From the massive city of London, the driving, the individual characters, and the countless missions that are waiting to be revealed. Jumping into Watch Dogs: Legion, it is immediately obvious that the team behind the game put blood, sweat and tears into building the game’s world, systems and the depth of what makes the title so interesting. While Ubisoft has some industry-leading writers, designers and creative people working behind the scenes to build the story and worlds that both these games live in, they often will get overshadowed by interesting technical ideas, or simply the tonnage of optional things you can do in both titles.ĭon’t get me wrong, I love exploring and experimenting as much as the next guy, but when the story is set aside for hours at a time to focus on busy work or mindless padding, the immediate impact of the narrative can get lost, and much of what makes me care about the characters and their journey is muddled in the process.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with the concepts, and the sheer breadth of options players have at their fingertips when they first insert the game into their system of choice is staggering, it never feels urgent.
Yet, after my sessions with both games, I still walked away feeling a bit empty. Both games look fantastic, bring forth the best the studios have to offer and improve on the formulas in almost every way. Having around two hours with both titles gave me a quick overview of what they each bring to the table and why they are regarded as exciting. I was fortunate enough to get some time with both Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at a Ubisoft virtual preview event a few weeks ago.
But with Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla hitting gaming systems everywhere this fall, the kinks in the Ubisoft open-world formula are starting to show. From the streets of renaissance Rome to the tech covered walls of fictional Chicago, Ubisoft has ushered players into a breed of gaming that rewards side quests and countless hours of exploration. It has been a few years since Ubisoft first unleashed Assassins Creed onto the gaming landscape, and since that time, the company has built up a slate of open-world titles that have helped define a genre.