It wasn’t all that long ago that I found myself watching Archer more out of loyalty and a sense of commitment than because of its inherent quality. Like many of its fans I’d grown to love the series in the first place for its trademark espionage antics and quick-witted zingers. Times had changed. Season 11, however, represents the first batch of post-coma episodes, and they nailed my expectations for a return to normalcy with simple storylines coupled with surprisingly interesting character growth. The season finale doesn’t quite land the helipad as it should have, but it certainly has me eager to see what’s next.
It should go without saying, but SPOILERS for the Season 11 finale and all the great episodes before it. Archer isn’t a show that relies on big plot points to nail jokes or move characters along, but the show does have a tradition of setting up cool and interesting scenarios for the next season, something this finale does to moderate success.
Season 11 gives us a look at our very capable but very inappropriate cast of characters once they’ve had Archer himself ripped out of their lives. All season we’ve been watching these now “reformed” characters return to their former messy selves, culminating in the awesome rescue mission of Archer and Lana’s daughter in the penultimate episode. It begged the question of why we needed an additional episode to wrap things up, and until about the last five minutes, this stayed true throughout the majority of the season finale.
The episode begins in proper Archer fashion as Malory gives a briefing of the mission while Cyril manages to find his face planted to the floor once again. A murder at an Antarctic compound spurs a murder mystery that brings the entire agency on board, including usual stowaways Pam and Cheryl. A few interrogations later, along with a quick game of strip solitaire with Pam (of course), a second character kicks the bucket. It’s quickly revealed that a hydrogen bomb is in the mix and a plot to blast the ice caps to flood the planet is in the works. Some quick thinking involving pickle juice and your classic Archer bravery brings the bad guys, and that pesky helicopter, down and stops sea levels from rising to massive heights. End credits.
It’s a perfectly serviceable Archer episode, but for most of its run-time it’s also hard to believe this is a season finale. The episode is not here to tie up storylines. It’s not here to push characters to advance or even complete character arcs set up right when Archer returned from his three year coma. It’s a fun whodunnit that gives our characters one more chance to behave inappropriately and throw out ridiculous one-liners. That is, until the last five minutes. Suddenly there’s characters reflecting on how they’ve changed over the last eight episodes and we even get quick glimpses of Archer’s coma season characters flashing before his eyes. I loved this portion but it felt like the episode only realized it was a season ender in the last few scenes.
Even so, the ending taps into some strong themes. There’s Archer as a terrible person. Hilarious, yes, but also narcissistic and incredibly selfish. We know that, the characters know that, and for the first time in his life, Archer begins to truly know that too. More than that, since his first days out of his coma, in which it was clear his friends had infinitely improved and became better versions of themselves in his absence, Archer has had to accept that he’s a terrible influence on his pals. And by the end, he was just a margin away from admitting it out loud.
All that seems perfectly true until Archer’s massive truth bomb shortly after being berated for his irresponsible yet heroic bombing of the submarine. Everyone is using Archer as an “excuse to be your worst self” as Archer so eloquently put it. Even Lana couldn’t refute this revelation and it’s absolutely true. These people are animals. They get the job done but they’re wild to the core and they’ve been itching to get back to their natural dispositions. Archer waking from his coma is all they needed to revert back. I love that Season 11’s message is ultimately that Archer is to not be blamed for everyone’s problems and that they’ve convinced themselves otherwise.
Now onto the coma sighting shenanigans! Is Archer still in a coma? Probably not! Is it possible Archer hasn’t fully recovered from his three year slumber? Sure, why not! Were these just cool Easter Eggs to give us a chance to see the space crew and Crackers the parrot again? I’d say no. In Season 10 when Archer was constantly seeing flashes of his actual non-coma life, that built up to something. While this is on a much smaller scale, these wouldn’t be included unless there’s something not quite right with either Archer’s awakening or current reality. It would be a shame to erase what Season 11 built up so I expect some funky coma character interjections next season but nothing that makes it feel like we deleted an entire season. Krieger, your time is here!
Isn’t it great to know Archer will be back for a Season 12? Not just because Archer is once again consistently funny and back to its humble roots, but because we have a number of loose ends to catch up on. What happened with the incredibly powerful exo-suit from the third episode? Archer is friends with Barry now? That can’t last! And we definitely don’t expect Lana and Robert to stay together, right? If anything, Archer has a lot of work ahead of him regarding his daughter AJ so it’s no time to stop the Archer train yet.
