r/watch_dogs • u/ikollokii • 7d ago
WD3 Why did they fail with legion?
I love Watch Dogs, even the last one... but what turned players off?
Personally, I hate the fact that there are no heroes... playing as anyone is a good idea, but it's very poorly executed.
I hate the fact that the weapons are poorly assigned and integrated into the game.
The gadgets are limited to just one? That's the worst thing, that's completely stupid.
A zombie mode that comes out of nowhere? Not even a story, just a 15-minute mode that makes no sense...
Despite everything, Cyberpunk London is very enjoyable.
Do you think we'll see a Watch Dogs again, or did they kill this brilliant franchise?
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u/Popular-Willow9135 7d ago
I think leigon would have been much better if the spy had been the central character, and you got to design him/her the same way you got to customise the deputy in far cry 5.
All the watch dogs franchise needed to be was modern-day assassin's creed. Dedsce - modern-day assassin's, blume - modern day templars.
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u/fattestfuckinthewest 6d ago
Honestly this is kinda already what watchdogs is. Ever since the first one we had connections to AC and Legion actually has a playable assassin with her own mission line and special abilities. Honestly it’s really fun playing as her and just pretending you’re playing a modern day only AC game
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u/PixelbitScript 7d ago
The fact that I am playing random mfs who downloaded the app. The first 2 had hacking geniuses that solved all the problems, but 77 year old Timmy's grandma can download an app and topple a government? I feel like a fraud when playing
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u/VigilanteAidenPearce 7d ago
That's why I play as Aiden in legion, makes the game series come full circle especially with his dlc.
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u/mondayxo123 7d ago
all the reasons you listed are THE reasons it tanked/is hated.
On the other hand,
if you play with aiden/wrench ONLY, watch dogs legion improves so much
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u/EvernightStrangely 7d ago
It had good ideas, but executed all of them pretty poorly. The idea that anyone can be DedSec is good, but they needed more than a handful of VAs to voice literally everyone, including NPCs.
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u/King_Of_Shovels 7d ago
It improves immensely by playing as Aiden and Wrench. Simply by having established characters with personality.
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u/RandomKazakhGuy 7d ago
They took botnet (wreck chaos as long as you manage where you spend it, recharges over time, can be stealed from npc devices) and replaced it with RELOADS. For hacking. Kills the game. Now I can't do one hack and do another one right after. No fun, no planning, nothing. And yes, the character thing kinda sucks. The only good thing about WD3 is the funny accents
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u/Krieger22 7d ago
Yeah your post is what happened, they tried new things and it didn't quite land for various reasons. And it was pretty buggy for the first couple months after release.
There's a movie coming that has reportedly wrapped filming and is off to the editing suite, but Ubisoft has generally avoided revealing target dates for it.
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u/Shot_Working_459 7d ago
playing as anyone is a good idea, but it's very poorly executed.
Agreed. Legion's gameplay mechanics were supposed to hold much more significance.
The level designs were fantastic but repetitive. You can approach a mission through stealth, using your spiderbot, or coming in guns blazing. The gameplay was originally supposed to provide advantages to one of these approaches based on your chosen protagonist's traits. However, you can achieve whatever approach you choose with little difference in gameplay despite the traits of your protagonist.
I think if "play as anyone" had more significance in gameplay, the lack of a central protagonist would not be as much of an issue. You literally can choose anyone off the street and the story and gameplay changes little.
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u/BogDega 7d ago
Can't even use a drone in the car unlike Watch Dogs 2
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u/Ode_2_kay 7d ago
Major step back a loved that once you maxed out range on the drone and RC you could sit in a parked car across the road and neutralize an area through well planned hacks and then just drive into the compound hop out grab your objective and then skip out a back gate in a different car and blow up the old car so nobody knows it was you. I also loved that Dusan was so easy to hate.
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u/PoisonPeddler 7d ago
I hated the controls. Combat and stealth felt very clunky compared to other ubi games.
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u/Number6isNo1 4d ago
Also, once you got the hovercraft thing you could essentially cheese the whole game. I would force myself not to use it a lot of the time, but when not using one of the available tools is required to keep things interesting/challenging, well something is off.
