[Music]
watchdog's legion is set in a sort of
near future version of london where
things have gone terribly terribly wrong
all is about as bad as it could possibly
go
your mission is to build a popular
resistance in order to fight back
against the sort of emergence of this
authoritarian regime
you do that by recruiting whoever you
want from the open world and
making them the characters in your
resistance and the heroes of your game
play and the stars of your story play as
anyone basically means that any
character that you find on the street in
the pub just anywhere in your game even
characters in a mission can be potential
recruits into your deadset team you can
profile them you can learn about them
you can help them with their problems
and then they'll eventually join your
team and be part of your group of dedsec
members you know in the previous two
games you could still profile people and
see these facts about their lives and
we've sort of just taken that to the
logical conclusion of okay these aren't
little bits of random trivia but this is
actually who they are in terms of being
fully simulated people in our world how
that affects gameplay and the fact that
you can bring them on to your team and
so your dead sec is the people you've
recruited and my game's not going to be
the same as your game it's not going to
be the same as anyone else's game
everyone's going to have a different
team where the new dead second london
emerges from is kind of part of the the
mystery of the of the entire game there
isn't one star dude in the box who you
get your story and your cutscenes from
it's literally the people that you
recruit from the world are the stars of
your story and the heroes of your
gameplay
with different backstories on your
characters with different relationships
like it truly is about who you've chosen
to pull onto your team one of the main
motivations of developing play as anyone
and working on on all of the technology
that would support it was to be able to
tell a cohesive and coherent story no
matter who you would recruit from the
open world so the goal was if i can
recruit a granny off of the street and
and you know take her into the big
climactic cut scene against the dude in
the powered armor or i can take the you
know the former royal marine into the
same cutscene that cutscene needs to be
different it needs to have a different
performance different character
different voice acting different
animation uh no matter which character
you take into it you know watchdog's
legion is still a very traditionally
story based game we haven't compromised
that narrative experience
in order to have plays anyone we've
actually done a ton of work to make sure
that you know these people who you
recruit to your team they're all voice
acted they're all animated they have the
facial animation they have all the stuff
you would expect from a triple a game
wait
what happened to that bloke who helped
me
he didn't make it every character in our
game comes with them a unique sort of
gameplay benefit that we call a trait so
some people are good at punching and
melee and some people are good at guns
and some people are good at stealth or
they're good at hacking maybe what you
really need is the fact that your
operators keep getting arrested because
you're not great at combat and maybe you
need to like recruit a lawyer or recruit
a former lawyer recruit some criminal
that's been in jail a bunch of times to
have specific traits that help people
get out of jail so it's sort of like an
encouragement to go and explore the
world and that's also based on their
fully simulated life so if you find
someone who happens to be a underground
bare knuckle boxer character then
they're going to have a good melee trait
or if you find someone who's an ex-spy
they might be really good with silenced
pistols everyone sort of has a kind of
opinion about deadsec whether they
support it or they oppose it and that
will determine how much work you need to
do in order to get them on your side so
once you start helping them with their
problems they'll start becoming more
amenable towards dedsec in general until
they're ready to be recruited the more
someone dislikes deadset the more work
you've got to do to get them onto your
team so you might have to do two or
three different favors from them and
these favors could be very serious they
could be getting a loved one out of jail
or uh clearing a debt that they've got
with one of the crime families and they
could also be really light-hearted they
could be
beating them at darts you're taking a
character that already sort of has this
internal life they have a schedule they
have friends and families they have
problems
they have memories they remember what
you've done you're taking that character
and then you're putting them on your
team and then all those sort of things
that that makes up that person is now
part of your team their personality
their voice the way they act the way
they move once people come onto your
team you continue to customize them so
we've got a full progression path for
each character you level up you earn xp
you install perks that change your
gameplay abilities so you're really
customizing your team
the characters remember and they also
remember when you do things to people
that they know i'm fighting a bunch of
enemies and maybe i kill five you know
enemy soldiers oh i just killed five
enemy soldiers those five enemy soldiers
had friends and families they'll
remember that they like deadsec a lot
less so like there's like sort of this
um cascading effect as you do actions
and people remember them and they
remember the things that you do about
other people
permadeath is a really important part of
watchdog's legion and we really wanted
this to feel like a you know a game
about serious issues with serious
consequences and further when you're
building a team we really want you to
feel attached to those characters and
part of that is knowing that there are
real stakes with that
we actually chose london before the you
know the current political
issues that are happening in the united
kingdom with with brexit and all of that
and that just kind of ended up you know
adding this layer to our backstory in
our universe and and allowing us to go a
little bit further with our what if and
so london provides really the perfect
context for a watchdogs game and that
inspired us to think about how does the
intelligence apparatus and how does sort
of state surveillance
take shape in that world and so we're
able to really make our world feel
grounded and credible because we're
starting from a place that's extremely
familiar and based on reality and then
going someplace that's sort of
fantastical
without completely detaching and
becoming something that's sort of just
science fiction
i prefer interesting and challenging
work and i find that this is probably
the most interesting and the most
challenging
work that i've done so one of the things
i really love is not just helping to
develop the systems but also trying to
figure out all right what are we going
to fill those systems with right it's
not just interesting to say all right
someone's job affects what they do in
the world it's also interesting to say
okay jobs we have are con artists and
construction workers and archaeologists
like all right so what kind of things
can they do in the world like start
thinking about um not just a cool system
that you're making but what are you
populating that system with and then
start exploring what are the interesting
connections that show up between those
two
it's
wild
that we are looking like we're going to
be able to land
the most ambitious
parts of this thing
the concept that literally anybody you
see on the street feel like they belong
in that environment yet still become a
hero who has the skills and appears in
the cinematics and has her unique
personality
stay with them when they become playable
that's
bananas
the entire vision of the game is about
me moving away and saying no it belongs
to you it belongs to the player i'm not
the hero you're the hero that's what i
want people to take from this game and
that's why we made this game
you