The Watch Dogs franchise has always been about hacking. The first two installments were comparatively simple in how they employed hacking. It was just the simple hacking into cameras, cars, signals and A.T.M.s e.t.c concept. But Watch Dogs Legion is the “evolution” of these things, according to Art Director Josh Cook. One of these new features revolves around “social engineering”.
Josh was asked if the hacking would be similar to the previous games, in a Q&A session. He said that he recognized Hacking was one of the “essential pillars” of the franchise. As such, Watch Dogs Legion was “the evolution of the foundations of the things” they had built in the past.
For example, in the past games, you could see someone’s profile through your phone. At that time it just seemed like a cool trick, seeing just a little more backstory on the npcs. But nobody thought it was something that would actually affect the gameplay. However, it will do just that in Watch Dogs Legion. Josh said that you can hack into people’s lives.
Considering how you can recruit people in Watch Dogs Legion, this will play a part in the gameplay. As a prerequisite for some of the members you recruit, you’ll have to change their lives first. How? Through a concept called “Social Engineering” by Josh.
He explained that sometimes the members will ask you for “favours” first. He said that this mirrored hacking’s progress in real life as well. Hacking is now “manipulating people and systemic systems within the world”.
But the new hacking features are not all going to be so indirect in the effect they have. Some of them will be very direct, say in the case of the drones you can control. Then Josh mentioned three examples of drones you can control. The first ones are the military drones, which have missiles on them.
The second are the police drones, which have light machine gun weaponry on them. The third ones are the Spiderbots which you can use to hack CCTV camera networks.
According to Josh, however, the social engineering aspect of the game will be more interesting than these plain hacks. And we get the concept, perhaps some storylines will play out like a detective fantasy and some will play like a soap opera.
Until we get more info from Ubisoft, all we can do is wait. And it does seem a long wait to the 6th of March, 2020, which is the date of Watch Dogs Legion’s release.
Watch Dogs Legion will be available on the PlayStation 4, Google Stadia, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One.
