Watch_Dogs

Watch Dogs: Legion coming October 29th to PS4 and Xbox One and later on PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Well, the new Watch Dogs looks VERY fun. Going for a more futuristic feel. ubisoft Forward led with it.

Release date is October apparently.

Not too deep on features, but DEFINITELY looks like each person is a nice mix of skills - gunplay, drones, melee, even infiltration (If they're, say, a faction member!) plus some insight into a couple of the villains.

Non lethal still looks to be an option, but this time it's an actual resistance movement rather than just hacker collective. First trailer was a cool, live action overlaid with some nice cartoony fx. And overacting fascists but hey ho.

The gameplay trailer was pretty amazing.

Gunplay has REALLY been improved. They even had a John Wick-esque segment showing how tighter it is, along with various ways of approaching missions.

Will have to wait for individual trailers but looked cool.

Yeah, will need to see the finished product, but it looks like Ubi finally figured out what to do with this series.

Plz just let us give the old lady a crown to wear if we can't recruit Bessy outright

Somw new Legion gameplay

They're bringing out a bunch a of Lets Players

Edited by jormis29 on Jul 12th 2020 at 9:00:33 PM

Looks hella fun. Just so much to do. And one of those lets plays showed London Bridge (The Scoop, to be precise) and they got the front of my office down PAT!

Really loving the look, the dialogue, the missions.

Only sadness is, well... Britain kind of feels we're actually going that way.

May have to actually FINISH WD 2 now...

Gameplay overview trailer.

This feels like it's going the route of Saint's Row.

I'm not sure how I'm going to enjoy this game enthusiastically given what's going on at Ubisoft right now. I want to want to like it, but it's hard.

Could they have given the demo to some slightly less obnoxious people?

What bullcrap are they doing now?

The usual: a bunch of execs stepping down or getting fired for years-long patterns of sexual harassment and assault. HR helping them get away with it.

Ahhh. Always good fun.

Head of HR "stepped down" - it does look like, basically, this was TOO TOXIC for the usual company brush-under-the-carpet approach. Too many complainants and too visible for a clearly compromised HR team to bat away.

Hopefully it leads to more culture change, but I think that's a ways off.

As for this being like SR... I don't think it's "wacky" enough - and it seems to be taking the Fascist side fairly seriously. Yes, you can be silly and some of the characters ARE jokes (And, weirdly, spies get a car that shoots rockets....) so I think it leans closer to SR 2 in terms of gritty to wacky.

Tentatively excited.

Is it weird I'm Rooting for the Empire in Legion?

It's the closest to a V for Vendetta video game we'll ever get, but this glorified, counterculture superhacker aesthetic bugs me. I don't like any of these people. It was one thing with Aiden, who was boring, and Marcus, who was blamed for a crime he didn't commit.

Now we're an imaginary group of superhackers working with futuristic technology that lets them bring combat drones into security zones and fight off dozens of armed guards. And it's the dumbest, funniest thing ever - we're playing as an old woman who can barely walk. It's "fun" and "wacky" to be somebody who commits crimes for a living, commits mass murder, and does all sorts of things to hurt the establishment - all of your mayhem is justified.

It's sort of like how Pirates of the Caribbean creates this romantic, heroic depiction of pirates, but at least that's far removed from the current time period and you're not meant to take it too seriously when the undead pirates start showing up.

_

Compare to Saints Row 3, which also took the piss to whatever seriousness the last games had. There, you were a chaotic gang leader fueled by Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!, and that was fine because there's no way you and your hood rat friends would break into an army base, steal a VTOL jet, and go to town on your corporate oppressors. At best you get that Fast and the Furious vibe where "family" and "brotherhood" means a lot to the protagonists - but it's not exactly a positive lesson that you're meant to take into real life. The entire adventure is a nonsensical thrill ride.

Here you're surrounded by masked, goth, counterculture vigilantes parodying real-life hacktivism. Sure we don't have anything as ridiculous as the CTOS system, but the message of rebelling against authoritarianism seems more enforced, more "go out and actually do this" compared to Saints Row's "you're causing all of this mayhem because it's fun."