Archer is best when it delivers genuine laughs without going out of its way to produce a wild plot to shake things up. Maybe the noir detective season or the pirate focused pocket of episodes is what I needed to appreciate the spy aspects of Archer again. Either way, Season 11 is a return to form that I hope continues the next time the world’s best spy pops up on our screens.
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Michael Koczwara is a writer who is ready for the permanent return of phrasing. Follow him on Twitter and Twitch.
The Xbox Series X and S consoles are going to be sold out at retail this year, and that’s something Xbox boss Phil Spencer has now apologized for.
In an appearance on the Dropped Frames podcast, Spencer said demand will outstrip supply for the new consoles this year and beyond. He said stock shortages will continue “for a few months” after release.
“We know what our supply will look like basically for the rest of the year. We’re going to have more demand than we do supply,” Spencer said. “And I will apologize in advance to people for that. We saw it with pre-orders, how much energy there was, and we were basically out [of stock] in a couple of hours, which is unfortunate. I think we are going to live in that world for a few months. We’re going to have a lot more demand than we do supply.”
This is a comment that Spencer has repeated in interviews recently. Before this, he told GameReactor that both Microsoft and Sony will sell every new console they make this year. “I am going to predict that we are both going to sell every console we build in 2020,” Spencer said.
Tropico 6 has been announced for Switch during the most recent surprise Nintendo Direct Mini. The game, which casts players as the leader of a small island nation, came to PC, PS4, and Xbox One last year. It’ll be available on the Switch Eshop from November 6.
The game, called Tropico 6 – Nintendo Switch Edition on the hybrid console, will ship with all previously released content and updates, plus a new palace design, Flamingo Pond accessory, and outfit for your El Presidente to wear. The game is available to pre-order now.
In the Tropico series, you don’t just lead the nation from afar–you also build on it, establishing infrastructure and placing buildings across your island.
Kalypso has released a trailer for this new version of the game, which you can watch below. The visual downgrade is pretty clear, but if the gameplay has survived intact, that might not matter too much.
Screenshots of the Switch version have also been released, showing off how the island will look on the console’s handheld screen.
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Tropico 6 received an 8/10 in GameSpot’s review of the PC version. “You have more than enough tools to control just about everything that happens in Tropico,” critic Daniel Starkey wrote in his review. “Failure and success, then, can feel quite a bit like a referendum not just on your policies, but on your rendition of El Presidente. The notion of dictatorship as a role that you play for yucks is still there, if that’s a hat you want to wear–though it’s harder to indulge your own selfish impulses when you can see how your actions are condemning Lydia the lumberjack to a lifetime of poverty.”
When Microsoft announced the Xbox Series X back in December 2019, people immediately roasted its design for looking like a refrigerator. Microsoft took the comments in stride, embracing the chatter with its own memes. This went even further recently when Microsoft created an actual Xbox Series X refrigerator that it sent to Snoop Dogg and other people. You can win one of these fridges, but the odds are you will get shut out.
However, Xbox marketing director Aaron Greenberg has now teased that Microsoft might release a mini-fridge version of the Xbox Series X refrigerator for everyone to buy. He asked his nearly 200,000 followers if they would be interested in buying an Xbox mini-fridge, and people resoundingly responded positively.
Help me out here for some market research. Q: Would you be interested in buying an Xbox Mini-Fridge if we made one for sale?
Of course, this is not confirmation that Microsoft will release an Xbox-branded mini-fridge at all, or anytime soon. But it would be a pretty brilliant and self-aware piece of branded marketing for Xbox. The company is known for this, too, as it previously released a line of Xbox onesies following a positive reaction to what was a silly marketing stunt.
Anthem, BioWare’s loot-shooter, has had a rough time since releasing in early 2019–so much so that the developer has promised an extensive overhaul. At the beginning of 2020, BioWare said that the update would be a long process, and now some new details about some of the changes being made have been released.
In an update on BioWare’s blog, we’ve been given some more details about the Anthem NEXT update that’s in the works. The post looks at how Javelin builds and skill trees will work after the update, and how they will change gameplay. There are some fundamental shifts here, like components being done away with and a greater emphasis on abilities.
