Watch Dogs: Legion (2020). Notable Bugs, Tips, Strange Observations, Fun Diversions, etc.
Writing this as if you've played the game at least a little bit. I just need a place to blow off some vast open world/nearly open world steam, like Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Uncharted 4. Not going to talk (usually) about the dark-dark grimness of WDL and how the "make some street art of a cop kicking a daisy that will save us" notion falls flat. I suggest reading this Vice crunchy bit Watch Dogs: Legion Promises Revolution, But Mostly Delivers Distraction which came out in 2020 but Ubisoft never updated anything touched on in the article. You may also enjoy Watch Dogs Legion was a Miserable Experience (2025; spoilers). I have plait easy, regular, hard, and resistance (which includes permadeath) mode. Probably totals up to 6.3 times. If you have not played, I suggest starting with resistance, that is how the game was designed to be played. Then, if you're up for a second playthrough, go with easy, the difference is stark.
Other blathering I've made on this very website about Watch Dogs: Legion:
Section 1: Bullshit.
Any Albion officer will recognize you in resistance w/in two-three seconds from a distance, even if you're a brand-new first-day Dedsec hire. So either Albion forces are trained to mesmerize hundreds of faces or there's some sort of proximity facial scan on their bodykits (I made that term up, copyright 2025 me) or there's a list of Dedsec Optik IDs or whatever. It's still way too fast, I whined. During a character handoff, the second I can move around a nearby Albion guard has already clocked me in the cutscene. Stupid. Starts chasing me, a drone sees me and elevates the wanted level "Oh there's the idiot we were looking for five seconds after the initial wanted level, let's elevate it." Stupid. Turn a corner, there's a border checkpoint, machine guns immediately start firing. Stupid. This, again, was a brand new Dedsec member. Quit the game, immediate reload. GFY.
Clan Kelly members that join Dedsec still continue their jobs with Clan Kelly. One profile has "Clan Kelly Enforcer" as their position, and "Protecting Clan Kelly territory at [place]" as their current location. This, with the given plotline and the whole ... focus of the game ... is absolutely bonkers. "We've recruited you to fight Clan Kelly, but yeah, keep earning that Clan Kelly bread and killing other Dedsec members, friendo." And THEN, even though they have a JOB in a Clan Kelly location, if you become that member and walk around a Clan Kelly location all suited up, other Clan Kelly members become increasingly/quickly suspicious about you when you're LOS. So ... pick a lane. They're either full-on Clan Kelly and I should be able to walk around with impunity because "hey, it's Charlie, your shift isn't for another few hours," or they're not actually in Clan Kelly any more, they just ... have the suit. Here's a few more: Clan Kelly Clan Kelly Clan Kelly Clank Kelly also: Clan Kelly.
Bagley, a powerful genial ai that helps with missions, can not generate a gps route that goes around the yellow-screen barricades that instantly get you a level-two Albion chase sequence. I have a feeling some of these odd decisions were made because There's A Thing We Spent A Lot Of Time On And You Need To See It. A smart GPS route would mean mostly never encountering the checkpoints. Somehow the screen picks up that you're with Dedsec but also they apparently do not have location features built into your Optik. An intrusive brain-interface that doesn't know where you are at all times: not plausible. It's a can of worms all the way down. ObjAI: AI sucks. "How do we steal other people's creative works and then sell a broken-mirror bolus of that back to them?" FO
Also the GPS does not change to waterways/ped routes when you're in a boat/walking. It's the future. Use tech points for a GPS upgrade: I am a brilliant game maker person.
The endless switching between (whatever weapon) and the spiderbot. "Could everyone hold on? I'll be right back ..." [FX: runs out of red zone, does some accounting, runs back] The spiderbot doesn't have any weapon function, it should have just been standard for everyone, like a multi-tool. [FX: continues building special frame for SPIDERBOTS R LUV poster] If you have a chance, look up some images of robotic spiders of the 1920s. Huge.
Running I: A level-five Albion chase is ... just fuck off. The problem with chases is that my rat brain gets tunnel vision and sticks to "go fast, escape" which is ~50% not going to work. But getting out of the vehicle is ~70% your funeral with permares because that's time to spawn infinite guards/drones next to you. Great gameplay. You can't get a break in the tunnels, you can't get a break on the unimplemented London Underground. Elevated abandoned Underground track stretches on and on, Albion guards spawn in next to you. Always Running Is Not Interesting.
