot in the neighborhood. There is no shortage of ways to improve the image of DedSec, the group of hackers to which we belong (and to which we blamed the attacks) for street art, evidence photography, sabotage, the release of prisoners.

Especially since this reputation to be restored will also allow us to discover one of the most significant concepts of Watch Dogs Legion: you can play anyone there.

come as you Are

This is the strong promise of this third opus of Watch Dogs. Every passer-by, whether entrepreneur, homeless, dancer or small-time bandit can be recruited and embodied by the player to continue DedSec's quest.

Acheter Watch Dogs : Legion

JVFR

Even your adversaries can, through persuasion, join the ranks of DedSec.

An attractive concept as hell, especially since we must recognize that the promise is kept. Just approach a fellow and press a button to launch a recruitment mission. A preliminary analysis of his profile will inform us whether the person is sensitive to the actions of DedSec or not. Otherwise, we can reverse the trend by doing him some favors to improve our reputation (beat up a loan shark, recover a stolen car, etc.).

But what is it for, concretely? Each character has its own characteristics. Some take advantage of an advantage allowing them to move more furtively; others are impervious to identification by surveillance drones. The arsenal, too, is specific to each: impossible to equip a Desert Eagle if one is not a hitman. Also, some assets are passive. Having a lawyer in your team allows you to benefit from a release from prison card. A paramedic will also be able to get you back on your feet more quickly if you fall from the sixth floor of a building (yes, it smells like experience).

JVFR

Friend Brad can summon a cargo drone at any time...

JVFR

... which makes it much easier to access the roofs of the city.

In short: a small “Ultimate team” side which is not unpleasant, even if – we will come back to this – the narration is found to be fatally diluted.

Thanks to its concept, Watch Dogs Legion has a much more pronounced sandbox aspect than the two previous games. The player is constantly prompted to recruit new people. Also we can consider that there is really a ton of things to do in this dystopian London. Unfortunately, we are quickly overtaken by a very common reality in Ubisoft games: repetitiveness is in order.

Bis repetita

Watch Dogs Legion is first and foremost a stealth game. Of course, you can play maraves with the Albion guards or the minions of the Kelly clan (one of the other factions in the game), or get involved in gunfights at the turn of a full-bodied mission. But everything is done so that the player does not come to that.

JVFR

Stealth is at the heart of Watch Dogs Legion gameplay

All missions are composed in the same way. We are asked to go from point A to point B, to analyze its environment in order to find an entrance in a heavily guarded building, and to hack any terminal in order to obtain information which will lead us to hack another some terminal, in another heavily guarded building.

JVFR

And the missions always end the same way.

If we play the game of immersion, it is indisputable that it is exhilarating to hack the telephone of the guards to distract them, or even to lure them to an electrical panel before triggering an explosion there. Ubisoft has also taken care to offer a variety of approaches to the player so as not to tire them too quickly. We can for example use the arachnobot to infiltrate the air ducts and open some airlocks from the inside.

JVFR

The arachnobot offers other possibilities of infiltration.

But added to these repetitions is an artificial intelligence completely off the mark which very often ruins the immersion. The guards are all visually impaired, and their helmets are obviously too tight on their ears. We can indulge in a sprint right next to them without it moving them. Especially since in terms of clothing style, our agent dressed in a fluorescent pink jacket denotes slightly in the ultra-secret laboratory of a private militia.

JVFR

Believe it or not: I'm hidden.

And even if we were spotted, just take a few seconds out of the henchman's field of vision to be completely forgotten. In other words: there are hardly any challenges in Watch Dogs Legion.

JVFR

I am currently in the process of disabling the central computer of a top secret research facility. Which doesn't seem to bother this guard.

Some missions obviously stand out. We particularly remember the one where, at the controls of a micro drone, you have to navigate the bowels of a server to destroy its power supply. A very interesting level visually, which requires some reflexes from the player.

JVFR

The micro-drone mission is very nice.

