Watch Dogs: Legion vs Watch Dogs 2 | Direct Comparison

welcome back everybody to another episode of direct comparison in today's episode we're going to take a look at the upcoming open world action game watchdogs legion and see how it compares both visually and from a gameplay perspective to the previous entry to the series watchdogs 2. for this comparison both games are being played on the pc with the settings cranked up to their highest values at a 4k resolution however there are a few settings that i will be swapping between including dlss and ray trace reflections that i'll enable when discussing the difference in lighting effects also motionboard will be disabled to help produce cleaner still images alright so let's kick this comparison off by first taking a look at our character models now typically when i compare models on these videos i either compare the same characters or at the very least the lead protagonists in each game but watchdog's legion does something very unusual in that it doesn't actually feature a lead protagonist the entire game is designed around this idea that every npc generated in the game world is a potential hero in your story so this guy with a mohawk this construction worker this lawyer or even this old man could all potentially be the one that saves london and while this is a very interesting and unique twist on the series formula it does leave the game open to a few major issues for one the general personality of these characters are pretty limited in the scope of the story it seems each and every voice line delivered by the player controlled character was re-recorded with several different voice actors to help cover the wide range of possibilities and what you end up with are voices that don't really seem to fit all that well every time what's more regardless of their randomized backgrounds and traits each character's performance in the cutscene is roughly the same which makes them feel rather empty as a result with a character like watchdog 2's marcus you get a passionate and arguably more complex character right out of the gate with more relatable humor and more interesting cutscenes to help piece together the narrative he may not be the best lead character but he was at least a character rather than just a vehicle for one like in legion on the bright side the visual quality and complexity of these randomized characters is still commendable when you view the random npcs in watch dogs 2 up close they're a pretty significant step down from more important characters like marcus and his friends the textures are flat the shadowing is lacking and aside from a few scripted animations for more unique characters they all seem to move around the world about the same legion doesn't suffer from this problem each of the characters in the game world are surprisingly well detailed matching the quality of the lead characters in the last game and they can even be customized further using clothing shops to change their attire the textures that make up this clothing is more finely detailed and a more advanced shading is used to ensure that the faces appear more believably the illusion does break down a little bit as the random generator used tends to recycle some of the same visual features too frequently like the same old man model only with different hair but these instances are still uncommon and you'll almost always see a new face around every corner moving on let's talk about the environments watch dogs 2 takes place in a recreation of san francisco complete with popular sites like pier 39 alcatraz lombard street and of course the golden gate bridge it's a bright vibrant interpretation of the city and one that while not necessarily to scale with its real-life counterpart still comes pretty close to capturing the look and feel of the bay area the world is beautifully detailed with tons of unique building structures vehicles groups of area-specific npcs and even animals like dogs birds and sea lions some of which can be interacted with watchdog's legion on the other hand takes place across the pond in a uniquely dystopian version of london after a series of mysterious terrorist attacks devastate several boroughs throughout the city a private military company called albion were hired to help police the streets and do so with heavily armed patrols vehicle checkpoints and swarms of flying drones this coupled with the near future setting helps to give london a very different look than what you're typically used to seeing and it feels very far removed from the more realistic takes on cities in the first two games most of the popular landmarks can still be found in this metropolis including piccadilly circus parliament the london eye and buckingham palace but they've all been altered with more sci-fi elements big ben for example now has holographic signs appearing along the top spire and around the base and trafalgar square looks more like a war zone now with several barricades tents and military blockades giving it a slightly less welcoming look as far as comparing the actual quality of the environment it's pretty difficult to say one is better than the other i looked at several different similar textures and models throughout both games and while legion certainly looks better in some areas watchdogs 2 isn't too far behind but what really sets the two games apart when it comes to its environments isn't the quality of the texture maps but rather the amount of objects that they're being applied to legion feels much more dense overall with areas feeling more complex than the typically empty streets of watch dogs do sure areas like the pier and the hacker's den look great in the old game but pretty much every building facade street corner and alleyway is brimming with detail that we didn't see quite as much before and its new futuristic style really helps it stand out with the occasional holographic checkpoint and advertisement helping to break up the repetitive rows of buildings and swarms of unique drones flying through the air painting a disturbing image of what our future could potentially look like this coupled with legion's darker war-torn appearance helps it to stand apart from watch dogs too which typically