Running II: Running from Albion along the border river. Everything is cooling off. Albion officer spawns on the short dock directly behind me. Resistance dead. The spawns and rubberbanding in this game are horrible. Why can't there be sliders for garbage like that. At a certain point, when you're in an extended chase scene for minutes and thinking "you know, I could use a snack right now" but it's just drive drive drive hide hide hide that didn't work drive drive drive. On resistance it's additionally annoying. Sometimes being on a roof is better, but sometimes the drones just don't stop coming, ever. Kill a drone; new drone spawns; kill it; new drone spawns; kill it [FX: twenty minutes later]. Broken record time: this is not fun. / Sit on a rooftop, get a trapped tech point: Albion called, three dudes spawn on the non-ground-level-access roof you used a cargo drone to access. Same game is same. Then that happened again, this time I just waited it out ... 10 minutes, three guys on street-opposite roof pointing their guns the wrong way. Decided to take them out ... wanted level bumped, drone appears above my head.
Running III: Tech points have their own rules vis-a-vis when Albion spawns in etc. Above drone max height + small area: no drones, no Albion, wanted level will not leave until you run around a bit. With large area: untested. Below done max height + small area: endless drones. Below drone max height + large area: one to three bullshit Albion officers spawning on roof, even if it's inaccessible. There might be variations depending on whether you access it with a spiderbot or not, what level the spiderbot is at, etc. Don't know. Low to the ground, small space, inaccessible: no spawns, auto time-out; Royal London Hospital, for example. What is fun? There are .. one hundred and thirty tech point locations. Probably about half of those are "trapped" and call Albion. Do I want run from Albion sixty-five times? Because it sure doesn't seem like there's any other option. Any time you dig in, welp, we're just going to keep spawning enemies right next to you until you learn this is a game about being chased and there's no other way to play it. WDL: Fleeing is fun!
There is no London Underground. Development should have started with this. Day one. Pretend I'm screaming this from the top of "Big Ben," a popular London clock attraction. "You can do little dances with your char--" "WHERE IS THE DAMNED TUBE"
If you try to grab a "trapped" tech point with a spiderbot while on the Millennium Wheel, it will stop the wheel. Then if you hit escape, it will teleport you to the ground where red icons are patiently waiting. Okay. So let's mind-play the scenario if it didn't stop the wheel. Albion would gather at the bottom. You'd be rising, maybe shooting back. Maybe your wanted level increases, a drone spawns close enough to take a near-immediate potshot. Why not have a battle on the Wheel? Or maybe, different scenario, the wanted level goes away oh no? Confusing.
Empty auto-drive cars honk. There will be random car jam ups and then there's multiple cars honking on the street while you're two floors up trying to stealth/assess. "SHUT UP DOWN THERE" Again again, because this is a favorite string to pluck: if something is annoying in real life, figure out how to make it not annoying in a game if you -have- to have it. If I want to be annoyed by something in real life, I can go ... do that. I don't need a simulation of the worst aspects of car culture. I'm soakin' in it, babes.
Black cabs never have anyone in them. Okay. Buses never have anyone in them, other than the driver, sometimes. Okay. But why does Tidis (etc.) have empty maintenance vans roaming the street. That you can commandeer, not like hack, just, expected value. "Of course randos should be able to join our company on the spot and do house calls." The future, man, it's crazy.
Pedestrians will sometimes stagger away when you're angling toward them in your car, but other times will stagger toward the car. Sometimes they'll do combat rolls into the street. It's the same each time. "Get a grip, people."
The Stormzy thing. Stormzy is a real music person who has a real music track in a mission just about this person. The mission is: listen to the Stormzy track. Can you: survive? It's kind of the same shape of ill will as the U2 forced-download. That's when you know culture is at its highest, when the tastemakers have to shove shit down your tubes and seal the trap shut. I just got word from Stormzy along with some new clothes: "the track is trending global!" So proud of my little street crew.
When switching characters, you can spawn inside an Albion stronghold. This is really fun on resistance. "what the WHAT THE" Because of the horrible map with the skew etc, it didn't appear like the character was inside. It just doesn't have any logical sense to it. This person is working just fine behind enemy lines but once you take control of them, everyone in the place converges on you.
The 3D map. Is that thing in the building or outside the building, it's fun to rotate/zoom in and out to figure it out, maybe. It's ugly/ill-conceived.
The deep profiler is horsepucky. If you pull up on a question mark from the deep profiler that is behind a NPC door and nothing happens, get in a car and drive a bit away, then come back. Either it will now (A) do nothing (bug) (B) prompt you to hit enter to wait until the designated time (C) your "recruitment opportunity" in the form of an enemy will suddenly be standing at the doorway/entrance you couldn't get in. The car is handy because then you can gingerly drive over them and solve the problem without attracting Albion's attention (more logic: shooting gets you a wanted level, vehicular homicide does not, usually. actually that's real life BOOM ... ME: 2 CAR CULT: 0), freeing up your ability to do the recruitment mission(s), if the recruit didn't immediately join up.
The Skye Larsen house "puzzle." Anyone who has solved any figure-out-the-combination puzzle ever will start writing down things -- okay, on the back of THIS photo, it's _3__ so the second number is a three, etc., but the game doesn't give a fig and you don't have to enter anything. It shows you, and tells you, the whole thing. Pick a lane, either pay me off for the tiny bit of labor ("I SOLVT THE FIEND DISH PUZZ GLARH") or don't make me do it. This isn't hard. Yes I get it, they wanted to make a thing for this but then time's up, the beancounters said ship the shit because the second The Hamptons property needs waxing. Not care.