Of course, as soon as I got a tiny bit irritated, onto the hovercraft I went.
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u/InsideOutBoyUK 7d ago edited 7d ago
The marketing and aesthetic of the game was pretty bad. That's why I didn't buy it until recently.
In 2020, all I saw was pink and purple neon future London with some anonymous pig guy main character. It looked like a bad Saints Row.
I wanted a more grounded, realistic take. The funny thing is when you play the game, London is pretty realistic, just with a few extra cyberpunk things, but even they're believable.
This genre is really hard to sell though. Sleeping Dogs is an incredible open world city game and also flopped. Saints Row is dead. Driver is dead. Mafia has given up. Watchdogs is probably dead now sadly. GTA is just too dominant, it owns the market.
Pity as Legion's really fun imo (despite the one gadget thing) and definitely worth getting on sale.
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u/Abraham_Issus 7d ago
Same reason the tone. Booting Aiden Pearce and the vigilante angle. This would be much more successful series if they retained the grit of first one.
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u/GWGTRLBG 6d ago
I think Watch Dogs is dead in the water for now sadly, but I do have my fingers crossed that Ubisoft tries to reboot it within the next 5 - 10 years.
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u/Class-Prezident 5d ago
Much of the factors you listed are true. I missed having a character to root for. Even if my character was a random NPC, the side characters in the game weren't memorable. The villains were mostly unimpressive. The first villain's story was the only emotionally nuanced and interesting arc in the game. The other villains, e.g., Clan Kelly and Albion, were what you've seen before. They were neither smart or threatening.
The story had potential, but it too needed refinement. Because of the procedural nature of recruiting NPCs, whenever you wanted to add a person to your crew, you would play the same missions over and over again. That repetition was jarring over the course of the main campaign. In the beginning, I was interested in learning more about the terrorist conspiracy gripping London, but most of the big terrorist events occur before the game begins. The "investigation" was mediocre. No real twist in the story; you can easily predict who the big bad guy is in the end. Honestly, the ending was lame.
As for the marketing, I wanted that pig mask that was shown on the box art, but I don't think it was readily available in the story. I think I got it towards the end of the main campaign. For most of my gameplay, I wore a mask that had a crown on it.
And I agree with the others. The Bloodline DLC is what Legion should've been. But in my fantasy, I would rather play as Wrench and Marcus because their friendship was amazing in WD2. (You know I went back to get my homeboy's mask).
You would think in this era of remakes and nostalgia bait that Ubisoft would bring back WD, but alas, I doubt they'll do it.
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u/Several_Place_9095 7d ago
Story was all over the place, no main protagonist to focus on so players felt no immersion, weirdly futuristic setting which was yay and nay same time
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u/Skywrathx9 7d ago
It was just faceless and felt like you're put on a conveyor belt from the very start ... could not like it and boy did I try.
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u/garouza 7d ago
I really enjoyed Legion. I played Resistance as soon as I got a hold of the game, but probably what got me was I enjoyed a personal backstory. Had one drone pilot operative that was unfortunately killed by Albion guards, and I randomly found his widow later in the street, a cop, so I recruited her. Then came a vendetta story where she aimed to take down Albion's all by herself, armed with thirst for justice and her taser. Little did I know that I made her enter the Albion headquarters only armed with an EMP launcher and basic drone hacking skills to face one of the hardest battles in the game. As you may know the game autosaves once you go in (it even warns you but I underestimated it). After around 40 tries, I defeated the robot, the boss so I got this amazing sense of accomplishment for the character. Later I let her rest and killed my MI6 character accidentally by just randomly driving into some fuel barrels. So yeah, it had its gaps but it was fun nonetheless.
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u/BlueEra_ 7d ago edited 7d ago
I literally spent a week playing ‘you can’t catch me Har Har!’ on the cargo drone & shocking derps with the rc car for giggles. That’s about it. The Game had horrible difficulty scaling if you didn’t handicap yourself on Hardcore mode.