A new work-in-progress UI for modifying your Javelin
BioWare has presented a series of bullet points explaining how gameplay and builds will change, which you can check out below.
Choice and Experimentation in your Loadout
All items are categorized to one of the 11 available equipment slots
Weapons are either Primary or Secondary, allowing distinctiveness in their role
Mods and Artifact slots replace Components
Manage Equipment and Abilities in your Loadout Screen
Reliably Create Builds
Abilities are unlocks, not drops! Play with the Abilities you want, when you want
Empower your Abilities by equipping them with Mods
Builds are defined by the synergies of Specializations, Abilities, and Equipment
Inscriptions improve build synergies, but are no longer the primary factor
Provide Choice and Progression through Skill Trees
Each Javelin can level up, awarding Skill Points
Skill points can be spent to unlock Abilities, Passives, and Stat Boosts
Each Specialization has its own Advanced Skill Tree
Expand on the Fantasy and Playstyles of Each Javelin
Javelins have access to multiple specializations that cater to different styles of gameplay
Each Javelin now wields a powerful Artifact that can be customized
Skill trees are being implemented because BioWare has realized that a player’s “Pilot Level” isn’t necessarily a good marker of progress. Players can unlock abilities, passives, triggered abilities, and stat boosts for their Javelins through the skill tree, and can focus on how they want to play to customize their build through the tree. Specializations are being tested now, which would allow players to unlock more powers through an advanced skill tree.
Artefacts, which are extremely powerful, useful pieces of tech, are also being added to the game, replacing components. These will give players more scope for adapting their Javelin, and hopefully lead to more exciting builds.
The developer has previously talked about how the game would overhaul loot, and it all sounds like an improvement. Of course, whether this revitalizes the game’s player base remains to be seen.
Anthem has not officially announced PS5 or Xbox Series X versions or upgrades, but the game is playable on next-gen systems through backwards compatibility.
There’s a lot going on in Watch Dogs: Legion. As a member of the hacker resistance group DedSec, your job is to bring down the terrorist organization Zero Day and fight back against Albion, a paramilitary company that has all but taken over London in the wake of an attack on the city. To do that, you have a bunch of tools at your disposal, like the ability to hack all sorts of machinery–and you can recruit just about anyone in the city to serve as a playable character, with each potential recruit bringing their own skills.
There are a lot of systems to keep in mind as you run around London fighting fascism, though. You’ve got your hacker gear, weapons, and a melee fighting system that’s new to the series. You’ll also find all kinds of side quests that have various benefits and with a city full of potential recruits, it can be tough to decide who to bring into your organization.
To help you get DedSec on its feet, we’ve compiled 10 tips you should know about as you begin your career as a cyberpunk insurrectionist. Here’s a rundown of what you should upgrade, what you should look for in recruits, and what you should prioritize in the game’s first few hours. And if you haven’t yet, make sure to check out our Watch Dogs: Legion review.
You can find tech points in the world or get them as rewards for completing missions, but make sure you spend them on upgrades whenever you can.
1. Find Tech Points And Spend Them, Quick
After the first few missions at the start of the game, you’ll liberate your first London district, which reveals the hidden locations of all its tech points. It’s worth going after them (and keeping track of the ones you’re earning for completing missions)–tech points allow you to unlock a host of additional hacks and gadgets. These include weapons, AR cloaking tech, and more, and having access to those gadgets can drastically change how you approach situations. Early on, it’s easy to forget that you’re accumulating tech points and that you can spend them on the Gear menu, but you should identify what you want to upgrade and start making moves to get better gear as soon as you can.
You’ll use your spider bot almost constantly on stealth missions and it can be great for keeping your DedSec operatives out of harm’s way.
2. It’s All About Spider Bot
In Watch Dogs: Legion, you’ll use Tech Points earned from completing missions or found in the world to buy and upgrade different gadgets you can equip to your characters, or to earn additional hacks to your repertoire of abilities. One of the first options you can afford is the spider bot, and you should prioritize it. The spider bot is ridiculously useful–it allows you to send a tiny robot pal into hostile territory, where it can climb through vents, hack most objects, and even flip some physical switches or pick up collectibles and additional tech points you’d otherwise need to reach yourself. The spider bot can’t do everything you need to do in a given area–sometimes you need human hands to work on a circuit board or ctOS breaker–but when the spider bot can do the job, it keeps your character well out of harm’s way. You’ll get a ton of use out of your spider bots, so unlock them and upgrade them early.