That one beam in The Black Hole of Battersea. It's like the opposite of Stray. "With this innvoative jump mechanic, your character will automatically fall off the beam bridge so you have to start all over again." "Cooooool" It looks like the play is to walk the beam. You're going to fall off the beam 80% of the time. You're supposed to jump, even though the jump looks unjumpable. You hold the jump button down then "normal" walk up to the jump and you auto-jump the gap (same thing in the Assassin's Creed mini-section/tribute/whatever, you hold the jump button down basically the entire time you're running around looking for those little light doots; there are videos specifically just about how to deal with this awful mechanic to give you some idea of how bad this is). But what's easier is to skip that jump/dark after getting through the first door ... pack the shooty spiderbot, fall/walk through the moat/depression to near the second door, have it open the second door/shoot Albion guard (not tanky)/press the button. Did you forget to pack the shooty spiderbot? Just quit and do it again, it's worth it. Actually, if you packed the regular spiderbot on accident ... go to below the second door, shoot your gun yourself to attract the lone Albion guard or use the spiderbot ... greet them and then moments later, finish w/the regular spiderbot.
My second resistance campaign was just borough missions, no main plotline. "Hey uhhh we've been getting this strange signal from a drone ... you could do an way-overly-long Assassin's Creed-type mission with the same "innovative jump mechanic" (but over and over) and then unlock what has to be the most prestigious operator with the god-awful worst weapon kit in the entire game." "Lol no" "How about flying a easily-damaged micro-drone for seven hours through a --" [SFX: doubles over]
Jumps off the cargo drone are sometimes overly enthusiastic, especially in high places. Sometimes there's an extra hop/speed burst added, then nearly a death plummet. It should just be a walk/drop off.
On re-load, the game sometimes switches the current mission. It's an easy switch back, it's just that the stack of dealing with problems gets way too high. I think it got confused between two different recruits who had the same 1/2 mission theme/status.
One thing that was hyped with promo screenshots etc.: "Put a combat spiderbot on your car!" In resistance? No. It shoots at every single drone in the sky. Now you have one star. Oh now you have two. Oh everyone's coming out to greet you now, do you have enough cake and punch.
There's fast travel differences between missions and borough uprising mini/final-missions. You can't use operative swap to fast travel with mini/final-missions. Decisions w/this game confound me. Wait, now there's differences on where you start with a new operator w/missions as well. You can't set your current mission to be a borough uprising mission. How daft.
The Battersea offers little in the way of stealth/sneaky ways to clear the space. Tried to drive scooter down the stairs, they kept bunching up in the corner w/"reverse" disabled. I think this was intentional. I also think that's a bit of lateral thinking that should have been rewarded, not punished. If you get a scooter all the way down there I raise a glass to you, scooter driver person.
If you pause and then come back, cars directly in front of you will have disappeared. Irritating during online's "destroy 10 trucks." "Just don't pause the game with a truck in front of you, complainer." [FX: throws another abnormality on teetering stack]
"We can't put a checkpoint in Information Overload because --" Because there's no good reason. Very bad design. It's easy to get spotted by a guard, and you're a nearly defenseless drone. Now you get to do the whole thing over again yay.
Crypto in homeless camps/medical tents/bars. More specifically, crypto you can steal from there. "But you can just not take it" We're not playing that game.
If you go to the effort of providing non-leathal weapons, and I use one to knock Nigel Cass off his feet, don't show him all bloodied/dying and then add "killed Nigel Cass" to my character's status log. The shock weapons send people to the hospital, no deaths. That was the point. Not that I care, just, some people do.
Most of the time getting a recruit on board requires two missions. They are not numbered/demarcated differently in any way. With resistance, the wise thing to do is sign up a ton of cannon fodder errr people. Now you have a boatload of icons on the map, hopefully some have clumped up in twos and maybe even threes so you can go to one place and take care of multiple things. But the only way to determine which mission it is is to go in the profiler, look up the particular recruit. It's a slog. "1 of 2" or even just a/gray dot(s) turned green would have worked a treat. "Oh here's a building with two recruit missions, they each just need one mission to get 'em in. Let's do that first." Etc.
Along the same lines, when you roll over a recruit icon on the map, it reads "Recruit [name]" "[mission description]" ... names mean nothing. What's their occupation? What guns do they have? That's another way I'd sift priorities.
There are enough buildings to mostly not repeat recruitment mission locations. Going back after you've thoroughly rinsed a building is repetitive. No thought given to that by designers. "Oh boy Old Spitalfields Market a third time ..." Another good reason to bulk up recruits asap. Do two+ things in one place.
