How did the Watch Dogs series come out of the shadow of GTA and carve out a new genre for itself?

When I finished my experience with Legion, the final part of the Watch Dogs trilogy, I had mixed feelings about the ideas provided by the game, some of which were taken from the parts that preceded the third part, and some are new. But in general, I consider this version to be the best in the series for me, and it is a smart and interesting revival of it. In this article, I will show you the reasons and you are free to choose in the end.

The first part of Watch Dogs Is Very Very Underrated:

I can't claim to know what was in the imaginations of the developers and creators of the first Watch Dogs, which turned into a successful series, but I believe that they weren't planning to enter the market that is tightly controlled by the Gta series, ungovernable, but instead I believe that They were trying to provide an experience similar to Assassin's Creed in the modern era, or an answer to the question of what the world would be like if there were a group of professional hackers in it, and human dependence on technology continued in this dangerous form. These ideas are not new, by the way, and have been discussed by other games before, such as Dues Ex, but from another angle we may talk about them in a later article. But Watch Dogs has taken precedence over putting players in the role of one of those hackers, or "Assassins" who use the network as a lethal weapon in their hands, and not many know how to use it so effectively.

The problem with the Watch Dogs series since its inception has been the demo revealed at E3 2012, which forced players to put the title they saw in direct comparison with the GTA series. Even some may get excited about the game just for this reason because it is “GTA + Hacking”, which is a difficult task for the developers to satisfy the tastes, especially since any competitive battle between any two games, one of which is the Gta series, there is only one result. Gta outperforms everyone else in terms of quality, and innovation.

Watch Dogs 2 doesn't take itself too seriously:

For the second release, they took a step back, and tried to get out of the shadow of GTA. In fact, despite being a good level release, this step was important, because the series was not going to become a leader in the “crime games” category, but the field for it was wide open in the rating New, made by the minds of the developers at Ubisoft themselves, which I really like even though I don't consider myself a "big fan" of this type of game.

So, reclassification here is inevitable. But what is the classification of the game after the second part? In fact, I couldn't get out of my brainstorm with one word that accurately describes the Watch Dogs 2 experience, but I can easily describe it to you in detail - in case you haven't tried it yet - it is a game whose first and last goal is to satisfy the hacker's inclination inside you, It puts you in the 21st century environment of over-reliance on technology, start-ups, and Silicon Valley, where millionaires are young. I can also liken the experience as if Hacker Simulation was a real thing. It's like a comic about our world, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I didn't like it at all. The story of the game was good, revolving around the public confrontation with the owners of companies who take advantage of technology to their advantage, but it was far from what I expected from the Watch Dogs series, especially after the expectations set for me in the first part. Even after I realized that the game wanted to offer something of its own, and while I respected that, I wasn't in love with the new path the series had taken, so I didn't wait for the third part.

Part Three: The secret mixture that may be the future of the series:

With the third part on the market, I could not stop myself from trying it and evaluating it, and I found that it took bigger and bolder steps towards what the second part wanted to reach, and by observing the stages of development of other Ubisoft games - almost all - we will notice that the Assassin's Creed series was also one of Planned since Origins' release to become an RPG-themed game, following in the footsteps of The Witcher, there's no RPG without different storylines and choices, right? We didn't see that until the next part, Odyssey, and I think all the ideas that were planned with Valhalla's release have come to fruition, which is what happened with Watch Dogs. I hate those games that don't do a gradual transition because they might not implement either side correctly, so I wasn't a fan of Watch Dogs 2, but I can say that Part 3 took it closer to my fandom rating of Immersive Sim.

This type of game in short is based on the design of a group of systems, and the player has to use a combination of these systems every time he thinks of passing a task assigned to him by the game. One of the most popular games that fall under this category are the Hitman, Dishonoured, and Dues Ex series.

Watch Dogs Legion isn't 100% like these games, but it did manage to offer a bunch of systems that can be used to pass missions, mix them up to diversify the gameplay, and a lot of the time the game rewards me for improvising pretty well - but maybe they should work on that side more. Later-

There are four central elements in the Watch Dogs formula, of which the latest release has only added one system, and this system may be the piece that has been missing the puzzle from the start. The four systems are:

1- The hacking system (hack) since the first part

2- Control systems for spiders and drones, and the design of environments compatible with it since the second part

3- The system of the ability to recruit any character in the game world, which appeared in Legion.

4-Exiting the story from the contemporary to the future

These elements make the Legion experience something more appealing than Part Two. The story is in a completely new city, London, we have not seen many games that take place in London, the ancient city, with narrow streets that do not encourage much driving, and because the game is a somewhat futuristic game that provides playing other means of transportation such as the cargo plane, which is an important element gameplay, and the environments are designed to be more horizontal than before, And more compatible with the various possibilities offered to you by the clients you recruit. After all, it's not as limitless options as the game's propaganda tried to portray, but it's there in abundance enough to make two-thirds of your game's life fun and varied, and only the last third repetitive.

In the end, I think the future of Watch Dogs is now unknown because Legion didn't achieve the success the publisher had hoped for, but it's a good, fun game, despite its obvious flaws related to repetition and the absence of a main character element, but we shouldn't let the quality of the final product make us forget that the game took A big step towards something of their own. Maybe not 100% original, but it's a mix of a bunch of things that wouldn't have come together without Watch Dogs Legion! It is also greatly supported since the release with excellent additional content. Part 3 has brought me back my interest in the series, and I hope they take more steps towards that new identity, but maybe they should write a better story than that, have they forgotten how to write excellent stories in Ubisoft?

If you've been holding off on getting Watch Dogs Legion, maybe now is the time. Pick it up for the Xbox, PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4 here.

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