Drones can be a real problem in infiltration and combat scenarios. Unlock the ability to shut down the strong ones as early as you can to save yourself some grief.
3. Upgrade Your Drone Hacking
There are lots of drones in London, and they come in many varieties. You’ll start with the ability to hack the most basic ones–your ctOS surveillance drones and traffic drones, essentially–but you’ll find before long that there are tougher, better-armed drones in closed-off areas that can give you trouble. One of your first priorities should be to upgrade your drone-hacking to at least get the ability to shut down Riot Drones and other combat drone types. If nothing else, you want to be able to disable any drone that’s about to spot you (or shoot you) while stealthing through an area. That’ll give you time to reposition or smash the drone before it gets a second chance to sound the alarm.
Further upgrading your drone-hacking lets you hijack combat drones so you can use them to scout an area or even fight enemies, which can go a long way toward keeping your operatives alive. Hacking the right drone can let you go loud and fight a host of enemies without your operatives ever facing danger–which is great if you decide to play in permadeath mode.
Use cameras to scout locations and, most important, to mark targets for easier tracking later.
4. Scout With Cameras And Mark Targets
This one is a pretty standard Watch Dogs element, but if you haven’t played an entry in the series in a while or this is your first one, it’s worth explaining. Your primary hacking capability is hijacking cameras, which allow you visual access to areas you can’t otherwise reach or would have to sneak into. Cameras can let you scout out an area before you enter it, which is extremely useful for finding a path toward your objective and seeing what opposition you’re facing. You’ll also want to sweep your targeting reticule over enemies as you look around with a hijacked camera. Doing so allows you to “tag” enemies so you can keep tabs on them on your radar and at a distance with a little bit of extra highlighting on your screen. It’s extremely helpful to pan over all the enemies you can find before you head into a restricted area, so use cameras to your advantage. It’s also worth noting that you can often hack objects through cameras if you have line-of-sight on them.
You can hack traps to arm them while you’re hijacking cameras, allowing you to take down enemies without ever entering an area.
5. Go All-Out With Traps
As you’re scouting a location through hijacked cameras, you should spot a bunch of interactive items throughout most restricted areas. These are traps you can set that will explode if any enemies wander past them, and if you want to soften up a location and make your job a lot easier, go ahead and arm them all. Enemies on patrol will often just meander into traps and take themselves out, and while that can put other nearby enemies on alert, they’ll never quite figure out what’s going on. In areas with lots of traps, you can knock out a bunch of enemies before you ever even set foot inside the building, which means a lot less opposition or fewer opportunities to get found out. Traps are easy to deal with and they’re just about everywhere, so make use of them when you can.
Stealth is often a lot easier when you ride to your destination on a cargo drone.
6. Cargo Drones Make Stealth A Lot Easier
Though you can go just about anywhere in London early in Legion, you should prioritize getting through story missions early in the game. Though you can go anywhere in London from nearly the start to recruit some extra characters and get access to one of the best abilities in the game: the cargo drone. These big, crate-lugging robots are large enough for a character to ride on, giving you the ability to ascend, Lakitu-like, over the streets of London–and the rooftops of most buildings.
The cargo drone makes infiltration a lot easier in many circumstances. Instead of having to find a way to unlock a front door, bypass a security system, and sneak past guards, often with the use of a spider bot to open the way, the cargo drone lets you just float over walls and above security. It won’t work in all circumstances, but it works in a lot of them, offering different and easier ways to approach some tough stealth situations. You’ll find you can float through an area to reach a tough spot, or get close to an objective and then chuck in a spider bot to finish the job. Prioritize working through the story far enough to get a cargo drone, as you’ll find plenty of opportunities to use it.
The Deep Profiler upgrade gives you a lot of extra information about tough-to-recruit characters.