The clothing experience is odd. Each clothing store has a different icon in the UI, so if you want dark sunglasses: click a specific shop icon, scroll down to glasses, click if they actually have glasses, see that they don't have any dark sunglasses, click out, go to the next shop, rinse, repeat for thirty-three shops. Brutally inefficient, especially given that some shops only offer shirts, for example. Aside: there are no dark sunglasses, only the lightest of tinted ones. "wE NEeD to sEe YOuR prEtTy eYES" Also: you can only access all the shops in one place, Dedsec HQ. Hack a boat from a spiderbot, that's no problem for Dedsec. Shopping? Whoa whoa, this is a rag-tag band of network enthusiasts, not some big corpo endless money thing. I do like the vending machine though. Maybe that should have been tech upgrades instead. Eh, I'd probably have groused about that as well. Predictable chump is predictable
Someone please tell me why there are two different control maps for passive hacking v. active hacking. press Q to summon drone. Oh you hacked the device: press C to summon drone. There's a "C" to start a download in an active hacking menu, and in different scenarios, an "F" to do the exact same thing. So that's "Q" to download passively, and "C" or "F" to download actively, depending on I don't know. And on and on. Three different control maps! This is so very, very bad.
You can hack an enemy with "shock" if you're a hacker. It deals a piddly amount of damage, and you can never shock-hack that enemy again. I've always felt that the specialist hackers were the ones underpowered for combat and moar guns = betterer, but I'm an old fuddy-duddy. Drone expert for taking out a "static" location, hitman for a "incoming swarm" location. "You're going to have to hold off these Albion goons for a little while longer." "On it, Bags, I am shooting them in the faces with my two real guns because the shock guns are garbo, yo, put a stick about." "Good job toodle pip cheerio right then." Hire me for intense, award-winning UK script doctoring.
The fake TV scan lines on the map. Not that noticeable, until some jagoff mentions them. Then, can never not notice them. You're welcome.
You spent some quality time getting the first mission done for a potential recruit. You meet with the recruit to finish up and move on to the second mission. Coming out of the cut scene, you accidentally hit "F" (attack) instead of "D" (move). You punch the recruit. The recruit immediately goes "screw this" and the mission fails. Now to win the recruit back, you must do a deep profile mission plus one or two regular recruit missions again. The recruit is not that valuable, every other recruit in the roster requires only the one-two missions. There should have been a thing in which you don't auto-punch friendlies, given the complete waste of time that was. "Waste of time = fun." The second time this happened in two days, there wasn't even an accidental keypress. Came out of cut scene, the recruit is far away, my character lunges to punch them, mission failure. Did it buffer a keypress right after mission success, through the cut scene, to the open world? Fun.
In the same manner, if you stand close enough to Clan Kelly members they will start yelling at you and eventually, punching you. If strangers intervene and start punching the Clan Kelly member and you join in, your punches will go wildly from person to person even if you're focusing on the enemy. One time, four punches, all on bystanders. The choice is, either implement a friendly/non-friendly priority system, or fix/make a non-capricious targetting system. Or in this case, do neither.
The game is set up w/this "punch everything no priority" system and yet you can't electro-punch explosive cargo. Your arm phases right through. You can stand on the cargo and shoot it, though. IIRC, you can do this repeatedly and never knock yourself out. Not sure about resistance.
There's one recruit mission that is a two-parter: rescue someone, re-steal an ambulance filled with drugs from Clan Kelly. You drop it off, it "locks" rendering it useless, and there's a Clan Kelly attack. No cars around, usually. The odd thing is just how long these chases can go on, you can drive halfway across the map, the drones will keep ultra-rubberbanding to you and the cars will keep spawning. And even after you've successfully "lost" them and the recruit goes "gosh I will join Dedsec" and the mission completes, Clan Kelly is still looking for you. Albion drones might become involved and shoot them, or they might find you if you stick around in the general area. They probably remain on alert forever until despawn.
There's a few other strange extended things like the Clan Kelly chase/attack, the one I keep thinking of are blaring sirens. "You will need to hack this thing for n minutes while the siren continues to blare. It's gonna be great." Mute the sound effects, environmental cues go away as well (even though some of those are coming from the wrong direction). Great job everyone. You want to make it funish? Make a button to turn off the siren, put it some place semi-difficult to access. Earn the silence.
Every time I think about how the floaty enemy level/alert indications (the exclamation point, etc) are "cheating," I think about extreme enemy rubberbanding/proximity spawning. "Eh, evens it out."
The standard shock guns operatives get if they have no other weapons. They work okay in regular play, but on resistance, they are useless. You don't bring them to gun fights. At all. The shock grenade launcher? Sure. The shotgun? Never bothered with it; tried a regular shotgun, was seriously outmatched so I'm assuming more of the same. The two main electro guns? No way.
Bugs/What.
