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Watch Dogs Legion to Offer Politics-Free Manipulation of Post-Brexit Londoners

This article is over 5 years old and may contain outdated information

Details about the third installment in the Watch Dogs series have been leaked by Amazon UK, and cryptically confirmed by the seriesā€™ official Twitter account.

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The original leaked product listing claimed that the game will be called Watch Dogs Legion, and that it will allow players to control any background character in the gameā€™s world. Per the since-removed Amazon page: ā€œPlay as anyone. Every individual you meet in the open world has a full set of animations, voice over, character traits, and visuals that are generated and guided by gameplay systems.ā€ A June 4 post from the Watch Dogs Twitter account confirmed the gameā€™s name and alluded to the play-as-anybody conceit using the slogan ā€œGod save the NPCs.ā€

Also revealed by the Amazon leak was a little bit about the gameā€™s setting, which will leave the United States for surveillance-happy England. Legion will supposedly be set in a ā€œnear-future, dystopian version of Londonā€ that is explicitly described as ā€œpost-Brexit.ā€ This is a little worrying ā€” Ubisoft has been notoriously spineless about political topics recently. In the last year and change alone theyā€™ve released several highly politically charged games, only to then backpedal and deny that they are making any kind of statement, on any subject, for any reason, in perpetuity forever.

Looking at the content of their recent release schedule that kind of hand-washing is obviously absurd. Last yearā€™s Far Cry 5 touched on prickly issues like American Exceptionalism, the role of so-called well-regulated militia in the age of the AR-15, fire-and-brimstone-style Christian extremism, and the looming threat of global thermonuclear war ā€” all while being scrubbed of references to any of the specific political turmoil in the United States that might have inspired it. Terry Spiel, one of the creative directors on Tom Clancyā€™s The Division 2, claimed to Polygon during that gameā€™s marketing push that his upcoming title about a decentralized military force cracking down on a Washington D.C. rendered lawless by terrorism was somehow ā€œnot making any political statements.ā€

The Watch Dogs series itself already fits this pattern of flirtation with and then denial of political themes. The first entry was never especially interested in questions like, ā€œCan the existing mass surveillance apparatus ever be used for good, and whom could we trust to use it.ā€ It preferred instead to ask: ā€œHey, what if Batman had a phone?ā€ Its sequel dove into the fraught waters of social media, and how it can be used to manipulate popular narratives and entire populations, before settling on thinking that that phenomenon was actually kind of cool and not democracy-erodingly frightening. For Watch Dogs Legion, with its direct evocation of a political boondoggle that is tearing a country apart in real time, this hedging of bets is either going to have to finally be cast aside, or else put into overdrive.

Ubisoftā€™s E3 press conference, where an official unveiling is expected, is on June 10.


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Patrick Lee
Patrick Lee is a writer, illustrator, photographer, designer, and serial arsonist from Toronto. He has written for The AV Club, and for his personal website, About Face.