Watch Dogs taps into how dangerous modern-day technology and news suppression really are, but it's turning it into a navigable, exciting video game where you can fight back and blow things up to fix real-world problems. And if you want to define yourself through obnoxious pop culture references and trends, power to you.

_

Marcus and Aiden I could get behind.

I can't tell if I dislike the new "army of hackers" because I don't expect them to be fleshed out protagonists, or if I'm expecting narrative problems as a consequence of quantity over quality, or if I just dislike glorified, superhero hacktivism in general.

But I genuinely want a Player Punch where it turns out not every hacker in the world is a nice person with decent morals and positive goals. This sanctimonious portrayal of corporate espionage is strange to me.

The game already insists that most of your hacker army are expendable cut-outs with some defining features, so maybe have an ending where whoever you play as gets killed off but some other anon picks up the torch and it turns out - whoops - you just gave Logan Paul the keys to a military drone! Not every hacker out there is out to right some great wrong.

EDIT: I guess it's just a video game and it's meant to be fantastical, but the marketing for it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and characters like Defalt and Wrench alienate me.

Though I suppose Defalt was an example of "not all hackers are good," to be fair.

Edited by FOFD on Jul 17th 2020 at 11:46:39 AM

Iget where you're coming from, basically portraying Anonymous as some sort of Noble Crusader types, when actually they're closer to Blue-and-Orange Morality with doing things for the Evulz one day and then being nice the next. And don't even start on how a lot of these "collectives" fall apart and can't really function.

Or how they're mostly co-opted by Right Wing / Incel elements.

Or run out of farms by larger states (The USA conducting hacks on Iran, Russia's activity internationally, CHINA)

As for the rebellion element - I think the "cut out" aspect is to be a way of showing how a revolution could form, rather than having some Uber Hero resistance fighter - basically a linchpin figure. This way we see it is actually PEOPLE fighting back. And they aren't all hackers - they're resistance members who get given a hacked phone with some shortcut apps, basically. Considering how the enemy in this appears to be a co-opted secret service (MI 5 gone rogue, basically, with elements of the Army and others) alongside a privatised police force I think that's fine, target wise.

Resisting authority is fine when said authority is basically overreaching and seems to be corrupt as sin. Now, are the "hacktivists" going to be the new government? Hell no. Also, would I trust a Dead Sec IRL? Considering in game you steal money, adopt a slightly worrying omniscient morality license against targets you disapprove of and there's not real limit to their power (beyond the aforementioned corrupt authority) it can come across as Evil vs. Evil at times.

tldr your ass didn't watch the trailer.

I'm sorry, but if you shoot someone who's sole crime against you was "wanting to check in with his superior before shit gets any thicker" and then blame a nebulous at best group of "terrorists", you are the textbook definition of a worthless fuckhole and any and all mayhem I bring down on your head is 100% justified. Don't start shit, won't be shit.

Nigel Cass started shit.

October 29.......London calling, Nigel.

• (1) Isn't that still a hacker? Someone using a computer to gain unauthorized access to data.
• (2) True.
• (3) For these reasons I'm not comfortable being in control of La Résistance who are effectively technopathic entities in the game world. And the game's marketing still blurs "fight the power" with "be a superhero" in a disconcerting way.

-rewatches the trailer- I suppose that's fair. I still don't like our hacktivist heroes and want to see the ones kitted out in cyberpunk masks eat a lead salad.

Edited by FOFD on Jul 17th 2020 at 6:01:18 AM

Not to risk too fine a point but isn't every hacker including Aiden in WD 1 a complete pile of shit?

Dead_Sec in WD 2 is about as threatening as the Scooby Doo gang and Chaotic Good at worst. But they're a sharp contrast to the first game.

I also think putting a fascist government in charge of the UK makes them a decent set of foes for hackers versus someone who isn't really a real threat like the second game's Big Bad.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 17th 2020 at 9:13:15 AM

WD was basically low-stakes evil. Or at least it appeared so - because it was important to understand it was a subtle threat to nebulous ideas of privacy, data or (in the case of the church) more ugly blackmail and brainwashing.

WD 3 has ramped that up. Thing is, La Résistance are never really clean cut good guys. Across history, revolutionaries do Bad Things in the name of Good, against (with hindsight) bad people. Or bad institutions.