Sometimes NPCs whoosh by at fantastic speeds. Mostly from far right to far left. Saw one once in a "switching to new operative" cut scene in the bar above hq. Saw a Clan Kelly member fly like a curveball right into the side of a dumpster. Happens mostly when driving. If you play your cards right they'll fall into the Thames. This happens all the time, one or two NPCs will just flash by randomly. "What was that oh right, superspeed NPCs." This was also a feature of Assassin's Creed: Syndicate. Or an NPC and an Albion NPC will suddenly materialize in front of your car. Hit the NPC, now he's "going to the hospital" but was "freed by operative Wrench" and the Albion guard was "stopped from attacking [person] by operative Wrench" as the guard walks away confusedly. You and me both, pops.
Hostages cannot follow you off "standard" jumps like the boxcars at the Albion facility. They can't board boats or drones. I've had to push them over little ledges or the like and of course that's fun because you half-phase through them.
The sound is off. You're facing/looking directly at a gun being fired; it sounds like it's to your back and right. That also stacks, so two Albion guards yelling and shooting, it's all clustered in that back/right area. This is very odd, kneecapping a critical component of gameplay.
Freed non-mission hostages will almost always, upon being uncuffed, change status to "fleeing/etc operative [you]" and sometimes just get down on knees cowering.
Small curbs/risers/ledges/elevations cannot be climbed half the time.
Cannot throw missile jet while in red zone.
When running full speed off high ledges you usually run in space while moving downward, slower than a fall. At some height the game no longer allows the run-off.
Did you notice that I didn't put the car noises in "Bullshit"? It's because the engine noises aren't bullshit, it's just unfortunate they built a team filled with people who had never used/heard a car. I'll put it in "Bugs." Every time I think of that I think of the one person who designed a software car engine simulator and you could just plug in tons of variables like the size of the engine, number of pistons, etc, and boop, out the other end, near-perfect engine noises. A game company snapped it up. Guessing it wasn't Ubisoft.
People climbing on top of/over cars because the car is on the sidewalk. "Just doing my normal pathing"
When time-jumping to meet a recruit ("Press [return] to wait until 6:00am"), the radio station in the car continues uninterrupted, and any timed hacks are still counting down.
Vehicle physics are deflating. The feel is like driving around a toilet paper tube. Light, bouncey, way more apt to take a curb the wrong way and spin you 180 degrees. I have seen real cars eat a curb, one time while the driver was rummaging in the passenger well for a CD or some such and it barely missed me. So I was right there to see that tire go deep into the well. That, instead of wiping out, I think is what.
When you're running around after clicking on something that will have a relic/treasure/text associated with it, the screen will abruptly shift from gameplay to the relic list etc., and since you're holding down the very same key that scrolls the list, it instantly scrolls off the relevant text into the morass of things you've already scrolled away from earlier.
Tower of London on a drone. Red ring wanted level. Will not go away, no one can see the drone. Move drone away from Tower. Goes away. Move it back, ring comes back.
I've talked about the drone highway before, the math is wrong so sometimes the drones have this weird galloping cadence. One time I heard a repeating banging noise ... looked up, two CT drones were smashing into each other as they trundled down the avenue. I mean, that felt very real, but it was still wrong.
At one point during a "download Optik records from two captains" mission one captain just walked away from the the whole thing, little yellow "current mission" dot following him the whole time. Kept teleporting on the map: farther, closer, farther. "Finish downloads before leaving area" Tell the captain that. Was able to chase them down during a "closer" phase.
Another time, one captain started walking away, much farther than the bounds of the location, but stayed w/in spawn distance the whole time. This meant two things. 1) When I went to go find him, enemies respawned at the location. I didn't find him, came back. "Oh." Other things did not respawn, like the control panels/vehicles, so that meant I had less to work with the second time around. 2) If I started taking out Albion guards, the captain would call reinforcements. Seemingly forever, since he was no longer available to be shot.
After destroying a camera drone and it has completely exploded and no longer exists it somehow plays the Nabisco three-note jingle. What, and what.
Timers for special operatives (bright green dot) do not reset between games. Loaded a game and immediately drove by a special operative; stopped the car, ran back to the location: gone. Timer ran out. Technically not a bug, but everything else is reset between sessions: if you're in a restricted zone, you magically appear outside it on re-load, weapons fully charged/bulleted, etc.
One operative became "unavailable," no information about why. This is not a kidnapped operative. [later] Still unavailable after multiple re-starts and main plot finish. Long meeting. Also, there is an alert on the door of Dedsec HQ. Go downstairs, nothing matches alert. The alert will not go away, after multiple re-starts and main plot finish. Maybe the unavailable operative is trapped in the matrix and this is their cry for help. Oh no. #ohno [later] Turns out the two things were actually related. For whatever reason, the game held off on the "alert" which was a Nowt talky bit about one of the operatives being in hospital "for awhile" blah blah, let's start the mission "Human Error." Still a bug, to put an alert icon on HQ w/nothing to show for it. I think maybe the icon shows up when the operative is hospitalized, that would be the problem. I think it waits at least three real days, not sure.
