Last time I finished up Watch Dogs 2 to make sure I was not skipping the middle of the story. Now it was time to finally join the Watch Dogs Legion resistance. I was looking forward to building a crew of misfits and random old people, but I also had fun recruiting some useful people.
If you are ready to play too, then I suggest getting it through Uplay+ ($15/month) instead of paying $60 upfront for just 1 game. Uplay+ gives you access to ALL Ubisoft games with the deluxe additions and all DLC. They don’t pay me (at least not yet), but it’s worth it for playing this game and AC Valhalla, then you have access to all the other games.
Watch Dogs Legion Performance
The first step with every PC game for me is to make sure that the resolution is set to ultra wide, Ray Tracing is on and same for DLSS. In the beginning, the tutorial mission was small enough where I did not notice any issues at first. When I was let loose onto the open world, it was apparent there were issues.
There was some definite jankiness and the game did not seem to want to let me show the FPS counter. I did finally get the Nvidia counter on there to confirm I was somewhere between 30-40 FPS with my Nvidia RTX 2080. It also was strange that people and cars were blurry at certain distances. Having just finished Watch Dogs 2, it was not as crisp in comparison.
After making sure drivers and patches were all installed, I read that people were having issues with Ray Tracing and DLSS. The optimize option in Geforce Experience didn’t help, so I used auto detect in game with much better results. It turned off Ray Tracing and DLSS, along with setting some things down to High/Medium. This actually made visuals and framerate so much better.
This is the point where the Nvidia RTX 3080 being sold out really stings, because I really want to push the game to it’s limits.
Watch Dogs Legion Tutorial Mission
The controls were mostly the same as Watch Dogs 2, but some of the variations were glaring. My playtime blurred everything together, so I can’t recall those differences except for hacking cars. The left/right option was swapped with the forward/backward, but I’m used to it now. People that played part 2 years ago probably won’t notice.
It was nice to see the improved graphics and animations as I learned the new controls (again the beginning showed not graphical issues). I like how they introduce your DedSec team only to basically take them all off the board. I guess this was necessary to allow you to rebuild from scratch.
Building the Crew
I’ve spent hours just building my crew. After a while there are a lot of common people with similar skills, but you will run into some special or weird ones. I don’t know if the developers track how many times you profile people to find out their bio/skills, but I must be up to the hundreds now.
You typically have to perform some type of mission to get the recruit to join DedSec in Watch Dogs Legion, but they usually are not very hard, especially if you have a spider drone. People that don’t currently like DedSec take extra missions to convince them. Recruitment is definitely a big strength for Watch Dogs Legion.
Construction Worker
It’s one of the first specialized recruit you pickup. I love how his skill was to call a cargo drone (you can ride it up to rooftops). It’s the most useful drone in the game. It’s funny how he also has uniformed access to construction sites (gangs in construction zones might not notice you unless you get close). His weapons were a big pipe wrench and nail gun, perfectly in character.
Spy
A fun platforming puzzle side mission using the spider bot to navigate the interior of Big Ben unlocked this operator for me. The spy has a silenced pistol, an Aston Martin style car she can call, a Bond Style watch that can disable surrounding enemy’s weapons and a skill where the spy takes less damage.
The car has it’s own set of tools that make the spy a must have operator. Their car can us an AR cloak to hide the car (just like James Bond) AND it can launch missiles. With this and the other skills available, the spy is an overpowered member to have in your crew. You can choose to balance things using some geriatric recruits to challenge yourself after owning people with the spy.
MMA Fighter
Wanting to play around with the bare knuckles boxing league side missions, I chose to recruit a brawler I profiled earlier on. She was an MMA fighter with a mouth guard skill and a knock out punch. These allowed her to take more damage and hit harder.
She destroyed the fighters in the tournament I put her in and that gave me a choice of other fighters to recruit.
Sex Worker
I said I wanted misfits, so I found and recruited one from a back alley. The only real skill she had was a sports car and I’m sure Ubisoft didn’t want to push things too far with the skills. Still thought it would be funny to have her on my team.
Pan Handler
Another misfit for my team has low mobility (I chose a super old one) and his pan handling skill allows him to beg for money. It is really funny to see him hold out the cup for change and most people mock him. Every once in awhile, someone will give him some ETO (in game cash).
Medic
Your operatives can die (I turned on Permadeath), but they can also survive and end up in the hospital. There’s a decent number of minutes it will take for them to recover, but a medic has a passive skill to get your injured players out of the hospital faster. You also get uniform access to hospital locations.
The guy I found also has access to an ambulance as his personal vehicle and a dart gun to incapacitate enemies. It’s a nice to have these crucial parts of the team.
So Many More Recruits
Next time I’m looking forward to recruiting a hitman to play around with the gunkata (aka gung fu like John Chow movies) skill. I want to go full on John Wick mode for a bit.
Some of the other people in my list of possible recruits include fun people like: a human statue (like you see in Vegas), drone expert, football hooligan, saxophone player, police officer and more.
Watch Dogs Legion Equipment
Spider Bot
This is the first thing everyone should buy with the Tech resource. You can use it to crawl through vents or other hard to reach places and physically connect with systems. This allows you to keep your distance from guards. There are even upgrades you can get later to attack people, jump higher and boost.
If you really want to spend your tech on other upgrades first, then many missions have spider drones you can borrow.
AR Cloak
Much like the spy’s car, you can hide yourself predator style for a few seconds. I think this is another must have, especially for operators that have skills for close combat or guns. You can use it to slip past guards or getaway if you get overwhelmed.
There’s a lot of other ones that I have even touched yet.
Watch Dogs Legion Deep Profiler
A must have for recruiting hard to get people like Albion guards, cops and gang members. It gives you extra detail about the person you want to recruit, along with a timeline of possible ways to get in them to hate DedSec less to open up their recruitment mission. It’s a great app for the stalker in you.
Other Tech
I’ve only unlocked a small set of what’s available, so I look forward to trying the other ones I’ve seen like combat drones, AR shroud to cover bodies and upgrades for my current drones.
Watch Dogs Legion Missions
Much like Watch Dogs 2, the missions in Watch Dogs Legion include a lot of the same mechanics, at least so far. This is not a bad thing considering all the variation you have in your approach. It adds even more variation by rotating which crew members you use.
I have the option to use drones to unlock or download whatever the mission requires. If I want more action, I can use the hitman to roll around and use the instant gun takedowns full John Wick style. To use more stealthy approach, I can equip the AR clock to slip by guards unnoticed and use distractions to get the jump on them or just go around.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the main story and have just had a blast recruiting people while inciting unrest in each of the borough. I do know the main story revolves around a rival hacker group that framed DedSec for London bombings. I plan on digging into that main story after I’ve done more recruiting to round out my team.
This game is a must play, even if the only thing you end up doing is recruiting weird people.