comes off as too clean and empty to ever feel like a real world city next up let's talk about the lighting lighting is one of watchdog legion's strongest visual aspects as it not only features a much more natural appearance but also offers more advanced technology to assist it further including full hdr implementation and rate trace reflections when set to its ultra settings the raytrace reflections look phenomenal with every glass storefront and puddle along the street surface accurately reflecting the game world relative to the player's camera one of the best areas to play around with this is piccadilly circus where all the bright red and blue neon lights realistically bounce off of the many reflective surfaces like passing cars and the fountain off to the side watch dogs 2 of course being a older game does not offer any form of rtx ray tracing though its screen space reflections still hold up pretty well the lights that are reflecting off this small pond for example still look pretty decent and it's all on par with similar implementation used in legion when using screen space reflections now the downside to ray tracing is that it's incredibly demanding even with the rtx 3090 i found i wasn't able to maintain anything above 40 fps at a 4k resolution it's plenty playable and thanks to various dlss options there are ways to achieve great performance with rtx enabled at the cost of some image clarity but for pc players looking for much higher performance i'd recommend just disabling rtx altogether as the standard lighting still looks better than it does in watch dogs 2. watch dogs 2's lighting is too bright and vibrant and it really doesn't paint the most realistic picture of san francisco the bloom effects in particular are completely overblown when standing in shadow and npcs especially those with lighter skin almost look like pale ghosts due to the way light effects off of their skin what's more the color seems to be completely oversaturated as well making brighter colored objects like painted structures and vehicles pop a bit too much in each scene it technically works with the game's more light-hearted and fun tone but this really wouldn't work with legion's more gritty art direction and so instead the developers went with something a bit more realistic with more lifelike color tone it's not perfect as the lens fire effect will sometimes flicker at weird angles and the sunsets look a little bit off but the nighttime scenes look fantastic and blow away similar scenarios in watch dogs too the shadows on the other hand really haven't seen quite that big of an improvement in fact they may even function exactly the same way as they did before watchdogs 2 offers a unique shadow projection method called hybrid frustum trace shadows which essentially lets the game engine draw shadows more sharply the closer it is to an object casting the shadow it's a real great effect that creates some of the most convincing shadows in gaming today and while legion's graphic options don't explicitly state that the technique is being utilized i feel like the technology is being utilized to some extent when the setting is set to its ultra value and behaves similarly to what i observed in watchdogs 2. next up we have our effects now this is an area where i think legion could have benefited from a few more improvements one of the most impressive aspects of the original watchdogs reveal was the incredible explosion that happened during the shootout but by the time the game finally released we were treated to something much less impressive this lackluster replacement fireball has now persisted through watchdogs 2 and seems to have been carried over into watchdog's legion which is such a strange thing to neglect to improve upon something about this effect just feels out of place with the game world almost as if it's not responding to ambient lighting then we have the water that for whatever reason actually looks worse in the legion than it did before it doesn't necessarily look terrible in fact it's better than most games released today but the way the water would ripple when the player or the player's boat would pass through it in watch dogs 2 looks so much better than what we're seeing here and it's unclear exactly why this was even changed my guess is that it had something to do with incorporating the ray trace reflections onto the water surface but that theory only raised more questions as the surface of the water even with rtx enabled and set to ultra still uses screen space reflections instead thankfully the rain effects still look really good and do help to enhance the rtx effects further with increased specular lighting combined with real-time reflective surfaces for deeper puddles along the sidewalks and roads it's easily one of the most impressive looking scenarios in the game and it blows away similar rainy conditions offered in watch dogs 2. though it is worth mentioning that the old game did offer a really cool fog simulation effect that allowed for the formation of massive viometric cloud effects to form over the bay area and unsurprisingly this effect was not carried over into legion in any capacity next let's switch gears and talk a little bit about the changes that have been made to the gameplay starting with a new recruitment system as i mentioned before watchdog's legion's biggest new feature is the ability to play as anyone you see and when i say anyone i mean practically every npc in the game world can be persuaded to fight alongside you even if it seems ridiculous you can for example recruit a sweet old lady and then send them on a mission to infiltrate a fortified structure it's probably not the smartest plan but legion is designed in a way that lets players push these boundaries and experiment whenever possible this is accomplished by means of a robust simulated population system that generates randomized character appearances and attributes depending on the relative location in the game world npcs found walking around larger federal buildings for example have a chance of being undercover spies likely with better stealth capabilities while characters found at fight clubs might be more proficient at hand-to-hand combat there