Every year, I dedicate my last video to the
most innovative game I played in the last 12 months. Just one game that I felt did something truly
unique and memorable. In the past, I've featured Her Story, Event[0],
Snake Pass, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Baba is You. But this year, I'm going for something quite
different. It's not a charming indie game, or a detective
simulator. No: this year it's a big, blockbuster, Triple
A title about shooting people. This time, I'm looking at Watch Dogs: Legion. ♫ Music ♫ Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are that an
open world Ubisoft game could be considered innovative. But this third instalment in the Watch Dogs
series is built around a core feature that I have to admit is wildly ambitious: a feature
called "Play as Anyone". Instead of having a single, authored main
character like Aiden Pierce or Marcus Holloway, Legion has about 9 million of them - or, in
other words, the entire population of London. You can walk up to anyone on the street, recruit
them into the resistance group DedSec, and then play as them. You can swap between a gun-toting granny with
hiccups, or a podcaster with an uzi, or dozens of other would-be heroes. And they're not like Pokemon or XCOM units
- they temporarily become the main character, who talks in cutscenes and everything. PROTAGONIST: "Oh my days. How's a girl like you get out of that clash?" Thematically, the idea is that a revolution
doesn't come from a single person - but the collective action of many. And so if you're going to take down an authoritarian
police state - you're going to need a few friends. And mechanically, it's a natural extension
of systems found in the first Watch Dogs games where you could hack into anyone's phone to
learn small snippets about that person. What if that wasn't just flavour text? What if that person really had a full life
of work, hobbies, and relationships? And so that was the pitch, made in interviews
and E3 announcements. Just the sort of pie-in-the-sky idea that
you'd expect from director Clint Hocking - designer on the fiercely unorthodox Far Cry 2, and
a game design nerd who does lofty GDC talks and coined the phrase ludonarrative dissonance. But let's put pre-release hype aside. How does this feature actually work, under
the hood? And, most importantly, what does it bring
to the game? Let's start with technical, because implementing
this feature was a staggering logistical challenge that required clever solutions and workarounds. I learned this stuff by reading interviews,
talking to a few Ubisoft devs, and testing the game itself. So first things first, no - Ubisoft obviously
didn't hand craft millions of unique characters. Instead, Legion makes use of random generation
to create people on the fly. Which, in of itself, isn't too revolutionary. It's not that different to character creators
in games which can be used to make an infinite supply of unique people. Though, the animations and voices are certainly
impressive. For animation, an old lady needs to move differently
to a young man, meaning Ubisoft needed to make dozens of different animation sets for
the main character. And for voices, the game's script needed to
be rewritten and recorded around 20 times to account for different genders, accents,
and dialects, including Irish, cockney, African-Caribbean, and Eastern European. Clever modulation tech was used to create
different versions of these voices. But it's actually what these characters do
before they enter your team that makes them really interesting. Because when they're just citizens of London
they seem to perfectly fit their surroundings, follow regular schedules, have jobs and family
members, and so on. To achieve this, Ubisoft used a pair of very
clever solutions. So for starters, each character has a dozen-or-so
different data points like ethnicity, salary, associates, and workplace. But it's not the case that each one of these
things is independently generated. Instead, there's something of a cascading
effect - where one choice dictates another. To explain this in full, let's see how this
works on a random female NPC - Heidi Khumalo. The most important thing is her location,
because Ubisoft used real census data to ensure that the game accurately depicts the different
boroughs of London. The people in Brixton should seem very different
to the people in Westminster, after all. I met Heidi in Lambeth which influenced the
chances of her having her specific ethnicity, clothing, and her job as a computer repairer. Her ethnicity and gender defined her name
and voice. Her job determined where she works,
her gameplay perks, and her salary . That salary then determined which home she'd
be randomly assigned to. These data points, and a little more randomness,
allows the game to build a daily schedule for Heidi: sleeping at home, visiting her
grandmother in hospital, committing a bit of vandalism, and working in the electronics
shop - before repeating it the next day. So this is a clever system where Ubisoft can
generate characters who feel reasonably organic - because data points aren't random, but heavily
influenced by each other to create a coherent picture. The second solution comes down to when this
information is decided. You might think that all of this data was
generated in the studio and then put on the disc. Or that the game generates all this information
when you first load the game, like in Minecraft. But no. While it would be cool to generate, track,
and simulate millions of civilians all at once, it's just not technically possible. So here's how it works. When you first see a character, they are pretty
much just like an NPC in any other game. A random human that spawns into the world
around you, and then disappears from memory when you drive away. A fleeting handful of bits and bytes. Some, easily observable factors like gender,
clothes, and voice are generated - but they don't have income, schedule or list
of associates. It's only when you actively engage with someone
- when you profile them, add them to your list of potential recruits, or even injure
them - that this information is filled in. For example, this woman is a glazier who is
protesting in Southwark, and will just stand there, repeating her animation. All night, if you wait long enough. But add her to your recruits and her personality
will be fleshed out. She'll get a salary, associates, and
metadata - all using the cascading system described earlier. Because you recruited her at a protest at
8AM, that will now be part of her schedule and she'll return here to protest for an hour
each day. But now she'll also go work at an antiques
shop, read mystery novels in Southbank, and more. Characters in Watch Dogs: Legion are, essentially,
quantum in nature - their full personality is only determined when you specifically observe
them. NPC: "Are you DedSec?