Hitting a garbage bin at Clan Kelly Leather Lane location with a cargo drone at a diagonal will blow up the drone.
While in the Broca Tech final set of missions, if you finish up the first chunk of tasks, the Albion guards swarming the facility all immediately disappear, even if they're right next to you. I think this has happened on most/all modes, from easy to resistance. "POP" "Okay now go get the drone." "Uhhh what there was like ten guys ..." "Shhh shhh you have to do the next thing and it's maudlin and it's the only character you care about except Claire Waters and she dead too but anyway no Albion assholes during sad times." "Wokay chief."
"Track Zero Day's signal." Fifteen seconds after starting, the van suddenly teleports far away, oh you lost the signal. Try again. What?
Sometimes the checkpoint scanner monitor only shows your face. Everyone else tootles through, nothing happens.
The captains call for reinforcements only some of the time. Shot at? Call. Some dork has run over six of my best Albioners? It's cool. This extends to Assassin's "locked" treasures or whatever that magically resets if you are detected at the location. Gas line blows up, killing two? Anomaly, keep that treasure available for plunder and stuff. "Wokay, gas lines for everyone"
You cannot put the combat spiderbot on a scissor lift. When the lift rises, the spiderbot stays on the base and the lift phases through it. This feels like a we-know-about-this bug that never got resolved, like the galloping drone highway etc, not a you-can't-do-this-fake-bug.
Randos/enemies that end up at the bottom of waterways are sometimes hackable. It indicates that they're headed to the hospital, even in resistance. It is the future, maybe there's a way to revive drowning victims.
Roughly half of the collectibles on the map "winked out" one time. A re-load of the saved campaign brought them all back.
Finished recruiting someone kidnapped at the London Necropolis. Once I led them outside out of the upper exit, I got the prompt to talk to them; usually a formality. "So now that I saved your ass, you'll join our rotty li'l club yes, yes?" "Duh ok" But this time when it came out of the cutscene, it said the mission failed. I looked around and the recruit was lying at my feet, waiting to go to the hospital. I must have blacked out and punched them in the face because of their chosen occupation, "living statue."
The unfinished bits of the London Carriage Service. The central lift that goes nowhere etc. It looked interesting. That's what locked/unavailable things do to your brain. "You can't have this" "OH I AM ENTICEMENTS #WANT"
Random timer reset on (at least) the shock mine. Takes long enough w/o it resetting.
Ubisoft servers were down, loaded into campaign. One minute later the "increasing points" meter pop-up from online appeared on screen. It increased to nearly maximum points, made the standard little "levelling up" sound, then started again from zero, over and over.
Online, if someone else makes a waypoint, it's your waypoint now. I don't care where randos are going.
Crashes: After spending a bit of time in the London Tower Bridge. Unknown cause, sometimes I was just sitting around reading comics waiting for a guard to walk by. / While looking at the map.
Praise.
Spiderbots. Pretty much hit it out of the park with this one. Spiderbots driving cars, boat captain spiders (they need small hats), spiderbots commandeering drones. Spiderbots making tiny pea shooter shots at enemies, pew pew. Spiderbots living their best lives. Spiderbots! I want a spiderbot. [two years later] I want a spiderbot.
Bagley. Great voice/writing work on Baggles. Yahtzee Croshaw of Second Wind provided punch-up. Sure, the game is an endless buffet of what techno-fascism could look like if today's techno-fascists really put their noses to the grindstone and/or is exactly what some rich ghouls are doing right now, and quippy Bags is a weird-off note in the middle of all the poison, but maybe we need that to muddle through. Maybe less poison next time, though. One body bag is shocking, one hundred body bags is Tuesday. [FX: poorly balancing armful] "What am I going to do with all these body bags???"
The spinny-world "synchronization" vantage point w/the Assassin's Creed crossover.
The hackable road ramps. Obviously not a real-life thing but still. How did that get past the kill-all-non-grueling-gameplay committee. "We could put a ramp on the road and players could mini-jum--" "SHUT THIS FUN SHIT DOWN"
Hacking (for example) a spiderbot to fly a drone up to access a camera and using that angle to hack something else. "I'm five levels in, here." Unfortunately the escape key bumps you out of all the levels, but still. Fun.
Shooting a tray of donuts and the donuts fly up. Shooting up bottles. If this was Arc Raiders they'd nerf the donuts/bottles then two weeks later write a paragraph defending their position after getting tons of negative feedback. "See, the problem here is that it was enjoyable. Games are supposed to be slogs. Start a-sweatin', raiders. Feel the tension."