are even schedules built into some of the npcs meaning they'll rotate around the world regularly depending on their personal interests once a character's been marked for recruitment you can later follow up with them by completing a recruitment mission these are often really simple side ops that have you sneaking into a guarded location and stealing a vehicle or downloading a file and if you're successful that character will then be made available to play as whenever you want the game's progression system has also been changed up a bit unlike watch dogs 2's more conventional skill tree system legion's progression is dependent on the quality of the player's recruits and their equipped gear each character in legion is limited to two weapons and one gadget which forces players to plan out their approach much more carefully gadgets include things like an rc spider drone or adaptive camouflage and can be upgraded further using earned tech points for completing missions this more simplified approach was likely incorporated to avoid having to rank up each recruit separately and thanks to a new permadeath option in the difficulty settings players need to exercise even more caution or risk losing their favorite characters forever legion also does a great job improving the game's melee combat system in watch dogs 2 marcus was equipped with a makeshift weapon called the thunderball that's essentially a pool ball attached to a string it's a really interesting and unique signature weapon that comes with plenty of cool takedown animations but it otherwise isn't all that involved you just run up and press a button and marcus does his thing legion incorporates a much more involved melee combat system that requires the player to time their attacks more carefully with light punches heavy punches that can break an enemy's defensive stance and dodges that can be used to counter attack an enemy for increased damage to make this fighting even more interesting enemies now feature health bars though their health does seem to be low enough that it never feels like you're fighting bullet sponges and you can easily disable the enemies health bar ui in the game's hud settings and then of course we have the open world activities and general mission structure watchdogs 2 is built like most open world games there's a main story line to play through and there's also a number of optional side activities and challenges to complete though outside of extending your play time there's never really been a need to complete these optional activities as they have no impact on the game world itself legion attempts to address this through its boro uprising system like many of ubisoft's more recent games the open world is now broken up into districts called boroughs each consisting of specific resistance goals to complete these goals can be anything from hacking into a holographic billboard or saving a fellow deadset member from capture and doing so will help dismantle albion's influence in the region and start a revolt once all the goals in a borough have been completed all the hidden tech points in that region will be revealed to collect more easily and the player is also awarded with a uniquely powerful new recruit that you definitely don't want to lose this gag for example is a parody of james bond it comes with his own signature spy car equipped with forward firing rockets and an adaptive camo option making him perfect for high speed pursuits and covert infiltration this borough system combined with the new recruitment options helped make legion's open world much more acutely focused on this theme of building a resistance movement and the more light-hearted activities like racing go-karts and sailboats are sadly excluded as well as the fan favorite invasion multiplayer hacking mode that let a player invade another player's campaign and begin to steal data from their phone creating an impromptu game of hide and seek legion will offer some multiplayer gameplay later on including a four player cooperative mode and a new competitive spider robot death match but these modes won't be available until at least early december finally let's wrap up with a few sound comparisons which game do you think has a superior audio quality here we go i'm done this time that's a toy right [Music] in your area over suspects has a weapon i repeat suspect has a firearm all units possible suspect or suspects reportedly your location mobilizing now and that wraps up this episode of direct comparison overall watchdog's legion offers quite a few big changes to the formula that should set itself far enough apart from its predecessor to make it a worthwhile experience the game's visuals have for the most part been improved with better npc character models more detailed environments and some gorgeous lighting effects but i am a little disappointed with the lackluster water and explosive effects and little to no improvement made to the physics engine then there's the gameplay that outside of the big recruitment system hasn't really changed all that much with only a few minor tweaks here and there that ultimately result in more of the same that being said the few tweaks that were made do a great job of enhancing the already uniquely fun hacker sandbox action and i'm looking forward to seeing the city continue to evolve with future updates including the new four player co-op later this year but what do you guys think do you like the direction ubisoft took with watch dogs legion or do you think watch dogs 2 had more going for it let me know in the comments section and don't forget to like and subscribe for more videos posted every week you

Channel: Nick930

Views: 1,284,241

Keywords: Watch Dogs, Legion, Watch Dogs 2, Watch_Dogs, Next Gen, RTX, Ray Tracing, Comparison, Side-by-side, Gameplay, Review, Graphics, Ultra, PC, Direct, Lighting, HTFS, Contrast, Difference, Effects, Texture, Nick930, Visual, Digital Foundry, Marcus, London, Recruit, Release, Analysis, Breakdown, Environment, Xbox, PlayStation, PS5, XboxSeriesX

Id: rJhSV_4loYU

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/elder-scrolls-fan]

Personally I think the game is worth is just for the fun you can get out of it for yourself