7. Your Next Upgrade: The Deep Profiler
We’ve recommended several upgrades you should prioritize from the Gear menu, but once you’ve got drone-hacking in place and a spiffed-up spider bot, you’ll want to snag the Deep Profiler upgrade. This thing gives you additional information about possible recruits, and while you won’t need it right away if you’re just following the story, it quickly becomes extremely helpful for getting better, tough-to-sway recruits on your team.
As you profile possible recruits in London, you’ll find that some aren’t too keen on DedSec in general. Without some work to change their opinion of the hacker group, you can’t get them to join up. The Deep Profiler will give you information on those people’s schedules and backgrounds, providing you with information about the tasks you can perform to bring them around to your side, and the places their schedules will take them. With that info, you can work on recruits who can be extremely helpful for your team, like Albion soldiers and police officers. Which brings us to our next point…
You’ll want a variety of operatives on your team with skills in different areas–but not every potential teammate is worth recruiting.
8. Build A Well-Rounded Team
The early portions of Legion’s story will net you a few recruits without much difficulty–you’ll pick a recruit near the start of the game from a large batch, get a high-level hacker when you follow the story quests to liberate Camden, and add a construction worker with a cargo drone within an hour or two. But once the story starts to pick up the pace and brings you to tougher locations (around the time you start looking into Clan Kelley), you’re going to start building out your team so that they can handle a variety of situations. At this point, you should begin profiling people whenever you’re wandering around to keep an eye out for teammates who might be helpful.
In addition to a quality hacker, you’ll want teammates who are good in a variety of situations. Look for operatives who are good in a brawl, ones who have a focus on stealth, and ones who get perks in a gunfight. There are also potential recruits who give the entire team benefits–doctors can shorten the heal time of anybody who’s injured, and some recruits provide buffs like making it easier for your squad to escape the cops. And some characters come with uniforms that allow them easier access to certain restricted locations. Take the time to build a team with multiple strengths and you’ll provide yourself with a lot more options for dealing with missions, as well as one that can adapt to unexpected situations more easily. You can always dismiss a recruit from the team if you find someone better later on.
Scouting out London will help you pin down where objectives are and help you learn how to escape from chases.
9. Explore The City And Its Districts
Unlike past Ubisoft open-world games, there’s no magic map-revealing towers to climb or outposts to destroy in Legion. If you want to know what’s going on in London, you’ll need to cruise around the streets and figure it out on your own. There are a lot of fast-travel points in the game that can make getting around a little easier, but when you’re first starting out, steal a car and drive as much as you can. You’ll want to get familiar with the boroughs of London for when you inevitably have to flee the police or avoid an Albion checkpoint decked out with turrets, for instance. Uncovering the map will also show you where shops are so you can deck out your operatives in new clothes.
The most useful things to find in any given district, however, are the places you need to attack in order to eventually liberate it from Albion oppression. Each district has several objectives you’ll need to complete, and they won’t all immediately be apparent until you do some exploring. Liberate a district and the map will reveal all its tech points, so you can earn yourself some quick upgrades, should you need them. Uncovering the map as early as you can will give you a lot more information as you make getaways and open up fast-travel locations so you can easily get to missions, and that’ll save you time in the long run.
Liberating districts earns you “skilled operatives,” who come with a bunch of extra perks that make them worth the effort.
10. Make Liberating Districts A Priority
There’s one other major benefit to liberating London’s various districts: every time you do, you unlock a high-level DedSec recruit automatically. These characters are especially good at their roles and come with a bunch of useful passive and active perks, which means they’re going to be very helpful in your quest to bring down Albion and Zero Day. You’ll have to do some extra work to unlock them, though. Each district has objectives you’ll need to complete, like hacking billboards or freeing imprisoned freedom fighters, and once you do that, you’ll unlock a final mission for the district that you’ll need to complete. The effort is worth it, though, especially as you’re building out your team and filling roles to make sure you can handle lots of different situations. Check the districts for what kind of recruits they’re offering and knock out their missions to give yourself a big leg-up in creating a strong, well-balanced DedSec crew.
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Borderlands 3 is coming to the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 at launch, and the next-gen versions of the game have now reached a major milestone. The official Borderlands Twitter account has announced that the game has been certified for release on both systems–meaning, essentially, that it has gone gold.
