It’s a tight and tedious loop, and Watch Dogs: Legion shows no sign of breaking out of it. Sneak, hack puzzle, sneak, hack puzzle, sneak, hack puzzle, shoot/punch as necessary. But this simply isn’t a robust enough gameplay loop to support much character differentiation. You sneak from hacking puzzle to hacking puzzle, and if you fail at stealth, it might erupt briefly into shooting or punching. It’s mostly a rote stealth game between hacking puzzles. The world is shallow and not even that wide. The first but not insurmountable problem is that Watch Dogs: Legion isn’t a very good game. But because they’re my conduit into the world, I might come to care about these characters, maybe even enough to play dress up dolly. As I might expect from the previous Watch Dogs, the writing here isn’t going to get me attached to the characters. Like State of Decay, they can die permanently (although Ubisoft, as terrified as ever of any design decisions that might frustrate a player, makes this optional). Like State of Decay, they can have weaknesses. Like State of Decay, they’ll have different abilities. A disparate group of people coming together, bringing their strengths and weaknesses. If State of Decay let me, I would pick my characters’ underwear.Īnd this is what’s initially exciting about Watch Dogs: Legion. From here, it’s not a far leap to caring about what they’re wearing. It’s all about how one character is good with guns, and another knows gardening, and yet another can sing to provide a morale boost. It’s all about wrangling this disparity, embracing the differences. State of Decay is all about the group dynamics. It helps that a fundamental part of zombie mythology is a disparate group of people coming together, bringing their unique strengths and weaknesses. And I will indulge in dressing up these dollies, because the gameplay has made me care about the characters.
Developer Undead Labs knows you’ve gotten attached to those characters, so they know they can afford to patch in a ton of dress up dolly. Now you’ll find costume bits scattered around the world, waiting to be found, won, or unlocked. The cosmetic options didn’t emerge until State of Decay 2, and especially the post-release support for State of Decay 2. But there was no support for playing dress up dolly. I cared about the characters in the same way I cared about my necromancer in Guild Wars 2 and my Dodge Viper in The Crew. State of Decay is another example of characters being conduits into a game. The necromancer and the car are my consistently visible conduit into these games.
A car certainly isn’t a well written character, but in a good caRPG - The Crew, for instance - I care about what color it is, whether it has racing stripes, and what the license plate says. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about my necromancer’s storyline in Guild Wars 2, but I’ve actually determined the color of the trim on her tunic because I spend enough time looking at her that I’d rather it be fuchsia than violet. The characters are blank slates across which gameplay is written. I see through his eyes, I manage the world with his hands, I endure its challenges with his body. The second way is to make a really good game in which I’m connected to the game through the character. Arthur in Red Dead Redemption, Kassandra in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, and pretty much everyone in Agents of Mayhem come to mind. The first way is to write a character well. There are two ways to make me care about a character, and the best case scenario is that a game manages both ways.
But to me it’s an indication that a game has succeeded at doing what any good story, videogame or otherwise, should do: make me care about a character. That’s an actual thing I spent time doing in a game.
Why am I messing around with the color of my character’s vambraces when it has no gameplay impact? What do I care about his hair style? Why would I ever set an eye color or choose a tattoo or pick underwear? I actually picked my character’s underwear in Saints Row IV. Sadly, it’s not what Watch Dogs: Legion actually does.Ī friend of mine mocks cosmetic options in games as “playing dress up dolly.” Which is funny for how it’s spot-on. So load me up with a team of dynamically generated characters and let me let them make my own story.
I don’t need someone writing a story about a character doing character things, because good writing in open-world games is rare and meaningful writing is almost non-existent. Watch Dogs Legion is exactly what I want in my open-world games, and I know this because State of Decay was exactly what I wanted in my open-world games.