Alice Fraser and Andy Zaltzman, real actual people, of The Bug which is based on The Bugle, an actual real podcast they host. I didn't realize until just now that Zaltzman is the Zaltzman that was the guy who dressed up as a cricket player in season/series #18 of Taskmaster. The Bug feels very real in the world (and unfortunately in ours as well) which probably isn't as high as a hurdle to hurd when you're pitch-shifting voices and rounding off corners of dialogue so it can fit with the "play as everyone" mechanic. PC Gamer: Watch Dogs: Legion's best writing is hidden in a radio station.
The echoes of police sirens and radios around Thames Landing.
The specific sound sequence of a specific car crash you hear off in the distance. You know the one.
The little "bing-bong" of the drink vending machine. "I am here if you need me, thank you!" I used it as a hydration reminder. "Yes I would like a drink, very kind of you." There should be small treats you can feed vending machines when they're being good. Hire me for your next dystopic future open-world videogame endeavour. canyoufeedthevendingmachine.tumblespot.com. Also the design of the front panel appeals. I would have put the pricing/etc information at the bottom of each item instead of the top. You know me: understated elegance. [SFX: distant car crash]
The little bits of behind-closed-door sounds that aren't the mewling baby/dog/whatevers. I can't remember ever running into the piano/vocal practicing just NE of Finnsbury Gardens, maybe it's only there, maybe I've forgotten. Update: Ran into it a week later coming from some unnamed administration building.
Tips.
Stack operative missions. Find an operative, click through to start the mission, find another operative, click through etc. The locations will start to repeat, so you can go to one place and move 2-4 operative missions forward. Haven't seen more than four. Haven't seen what I guess would be the maximum: four operative missions, tech point, main mission, 404 contract, and borough uprising challenge. Eight in one blow. Guessing the Kaitlin/404 missions are all in unique places so it's either one or the other. Also the only off-list item I can think of, grabbin' an armored car. Probably could only happen at Nexus Tower. You have to keep checking back with the map to make sure you got everything, it's not going to prompt you. Quite the opposite, "Escape the area" will pop up after each mission. Yes, I have left multiple times and then smacked my head.
When playing resistance, it's a bit rich that Albion comes running every time you get a widdle tech point. Avoid this by quitting immediately afterward. You start up with the tech points and no cops. It's a nice way to end a gaming session: goodbye, coppers. In a bullshit five-star chase that never ends and your hand is getting cramped? Just leave, as long as you're not in the middle of a critical mission. "Escape to safety" (45 minutes later) "Escape to safety"
I don't know what triggers Albion thugs to calmly walk into the water. It happens during missions at the Battersea (at least). I was on the "download optik data from two officers" member signup mission (resistance). Got the download data from the first officer off a camera. Other guy wasn't near a camera, didn't move, couldn't do the download. First, I saw a bomb officer randomly walk off the edge of the platform. No hesitation, just "I'm out lol." Second was about ten minutes later, the actual second officer with optik data had dunked it while I was looking for a scooter just outside. I got a spider, climbed the weird catwalk, sat above the waterway, hack-glided a boat underneath, jumped on that. Captain Spider. Officers can't see spider in boat. Backed the boat up to right where the second officer download would have been. But the spider couldn't get it through the boat hull or something, so I went to a security camera to start it, then it auto-downloaded because the spider was close enough to the corpse, I mean the to-be-hospitalized officer. My theory is that while looking for scooters, I went lower than the second officer, which triggered an errant pathfinding event. Though that wasn't the case with the first one.
Use camera drones to lead enemies into traps, either with "attract" or just waggling a bit around a corner. "What was that?" Yeah, come see what was that. Turns out: combat spiderbot surprise. Stationary cameras also have an "attract" button, which I always forget about. Anything to break their tiny nearly-useless pathing cycles.
Do not snore on the chase drone. I ignored it for the longest time but getting data points in resistance is grueling. Just have to be nimble with it, map out hiding places. Ducts are good but finicky to shoot out of.
You'll get a five-star wanted level if you steal an Albion vehicle. But zero stars if you steal it inside an Albion-designated area. Just tack these missions on the end of other ones. "Rescue some rando, download some data, grab an armored car." Goes from insanely difficult (in resistance) to the easiest mission type.
When you get that weird "get the prize vehicle/destroy it" and the possible recruit says "Drive it into Thames" you can just destroy it with an explosion/etc. Can you just destroy it outright, before acquiring it? Tests are needed, though my gamesense tells me that they'd take the opportunity to say you failed the mission even though you did not. You did good. We're all proud of you at HQ. Come in for some cupcakes some day. Lots of them. Yeah even the weird pink ones ... I don't know, I think it's strawberry? But like strawberry lite. I was lightly reprimanded at a party once for eating too many cupcakes. Knowledge: the key to power. I felt my face flush red, I felt bad about it the whole party. I felt bad about it for days afterward. I still feel bad about it. Did I mention I don't like being me much? [FX: small puppet appears] "Ho ho! What a jolly jest! Ha! Ha-ha!" Update: Yes, you can destroy it immediately even though you're given no indication that that's a viable vying.