Owners of the game on PS4 or Xbox One will be able to upgrade for free within the same console family. Because of this, the game won’t come bundled with DLC by default–you’ll need to buy that separately.
These versions of the game will run at 4K/60fps, and support four-player split-screen multiplayer. There’s a second season pass coming to the game, too, so there will be plenty of content updates to keep you playing.
Gearbox had previously announced Borderlands 3 as a launch game for both next-gen systems, but in 2020, nothing is ever really set in stone–so it’s good to have this confirmed. Of course, a game can still go gold and then get delayed, as has been the case for Cyberpunk 2077, but it seems unlikely here.
The Xbox Series X is available from November 10, while the PS5 begins its global rollout on November 12. Borderlands 3 will be available on both systems from day one.
Watch Dogs: Legion releases on Thursday, October 29. While we reviewed the game on PC, other outlets playing the Xbox One version have encountered overheating issues on Xbox One X. Ubisoft says it plans to release an update on October 30 that’s intended to resolve the issue.
Watch Dogs: Legion takes the foundations and ideas of its predecessors and expands upon them exponentially. The core conceit of Legion lies in the old adage of “strength in numbers,” which manifests in the game letting you recruit and play as nearly any character you come across, amassing a ragtag crew of freedom fighters. This open-ended stance to fighting the system is a significant change for the franchise, and it’s bolstered by improved hacking and social-engineering gameplay. Legion’s approach, while admirable, does have some unintended issues that make its powerful message of unity waver at inopportune times, but it still manages to make a profound statement about hope with its novel approach to player agency.
Legion is set in a near-future, more technologically advanced London. Longstanding hacker group DedSec has been framed for a series of bombings in the city, and its members are branded as terrorists. This, however, was all engineered by the mysterious rival hacker group known as Zero Day. In the chaos after the bombing, London and its citizens are effectively caught in the vice-grip of encroaching fascism and suffocating capitalism due to the occupation of Albion, a private military group, as well as criminal and corporate enterprises taking advantage of the power vacuum. With many key operatives dead or missing, DedSec London starts from scratch by crowdsourcing new members made up of like-minded citizens wanting to liberate the city.
The London in Watch Dogs: Legion is presented as a more advanced and exaggerated version of the real-life London. However, this interpretation of the city still reflects the present mood of 2020, albeit with more of a cyberpunk-dystopia aesthetic. The city’s history and its iconic landmarks are the backdrop for stark futurism. The majesty of Buckingham Palace and the bohemian charm of Camden are washed with parcel delivery drones, holographic advertisements, and self-driving cars that flood your line of sight. Of course, all of this also makes for an exciting playground for your hacking antics.
In a game with multiple playable characters, the one constant that you’ll have across them is your connection to London itself. Each of the eight districts has its own varied cultures, demographics, and cultural stylings, making England’s capital city an exciting place to explore. It’s cool to see areas like the Tower of London and Piccadilly Circus recreated with stunning detail, and there’s something to appreciate in how much effort went into presenting the locales through a dystopian lens. The game manages to capture the history and the cultural diversity of London, while also juxtaposing it with the banality of evil represented by the presence of Albion, who detain citizens in plain sight.
Much of the flavor and atmosphere of the city is rooted in the now. With Brexit, weaponized social media, and far-right ideologies going mainstream, Legion effectively portrays the inherent angst and bewilderment at seeing your country fall slowly into chaos–poignant for the troubles of the present day. The main story deals with topics relating to nationalism, xenophobia, and which class of people should be in control. At times it can get unnerving to see how real life seeps into Legion’s story, especially when it comes to the inhumane treatment of immigrants.
The main story of Legion is heavy in its subject matter, feeling like a mix of Black Mirror and Mr. Robot. It grapples with themes around nationalism, capitalism, classism, and of course, policing. Although the execution is somewhat scattershot, the moments in which the game chooses to shine a light on these pervading issues can be sobering. The most notable example involves a guest appearance by British grime rapper Stormzy, who gives a rousing and powerful performance confronting systemic racism. He takes the stage and confronts the people with a truth of Legion’s world, and it packs a powerful punch because it reflects the realities of our own. “I am the one they fear the most,” he says. “I’m a black man with money.”