Hackolics Anonymous

Aware of the narrative problem posed by its central concept, Ubisoft Toronto is nevertheless making efforts to involve the player in its scenario. Each new agent recruited into your team will be entitled to their little line of dialogue launched randomly according to the briefings with Sabine (the surviving leader of DedSec) and Bagsley, the AI who accompanies you during the adventure.

When you think about it, it's not even so much the absence of a protagonist that handicaps the narration. The Assassin's Creed are far from being masterpieces of writing when we embody a single hero. What gets stuck is quite simply the Ubisoft paw.

JVFR

We always do the same thing in Watch Dogs Legion.

In addition to being repetitive, the missions follow one another like one plunges one's hand back into a packet of crisps when one is already hungrier. The events follow one another without any incident disturbing the lives of the inhabitants of London. To the point that we have the impression of living each mission under glass and finding our daily routine the next moment.

It's that Watch Dogs Legion (and Ubisoft games in general) are caught between two chairs. On the one hand, they want to assume leaving the player in charge, and invite him to create his own adventure. On the other hand, they absolutely seek to tell great stories of revolution, espionage and political shenanigans without ever giving themselves the narrative means. Result: we never really catch on, and I even happened to skip certain cutscenes to, as quickly as possible, return to yet another building heavily guarded by blind imbeciles to hack into the game's thirteen thousandth terminal.

JVFR

We take the same (or not) and start again.

London full of majesty

But if there is a grimace that we cannot teach them, at Ubisoft, it is that of world building. Already very well reconstituted in Assassin's Creed Syndicate in 2015, the British capital is the real star of Watch Dogs Legion.

It's a real pleasure to walk there and to return to neighborhoods that you have visited yourself. A very careful attention to detail, even if we would have liked to be able to enter more buildings. In fact, only a few pubs are open (count 10 pints of beer to die). We buy clothes in the (very) numerous shops of the city via a simple panel placed in front.

JVFR

London is superbly done.

Where Watch Dogs Legion also shines is in its graphics. Taking great advantage of ray tracing, the title of Ubisoft Toronto is a nice plea for this technology. The reflections in puddles of rain and in car windows are simply impressive. It's a pity that the animations are still so rigid, and that the characters have not benefited from more care.

JVFR

Ray tracing offers splendid reflections.

We must also address the catastrophic optimization of the title. Rather greedy, Watch Dogs Legion is above all inconstant in its impact on the components of our machine. In 1440p with high / ultra settings and ray tracing on "high", the framerate sometimes fluctuates between 20 and 60 frames per second for no apparent reason. And according to the first returns, the console versions are not doing any better.

Watch Dogs Legion : l’avis de Clubic

This third opus is by far the most attractive of the series. With its unique concept allowing to embody any Londoner to lead the revolution, Watch Dogs Legion appears a priori as a game with an infinite lifespan.

This is not necessarily wrong. But you also have to keep your feet on the ground. All the activities are similar, and the missions follow one another unfortunately without flavor for the twenty hours that the main plot lasts.

In this Watch Dogs Legion carries with it all the usual stigmata of Ubisoft titles. Easy to handle, and very fun to peck here and there, it very quickly falls into a deadly repetitiveness for our enthusiasm.

Watch Dogs Legion

Watch Dogs Legion has for him a concept that many players have fantasized: that of being able to embody anyone, to make him do anything. A successful bet, which is not enough to save a game that scrupulously follows Ubisoft's usual specifications.

This third opus, moreover very nice, is unfortunately weighed down by repetitive missions and a scenario that never hooks us. To top it off, the completely strawberry artificial intelligence offers the player no worthy challenge.

There will remain the pleasure of strolling in a futuristic and dystopian London, and of satisfying one's voyeuristic impulses by hacking into the telephones of one's fellow citizens. In the end, it's when it doesn't tell anything that Watch Dogs Legion is the most enjoyable to browse.