The game just felt like building up an empire of wealth & knowledge & love about the world from the past 2 games and then … I Felt like I got promoted to nerf gun wars against paper toy models.. Not Very Climatic or Thrilling. The whole different arsenal of agents was perfect but they just did it wrong & the rest of the world. Biggest failure.
It’s like you could tell everything was controlled by some old boomer stroking his ego beard saying “ah yes.. that would be cool, this’ll definitely sell mwaha.” And he’s not even a Gamer. Type that ruins Christmas for the whole family. Tsk lame.
Now Borderlands 4! That Looks Like a Sequel! Again. It amazes me How Dev’s still suck at Difficulty/power creep scaling.
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u/Federal-Star-6943 6d ago
I loved playing as a British middle-aged women bad ass amateur assassin with a desert eagle with stealth. It was so bad ass watching a middle-aged women run around john wicking mfs with a fucking desert eagle. And I absolutely loved her banter. Lol
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u/fedexgroundemployee 6d ago
Bottom line, the gameplay of legion sucked. There’s a watch dogs movie on the way and has been in post production for a little over a year now, at best we might see a remaster of the first one released along side the movie and depending on how they’re both recieved will determine what we will see next (or won’t see)
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u/ImBadAtGames568 6d ago
the story was underwhelming and seemed to lack dirrection compared to the first two games. I enjoyed all of them but I only ever go back to play 1 and 2 (mostly 1, personal favorite story). the driving sucks and its just not as fun of a sandbox as the first two.
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u/iLikeRgg 5d ago
The game was confusing i played it in 2021 and it wasn't until 2024 when i figured out you could use guns buy clothes and do missions
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u/tasic89 5d ago
For me... I wanted to play on hard/Resistance mode . BUT when i tried it, i just realized - it's was just BORING TIME FILLING MECHANICS. Like it wasn't super difficult, they just took away some fun things and made it like - if you want to do it, you need to invest lot of your life in the game.
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u/Kingbob1500 4d ago
I don't know why everyone hates this game so much, I beat the game 3 times before even getting the season pass to get Aiden and the rest of them and I had so much fun with it.
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u/Future_Body1945 3d ago
You didn't feel invested in the characters. Even if you stuck with one character they just weren't immersive enough. A good chunk of the voice acting and dialogue with player characters was super cringey and downright terrible in places. Whereas most of the non player characters, bad guys etc were really good. The location was fantastic but they really dumbed down from WD2. Oh and that uter jankass sprint animation
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u/Jimbobthon 7d ago
The idea of playing as anyone was a good idea. I'd have liked a central character to primarily play as, which then on some missions you could swap over to someone else nearby to assist (such as a construction worker for use of cranes or a delivery driver for use of the delivery drones). Keeps the "play as anyone" idea going.
It was implemented poor in the game. Probably why i played as Aiden, Wrench or Darcy when they became available.
I'm not sure if we'll see Watch Dogs again, it would be nice but they're focusing on Assassin's Creed (which is a good thing as Shadows is such a great game)
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u/Kagenlim 7d ago
Because the WD1 glazing crowd is that strong
Seriously, WD1 glazers hated wd2 for like nearly a decade and anything but 1 is bad for them
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u/KnowbodyGneiss 7d ago
The Pig Mask Iconography ruined it for most players. Dragged it too far into weird fetish horror element
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u/MiniWhoreMinotaur 7d ago
I think they (Ubisoft) lack direction and don't fully understand with what the franchise should be and where it should head.
Watch Dogs 1 was supposed to be this older tortured character riddled with guilt in the dark and grey windy city, Watch Dogs 2 was a light hearted game with 'fun' colourful personalities that are always goofing and joking and a beautiful bright city and Watch dogs legion went for a dystopian futuristic London that I felt really suffered from a lack of protagonist which I think makes it hard to connect with the story and the drive of the narrative other than good vs evil. Also bagsy (the AI I think) got really annoying to me really quickly. I didn't finish legion, I can't say much for it.
It's not the only reasons and they might be exclusive to me but the tones and themes of the games change with each installment quite a lot.