Thank the lord! I could use your help." But it's necessary because it means the game
only needs to keep track of a certain number of people. At different levels of detail, depending on
how important they are. Which means the game never runs out of memory. Speaking of memory - one more datapoint is
each character's opinion of DedSec - which can be influenced by events in their life. If we assault them, or kill one of their associates,
their opinion will drop - all the way to "hates DedSec", which means they'll never join up. But if we help them out, or beat up a competitor,
their opinion will rise - until it tops out and they join the team. These events can also change their schedule. If a family member is killed, instead of hanging
out with them they might instead go mourn at a local graveyard. All of this put together leads to a game where
every person in London has a rich inner life, a daily routine, family and friends, and a
shifting opinion of DedSec. And you can recruit that character and use
their unique skills in missions, giving the game a literally infinite supply of unique
characters. But the thing is - and this bit is quite important:
none of this actually matters. One of the most critical questions that Ubisoft
had to answer with Watch Dogs: Legion was not "how do you make a game where you can
play as anyone" - but instead, "why should anyone care?" Well, there's a couple answers on the game's
official website. For one, it says "choose the right operatives
to best confront the challenges ahead", suggesting that you should recruit someone who will offer
you an advantage in the mission you're about to carry out. That's cool - but this is completely undermined
by the fact that the NPCs are all incredibly similar. In London, every citizen can hack a computer,
drive a car, fire a gun, and do stealth takedowns. And their unique gameplay perks are often
unhelpful or insignificant - outside of a few outliers like some overpowered recruits
and those with uniformed access that let you get into buildings unseen. Plus, every mission can be completed in so
many different ways - including hacking, shooting, or stealth. Which means every character is totally feasible,
and ultimately it doesn't matter who you hire or who you choose for a specific mission. Why bother following a character's schedule
or manipulating their opinion of DedSec, when there's a million other characters who are
equally capable? Of course, those characters might die - temporarily
or permanently, depending on the mode you're playing. And that will force you to find more recruits. But Legion is so easy that it's incredibly
rare for characters to be taken out of rotation. The other answer on the game's site is the
idea of making a completely unique crew. "Want to make a team of classic British spies? Or maybe a team of football hooligans is more
your cup of tea. Whatever you decide, it's all up to you,"
it reads. And in this instance, Legion fares a little
better - especially thanks to the goofy characters like a living statue, characters who can't
stop farting, or geriatric pensioners with bad backs. You could argue that the game's actually at
its best when you try to pick the very worst characters for each situation. But that has limitations too - especially
with the story. For one, the game's somewhat serious narrative
is weirdly contrasted with your absurdist comedy hero. And two, while each character has a unique
backstory and personality, none of that matters when they join DedSec. The protagonist of Watch Dogs: Legion is just
one amorphous blob, with a different face and slightly different inflection depending
on who you are playing as. Look, I could spend a lot longer exploring
the specific ways Watch Dogs: Legion doesn't work. If you want more, I recommend this great video
from Writing on Games. But that's not really important here. Because the critical point to take away is
that innovation without implementation is basically… nothing. The developers of Watch Dogs: Legion spent
considerable time and effort making a clever, complex, and expensive system of data points,
relationships, and random generation. But because it's not supported by the game
design in any real way, it's all rendered largely meaningless. The structure, story, and moment-to-moment
gameplay almost never encourages the player to explore this system. In fact, a lot of the time, it actively discourages
the player from bothering with it at all - thanks to repetitive recruitment missions and long
loading times to switch character. Perhaps Ubisoft should have doubled down on
the idea of picking the right recruit for each job, with distinctly different characters
and missions. Or gone all in on giving each player a unique
experience, with more crazy characters and a story to match. But it doesn't really do either, leaving us
with a pretty typical open world game where you can change the main character for… some…
reason. This annual series is all about celebrating
innovation, but Watch Dogs: Legion is a strong reminder that innovation alone is not worth
