Play as any character in Watch Dogs: Legion and when they die, ‘they’re gone for good’

Ubisoft opened its E3 briefing last night with new footage of Watch Dogs Legion, the third instalment of the firm’s hackitivist franchise that enables players – as an early leak suggested – to fill the boots of not just a main protagonist, but also any character you encounter in the game. Each one “is unique in appearance, backstory, and combination of gameplay traits, and they’ll appear, fully voiced and with their own personality, in all cutscenes”.

“In Watch Dogs: Legion’s London, traditional government has all but fallen; a corrupt privatised military corporation called Albion imposes martial law on the civilians, gangs rule back alleys, and there’s a surveillance camera for nearly every person,” Ubisoft says in a press release. “This near-future dystopia is ripe for hacker group DedSec to step in and free the people of London from violent oppression and subjugation. It takes a city to save a city, and in Watch Dogs: Legion you’ll be able to recruit from London’s entire population, turning them into DedSec operatives and playable characters.”

Players will be able to assemble a team of up to 20 DedSec members – although the entire population remains available for you to recruit should you lose operatives – and “recruiting a character doesn’t mean they stop being an active participant in the world”. You can switch between your squad at any point, “effectively turning them into roaming fast-travel locations (London’s famous Underground stations will also act as more conventional fast-travel destinations)”. You can also assign any class to any character but once they die, they’re “gone for good”.

Watch Dogs: Legion is out on PC via Uplay, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One on March 6th, 2020. It will also be available on Ubisoft’s all-new subscription service, Uplay+, which was also revealed during Ubisoft’s E3 2019 conference.

PC subscription service Uplay+ will launch on September 3rd with a price tag of $14.99/month (UK pricing TBC). Ubisoft is promising over 100 titles at launch, “including new and upcoming releases, premium editions and DLC and post-launch content.” That includes Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Quarantine, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, and Watch Dogs: Legion, which both got extensively detailed during the conference.

Read more of our stories and analysis from E3 2019.