Through text messages, podcasts, and other supplementary means of delivering narrative, Legion lays bare even more of the issues plaguing society. Text messages reveal that Albion, effectively a police force, is targeting and harassing citizens in public, and recalling this information as you watch people out on the street fall victim to these practices can sting. Radio shows mock the in-game right-wing ideologies which, when described, sound ridiculous and the stuff of fiction, but aren’t all that far from what we hear in real life.
What really hits home about Watch Dogs Legion is that, as the cartoonishly bleak world comes into focus, it becomes difficult to ignore the immediate parallels to our own real-world society. Sure, it might not interrogate the issues and explore the nuances with a great deal of depth, but the broad strokes of the brush are enough to blur the line between fiction and reality, and at that point you have to confront just how far our own society has fallen. Ubisoft games have often used real-world politics as set dressing, but on this occasion, it feels like a genuine attempt to at least identify the problems it is leveraging as narrative milieu and present their cold hard truths.
For the most part, the main narrative does a good job of tackling these topics, but the impact is lessened somewhat because of the open-world format of the game. The game’s scope is too wide to deliver its messages in a sharp and concise way. As a result, the 25-hour main plot can feel like it drifts into the periphery as the core narrative becomes secondary to the moment-to-moment actions and events that occur when the open-world mechanics are at work. The knock-on effect is that the side activities are left to do a lot of the heavy lifting on exploring the nuance in these themes, which they do reasonably well.
Like previous games, Watch Dogs: Legion hinges on the familiar loop of open-world gameplay, which entails exploration, combat, stealth, and in-game narrative events. While Legion uses a more streamlined hacking system, it leans much further into the systemic effects of hacking and manipulating social threads to fulfill your goals. Depending on how you utilize the city’s ctOS infrastructure–which consists of cameras, phones, computers, AI drones, and other machines you can hack–you can accomplish many of your goals with your enemies being none the wiser, giving you the sense that you’re always on a heist.
Watch Dogs: Legion reaches its highs when channeling elements of immersive sims, where many of your choices can cascade into a satisfying chain of reactions that yield the desired result. Hacking is your core connection to the world, and it opens up many clever opportunities when it comes to figuring out how to achieve your present goals. In one mission, I came up to an enemy base that had a vehicle I had to recover. While I could have snuck in, knocked out the guards with my non-lethal instruments, and taken the vehicle, I instead went with a more elegant solution. Using the cameras, I was able to remotely examine and download data keys from their tablets to gain access to the base’s gates. With the gates now opened, I hacked into the vehicle and had it accelerate forward out of the base. I made a dash for the car and rode off while the guards were left stewing in their confusion. All of this was done without ever setting foot in the base, and it felt incredibly satisfying getting the best of them. Coupled with the randomly generated playable characters, Legion presents many interesting opportunities to take advantage of, and its core gameplay represents the prospect of the Watch Dogs hacker fantasy at its best.
Legion’s true stars are London’s citizens, all of whom are randomly generated based on various professions, ethnic backgrounds, and other personalized details. The previous games allowed you to learn cursory information about citizens around you, but in Legion, you can use this information to scout prospects. Depending on if they favor DedSec, they’ll ask you to complete minor objectives to seal the bond. In a clever mechanic, the citizens of London will remember and react to decisions you make. For example, I was surprised a potential recruit disapproved of DedSec because a different character I played as accidentally hit them with a car–the game even makes note of this in their file.
With such a vast list of characters, you’ll likely find yourself leaning on a select few operatives as your A-team, especially if they are gifted when it comes to hacking, driving, or melee combat. Still, Legion has a way of tossing in a curveball recruit that could be in the running for your new favorite. A particular standout for me was a gold-painted performance artist who could hide in plain sight to complete his goals–and collect tips while he was at it. It can be bizarre seeing what sort of characters you can pull in on your crusade, and it’s solid fun getting to use whatever skills they have in some critical missions to succeed by the skin of their teeth.
While each operative is capable, missions can and will likely turn sour after a wrong decision, resulting in all sorts of enemies coming down on you with assault rifles and combat drones. Even failing recruitment missions can set you back, prompting you to work extra hard to get back into a potential candidate’s good graces. Adding to this stress is the option to enhance the campaign to include permanent deaths for your operatives–meaning once they fall in a mission, they’re gone for good. It’s a clever addition that adds a bit more realism and a greater sense of consequence to the campaign, which can make some of the more daring missions feel more stressful, especially knowing that losing a favorite operative will leave a lasting sting. But even without permadeath, the difficulty can still be quite challenging, with failure taking your operative out of the game for a set amount of time.
