Ubisoft’s open-world games are rather famous for their accurate recreations of real-world locations. Exploring the many past and present places they’ve produced is always a pleasure, but probing a position you actually populate? Now that’s a different story.
I was absolutely blown away by how similar Watch Dogs: Legion’s vision of a near-future London was when I played through three hours of the game earlier this week. There are of course many parts that have been changed, moulded and repurposed in order to fit in with the gameplay, but for Londoners there are countless familiar locations to visit and in some cases, enter.
I was even able to partially follow the walking route I normally take when heading from The Tower Hotel to London’s Tobacco Dock arena for EGX Rezzed. Unfortunately the map doesn’t stretch far enough to reach Tobacco Dock, but it does feature a highly realistic version of St. Katherine Docks Marina, which by the way is a lovely place to grab a beer and a burger after the show kicks out. (Aw, now I really miss EGX…)
It’s not just the locations that are familiar though. Legion also features plenty of iconic British sights like red double decker busses, real ale pubs and, thanks to an abundance of terraced houses, it even allows you to recreate more obscure British activities like late night garden hopping.
You can take in the sights and sounds of London, and watch me try out in my own version of Boston Kickout in my preview video above, where I spotlight 9 incredibly British things to do in Watch Dogs: Legion. While the premise of this video is admittedly a bit silly, it does include over 17 minutes of brand new gameplay that was captured during my hands on and there’s actually a lot of information in there as to how the game plays and handles.
So, if you’re curious to see how Watch Dogs: Legion compares to previous games in the series, give that video a watch, Dawg!