Though ETO is only for clothing, you apparently maximize your intake by hiring operatives with the "Skilled Investor" perk, up to six. I don't believe any of the financial perks are in the online version. Random shopping purchases, skilled investor, gambling, etc.
I think if you're in Clan Kelly territory outdoors other than Brixton Block, gun shots always get a quick visit from Albion. Use silencers/shockers.
You can sit in your car with a chase drone right above it. Albion doesn't recognize you as well.
"I'm detecting Clan Kelly fucking around in the general vicinity." Battlebridge Basin is a nice place to visit when the chase starts, if you're in the area and want to avoid the ridic long chases (this was resistance). I don't know why, the whole chase fizzled out when I got there. Maybe a fluke. Just standing ground works well in easy mode, don't know about the others.
If you can get two+ recruit missions in Brixton Block, there's a ledge on the building (it's roughly the center of where you would expect VIP seating to be for the whole "bowl" of the area) that works well with shooty spider. Watched a battle for about five minutes. Additionally with two+ recruits at Brixton Block it might get up to eight captains (!?) if you want some long-battle gameplay.
The mission "Take It To The Bank" is really something on resistance. ~14 Albion swarm. I forgot about the best place to steel yourself and died. Next time, only five Albion, and they stood still most of the time; took some pot shots at the one guy I saw cross and then re-cross LOS. Game took pity. Anyway, best spot is behind the sliding glass door. Explode the control panel/gas line near it beforehand, park a car up against the exterior door though I've not seen Albion come in from the outside that way. I think going farther back, behind the control gate, is the best move. I've seen playthroughs in which multiple Albion guards get right up in the door frame. Not good with resistance. You have to move out of that spot to hack re-close the glass door. Better situation than trying to melee/shoot Albion next to you in a door frame.
I snoozed on the odd difference between an enemy searching for agitators outside the perimeter of their designated area and a spiderbomb searching for you, specifically. You sit outside, do something inside, sometimes enemies will rush outside, they'll walk right past you. It's comical. The problem is that spiderbombs, somehow, know exactly who/where you are even if you are outside, which doesn't comport with what the enemies know/don't know ... but okay. So let's say I was a drone expert, got in a car outside the perimeter, then sent up a one-shot drone. Let's say I got used to doing that a lot because with resistance you don't go in guns blazing and working all the gas lines/control panels is sometimes tedious. Now, if a spiderbomb had bombed me standing outside while I was piloting a drone, I probably maybe would have survived with a tiny fraction of health. I was in a car, so the spiderbomb blew up the car and resistance was on ... oops. TL/DR: Don't sit around where a spiderbomb can get you if you're mostly hacking/droning because there's no warning, just cut to burning car and the announcement that your operative is dead.
Online.
Online challenges are inane both for quality and quantity. Drink 20 beers, should be max five -especially- when you have to cycle through operators twice because they pass out. Maybe they thought someone would just stop into a bar, have a few, do something else, have a few. I mean, have something to do, honestly, then we'll talk (yelling over the odd [in concept and execution] "you're getting drunk" jazzy number which slowly fades from right to left and back again; this is exactly what happens when I drink). Ten cars into water, should be max five. The mind gets numb after doing things after three times. Ten times? Congratulations, you turned gameplay into gamechore. Additionally, things that have randomness built in -- destroy ten trucks, for example -- suddenly there are no trucks anywhere, to the point where it's clear there's some programmatical fuckery going on (try it: pick a random time, start finding trucks, compare and contrast against finding trucks when you have a "find ten trucks" challenge). Everything: max five. Especially when the variety of challenges is so limited.
Drive 10 Albion cars into water -- Best place is Scotland Yard. Hack through the Yard paved narrow shortcut (Albion SUVs don't fit though cars do) to where the cars are parked on the next street over. Hack a car and drive a second car at the same time ... drive the hacked car near the river ledge, not into it -- hacking a car into the water doesn't count (I call that a bug, hacking a car is driving a car [Cabdrivers are also known as "hacks"]).
Destroy 10 trucks. Go to Nine Elms Walkway. There is a truck under the walkway. Fastest way to do this is to steal an Albion truck, drive up the walkway (because there's no other easier way to drown the truck), cut right off the walkway to splash in the Thames, swim back to the under-walkway truck, drive that into the Thames. Do not hack the truck in, sometimes (?) it doesn't count it as w/Albion cars. Then, grab fast car/motorcycle, drive far enough away to re-spawn truck. Rinse, repeat 5x.
Shoot 5000 Albion cars with LMGs -- Ram the car into a wall until it's heavily damaged, then shoot it. Faster. Or, better strat: don't do it. It takes too long, you get Albion sniffing around. Who cares, skip it.