I often found myself falling down a rabbit hole to gain new operatives and explore more of the city to complete the laundry list of objectives required to recruit them. In some cases, I found members of my team kidnapped by their own personal rivals, and I had to undergo an impromptu rescue mission–all of which was randomly generated. The game’s constant stream of characters and the opportunities that pop up certainly makes it inviting to break off on tangents to meet the requirements needed to recruit them. However, you’ll eventually also fall into a repetitive loop of recycled objectives and dialogue set in all-too-familiar areas, albeit with different voice overs. This repetition also makes London feel a bit small, considering the amount of ground you’ll have to retread constantly. As engaging as it is to constantly bounce around characters, over time, Legion’s many wacky excursions can also give rise to periods of aimlessness without a centralized viewpoint and structure to guide you.
Watch Dogs: Legion does a lot to confront topics like fascism, inequality, and the idea that new technology exposes and amplifies old fears and hatred.
And while these characters have great personalities on the surface, they can appear mismatched for the moment and context of what’s happening. This can lead to some unexpected and bizarre shifts in tone. For example, during one of the game’s more haunting plot threads, DedSec unearths an underground organ-harvesting operation, with its products coming from kidnapped immigrants who are kept in a detainment camp located within London. On its own, this is an incredibly gut-wrenching and profound moment where the game’s drama and narrative chops are hitting its highs. However, I made the unfortunate choice of using one of the more flashy characters in the lead-up to this mission–a cosplayer who wears a bright reflective jacket and glowing holographic cat ears. Seeing her walk down the dark and bloody hallways was jarring and undermined the moment. When you couple this with the aimless structure, it can be easy to detach from what’s going on or not buy into the sense of urgency the narrative wants you to believe there is.
In moments like this, the overall narrative and tonal issues that Watch Dogs: Legion has can force their way to the front of mind, but the core gameplay of hacking the world, making connections, and seeing your favorite operative succeed is satisfying enough that it makes it easier to not get hung up on them. The main story hits some impressive highs during the latter half thanks to the aforementioned Stormzy mission and the podcasts, emails, and even chats with your fellow DedSec members that tackle the heavier subject matter. At its best, Legion manages to stay on message while keeping things fun and exciting. And in some ways, the goofy absurdity of Legion’s characters and wacky side activities feels like an appropriate match for the sad absurdity of Legion’s world.
In the past, Ubisoft has had an unfortunate history of missing the mark when it comes to utilizing real-world events, politics, and other hot-topic issues for the backdrop of their games. However, Watch Dogs: Legion does a lot to confront topics like fascism, inequality, and the idea that new technology exposes and amplifies old fears and hatred. Legion not only does an effective job of showing the banality of evil in plain sight, but also, in a more optimistic light, shows how the citizens look to London’s culture and to each other to overcome oppression.
Watch Dogs: Legion is an anti-fascist game, and it’s admirable that it sticks to that message and sees it through to a satisfying and affirming conclusion. It also bolsters the franchise’s clever hacking gameplay to offer more creativity than ever. One of Legion’s more profound messages is about what it means to be a true Londoner, and by the game’s end, you’ll have a DedSec crew made of wildly diverse and disparate citizens from unique cultural, ethnic, and economic backgrounds–all united in their goal to restore their home. If anything, that’s as powerful a message for the game as you can get.
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It’s a perfectly serviceable Archer episode, but for most of its run-time it’s also hard to believe this is a season finale. The episode is not here to tie up storylines. It’s not here to push characters to advance or even complete character arcs set up right when Archer returned from his three year coma. It’s a fun whodunnit that gives our characters one more chance to behave inappropriately and throw out ridiculous one-liners. That is, until the last five minutes. Suddenly there’s characters reflecting on how they’ve changed over the last eight episodes and we even get quick glimpses of Archer’s coma season characters flashing before his eyes. I loved this portion but it felt like the episode only realized it was a season ender in the last few scenes.