chasing. It's only when those clever ideas are actually
supported by the rest of the game, and become a critical part of the structure, that they
become legendary bits of design. Hey! I had a bunch of other games I considered
for this video - so here's my honourable mentions for most innovative 2020. Noita is a roguelike where every pixel is
simulated, which allows for crazy explosions, raging fires, and water physics. Carto is a cute cartography puzzler where
you change the map to literally move the world beneath your feet. And Carrion is a reverse horror Metroidvania,
where you play as a tentacled monster rampaging through a lab. And that's me done for the year. 2020 has been an unrelenting nightmare that
we just can't seem to wake up from - but, professionally - this has been a pretty good
year. I hit a million subscribers and 100 million
views. GMTK had the largest ever online-only Game
Jam. I was a game design consultant for a major
studio. I co-wrote an academic paper and saw it published
in a journal. I was a BAFTA judge. I got my name in the credits for Spelunky
2. And I even won a game of Fall Guys. But now, it's time for a much-needed break. Have a great Christmas or whatever, and I'll
see you in 2021.
This video really takes a turn near the end. Most of the video talks about the complex and smart innovations Legions brought before they says none of it really matters due to design that makes most of that meaningless.
Legion really had some cool ideas. I just wish it used them at least decently
I played legion for about 8ish hours on uplay plus, it's alright I guess. The system is really cool but i found everything around it sub par. Story is passable, the way they try and give every character a voice is hit or miss, voice acting is not the best, and I feel like the game needed more combinations. There are too many npcs in the game that have like 1 or 2 positive skills but you're more likely to find someone with 3 or more including those 1 or 2 the other npcs have. Not many people have negatives so you only take those characters for the laughs. The joke gets old quick though and I would have much preferred a system where negatives are always guaranteed and characters with nothing but positives were rare. I suppose if you're the kind of person who likes games where you can make your own fun with the tools the game gives, you might love this game, I like my mechanics to be forced on me, otherwise my brain just says use the assassin because he can do basically any mission in the game. Watch dogs seems to be an ever fluctuating series and I hope for their next outing they stick with this system, improve it, and then make the other parts of the game a little more interesting. I don't know how you get pass the obvious limitations of having a story with no permanent characters and dialogue that can't get too personal and has to remain vague. Maybe there's a better story hook they could use besides building a resistance that could better suit the limitations.
My pick for this year would be the wind guidance system in Ghost of Tsushima. I HATE having to use minimaps all the time to navigate a world, squinting at 1/10th of the screen. This was a great and simple, though imperfect, solution that just made it a lot easier to just enjoy the game. Really hope other devs use more inventive ways of facilitating navigation in the future, like sucker punch did with Ghost.
I mean, fuckin come on, Saints Row 3 put markers in the world 9 years ago (looking at you Cyberpunk2077).
I'm just starting the video but I am not surprised Legion is getting the stamp of approval. I watched the AI and Games video on how the system works and, knowing it's on top of Watch Dogs 2's system, I am very impressed. I wanted to play Cyberpunk 2077 as my AAA game of the season but I may grab this one instead.
I know the game didn't set the world aflame, and I— uninformed armchair dev that I am— think there's a two-fold reason why. One part of that is Ubisoft not building a game around this system that engages with this system the best, and the other is going soft on permadeath.
I love watchdogs series but this one was hard. It felt so shallow compared to other 2, I think this game would of done alot better with the play as anyone being the second feature not the main feature. So there is a main protagonist but missions now are complex because dedsec and other hackers have been around for years so the main companies have gone wise and upped their security, so no one could do it on their own. they would have to create a team to work together each mission. With each player still having their unique styles. Which would make many combination to do a missions with a unique team. Also they should of just gone elder scrolls with the vocie acting ill rather have 4 team members sounding the same then 2 team members sounding the same but one sounding more robotic.
WatchDogs legion is like having a chat with one those Ai bots, sure its clever and impressive, but still feels a bit shit