I think the way the hackers get portrayed in WD comes across as trying too hard, a bit cringey perhaps. In WD 3 it's less about "Quirky characters" and more about how you build a functional group of resistance fighters who all have skills (Or don't, as some people just seem to be... people) - normal people being oppressed or trying to exist in a violently authoritarian London. And the game is about pushing back against that.

That it's being made by a massive conglomerate with internal issues around bullying... yeah that's a bit weird. But the idea of normal people rising up and throwing off unfair, overt privatised thuggery... I like it.

I like the idea of it but I do think Ubisoft has a bit of a bad track record when it comes to rebelling in the face of tyranny and oppression. And resistance stories already feel a bit pervasive in the "The Big Bad is so OBVIOUSLY evil we need to make sure the rebellion is full of corrupt people who are JUST AS BAD! Aren't we so smart?" department.

Honestly, in this day and age, I'm rather tired of the whole "Rebellions will become corrupt if not worse than the original tyranny they were fighting and it's questionable if we should have just been thankful for the abuse we had" trope. No, I hate it. It can sometimes tell a good story, sure, but it's so... dark and cynical and I don't like the logic. If a Rebellion falls to corruption, sure, that's bad. But that doesn't put into question the choice to rebel in the first place? The Big Bad is still the Big Bad?

I think, here, we won't see that. Maybe ALLIES of the rebellion (The Secret agent they rescue in the mission seems.... pretty unpleasant) but I think the Dead Sec bunch will be fairly clear cut GOOD. Having to make tough choices, yeah but overall good.

It's Truth in Television that revolutions tend to backfire when they get into power, but in fiction it gets tiring seeing the good guys go bad - sometimes you do just need a nice, straightforward non-cynical take!

I feel like backfire is the wrong word? Rebellions are oft united against a common enemy and well, cutting off the head of the dragon can sometimes be the easy part. If we 'won', now it's time to hash out what to do about that and, while we may all agree on what DIDN'T work the first time, what will work in it's place is far different of a debate. And that's where things get messy and, at this point, I feel the whole "Things will get a lot worse before they get better" kicks in. French Revolution abolished slavery only for Napoleon to come in and kick it right back in. The Russian Revolution (because I can never spell the name of it properly) might have been right to oppose the Romanovs, but the resulting Communist reign unleashed a lot of suffering.

But considering they only turned to outright rebellion because the other routes of putting their leaders in accountability and to the benefit of the people weren't working... It's complicated. It could get worse. It could get better. It could get worse now but be ultimately better in 10 years when the politics have untangled. But it doesn't change that right 'now' isn't working in the first place and something has to be done about that period.

I feel like 'backfire' suggests that rebellion shouldn't have happened period. That getting into the game at all is the wrong move. And I don't think that's inherently true and it's the moves across the chess board where the mistakes are made.

Agreed - backfire was the wrong word. The intent is the right one, the outcome is the uncertainty.

In this case, the game will likely end with the deposing of the baddies, the death of the irredeemable ones (because the game has shown the systems are so broken they'll just get away with it... so Black-and-White Morality will kick in to give the player the catharsis.

We won't see the aftermath or the fallout.

In the game's case, I think rebelling is the right thing to do, despite a clear active passive population (Don't rock the boat; it's all LEGAL etc)

After watching Jim Sterling's video this morning, I'm done with Ubisoft unless they show serious signs of cleaning up their corporate act. I'm not going to be one of those people who pulls the, "But I really want to play Watch Dogs," card. We have to draw the line somewhere.

It's awkward because I DO want to play these games... but there's an element of "put up or shut up" around values, standards and rewarding corporate behaviour. Paying lip service to employees whilst feeding the corporate entity success.

The fact that the company has a bad track record is awful. The mixed issue comes with the developers who are at the receiving end who probably want people to enjoy the thing they helped craft. But the issue is that product is enmeshed in the success of a Corporate entity with a really really poor track record.

I am excited for the games they have coming out, for the people who made them to get recognition.

Question is, will a company seeing poor sales relate that to said poor behaviour? Not sure. So I'm... torn. Want to show support for Devs, but at the same time... somehow show I'm not comfortable with Ubisoft as an entity?